StarWind Software

Current test machines:
(1) Win 2003 STD 64-bit SP2 with 1.5 GiB RAM + StarWind 3.5.3
(2) Win XP PRO 32-bit SP2 with 1 GiB RAM + MSiSCSIInit/StarPort

TTCP says (1) and (2) have a link that can do about 40 Mbit/s.

HDTune says average transfer rate for the SATA disk I will publish from (1) as iSCSI LUN is about 70 Mb/s.

Initiator on (2) logs on the LUN. I format it and it's ready. I run HDTune and it says 25 Mb/s.

0) What should I change to enhance the transfer rate?

1) At present, with version 3.5.3, what is best? StarWind for x86 or for x86_64?

2) Does running StarWind on desktop versus server versions of Windows affect the performance (throughput as seen from initiator's point of view)?

3) hw versus sw iSCSI initiators: how much does a hw initiator increase the throughput?

4) after configuring the Windows TCP/IP stack as described in this forum, what other changes should one perform on Windows to enhance throughput?

5) Is there a matrix where I can find the penalty/boost factopr I get when I choose this or that? (OS, RAM, physical disk, HBA, cabling, parmeters)

Who edited my message? I didn't.

Anyway, thank you.

What I don't understand fully is why the machine where StarWind runs in does not show a 100% CPU usage, nor a 40 Mbit/s network usage. Does it mean that it is actually the I/O subsystem that forces the system in idle waits?

Sorry it was me who had hit the wrong button

0) Nothing. Your network is not working slowly, it's simply AWOL.

1) No difference between 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

2) No difference.

3) With the modern TCP offload NICs hardware iSCSI adapters are redundant. Including iSCSI offload engines.

4) You need to optimize I/O subsystem.

5) I don't think we have any ((