LSFS - Snapshot and async replication - all flash

[KPS]

Hi!

I did not use LSFS (only raw-devices) in the past, but it seems to be interesting and I need the ability to use snapshots.

Can you tell me something about the limitations?
- Can there be "nearly" unlimited snapshots?
- Is there any possibility to see the space, that is consumed by every snapshot?
- Do you have retention-policies like: Keep 1 hourly snapshot for 24 hours, 1 daily snapshot for 30 days?
- Is it possible to keep a higher number of snapshots on a "DR-system" with asynchronous replication?


In theory, LSFS should be slow on "uncached reads".. That should be solvable with all-flash-storage, but the LSFS-overhead makes this quite expensive. How do you solve this? Just an example:
7x 1.6 TB Flash
--> Raid 5 (brave with 7 disks...): 9,6 TB
--> Max LSFS-Size: 3,2 TB

And a last question:
Are there any plans to add the feature: "clone-snapshot" to get a read/write-version of it?


Regards,
KPS

[Oleg(staff)]

Unfortunately, LSFS is not recommended option for the most of All-Flash scenarios.
You can find more information by following this link.

[KPS]

Hi!

So, there is no "starwind-solution" for All-Flash, if snapshots and aynchronous replication are needed - right?

[Michael (staff)]

Hello KPS,
LSFS was designed for spindle storage to coalesces small random writes into the stream of big sequential writes to get better performance. It can be used on some flash configurations, but as you mentioned it's expensive
So if you really need LSFS feature, you can configure it on All-Flash storage.

[KPS]

Hi Michael!

Thank you for your answer!
Can LSFS provide a good performance on flash? I did not find any informations about this?

Another question: does LSFS provide any "system" to do integrity checks like zfs or refs?

[KPS]

Hi!

It would be great, if you could give me some input on:

- Can there be "nearly" unlimited snapshots?
- Is there any possibility to see the space, that is consumed by every snapshot?
- Do you have retention-policies like: Keep 1 hourly snapshot for 24 hours, 1 daily snapshot for 30 days?
- Is it possible to keep a higher number of snapshots on a "DR-system" with asynchronous replication?

[Michael (staff)]

Hello!
LSFS is checking the data internally, but using another unique mechanism, which is not the same as zfs or refs.
You can read about working with snapshots here: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resour ... -snapshots
There is no possibility to see the space, taken by the snapshots (unless you check it manually ) and there is no retention policies for LSFS, but you can use scripts here for snapshots automation: C:\Program Files\StarWind Software\StarWind\StarWindX\Samples\powershell
Also, you can read about Asynchronous replication here: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resour ... r-recovery
During the Asynchronous replica creation, there is a possibility to set a maximum number of stored snapshots on the DR site (see step 10).

[KPS]

Hi!

I did some performance-tests with LSFS and full-flash / NVMe, but results are not very good on random write.
It's sad, that there is no oterh snapshot/replication-possibility with starwind.

[anton (staff)]

Don't do LSFS with all-flash, it's designed for parity RAID (5,6+). For replication you'd better use application level replication (SQL Server, Veeam etc), it's where industry moves from LUN replication.

Hi!

I did some performance-tests with LSFS and full-flash / NVMe, but results are not very good on random write.
It's sad, that there is no oterh snapshot/replication-possibility with starwind.

[KPS]

Hi anton!

At the moment, there is no replication solution except zerto (which I know). Veeam-replication 9.5 leads to an outage on every replication...

Everytime, Veeam is doing a snapshot or deleting the snapshot, 1-2 pings of the VM is lost and every UDP-packet, that is sent to the VM is lost.
--> 2 outages on each sync-job on each vm

Thats why i am looking for a storage, that can do the job.

[anton (staff)]

LSFS won't help you here... Sacrificing performance (dramatically) in favor of async replication is a bad idea. Can you use per-application replication? What's your workload?

Hi anton!

At the moment, there is no replication solution except zerto (which I know). Veeam-replication 9.5 leads to an outage on every replication...

Everytime, Veeam is doing a snapshot or deleting the snapshot, 1-2 pings of the VM is lost and every UDP-packet, that is sent to the VM is lost.
--> 2 outages on each sync-job on each vm

Thats why i am looking for a storage, that can do the job.

[KPS]

Hi!

My workload is a vSphere infrastructure.
I am using 4 procudtion-hosts and a DR-vSphere-node.

My goal is to replicate the data to the DR-location to be able to bring the VMs up, there, if needed.

I am testing some different solutions, but I hope to be able to stay with starwind (as I really like your product and your support!):

- LSFS -> has all the features, but bad performance with all-flash
- ZFS -> no good products with good support in Europe on the market, but full featureset with replication, snapshots, snapshot-clones, etc.)

Replication on VM-basis:
- Veeam 9.5: Outage on every replication
- Zerto: VERY expensive
- Veeam 10: should be out for months/years...

[Michael (staff)]

Hello KPS,
Thank you for the provided description and feedback.
You could replicate data to the DR location with asynchronous replication, but in your case, I believe, it is better to go with Veeam B&R or any other solution to replicate VMs.