Design Recommendation for Large LUNs

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Matt Meyer
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:19 am

Tue Jun 26, 2007 8:37 pm

I'm testing StartWind and I have a design question. I plan to use StarWind to present 250G and 500G LUNs. (Yes, I know, quite large)

Would it be better to use Image File or Disk Bridge mode? On one hand I like the ability to be able mirror an image file to a second iSCSI target for redundancy, but how well can Windows handle a file that large on NTFS? Even with RAID caching enabled, I'm concerned I'll eventually start to take a performance hit.

With Disk Bridge mode, there is one less thing for Windows to worry about. It's just a cleaner config as there is no encapsulated file.

Anyone have anything thoughts on which config they would choose and why? The hardware I plan to use is an HP DL380 G3 with a RAID-6 (ADG) and a well equipped array controller to handle the parity overhead. There will be 6 300 GB drives in the server for a usable space of around 1.2T.

Thanks,
Matt
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:11 am

Hi Matt,

ImageFile is the most flexible way to share your storage.
Just keep your image files continious and non-fragmented for good performance.
Also using the filesystem buffering can help for some types of workloads and storage configurations.

DiskBridge is actually a wrapper over ImageFile that works the same way, except no filesystem is used.
Best regards,
Valeriy
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