StarWind performance without jumbo frame

Software-based VM-centric and flash-friendly VM storage + free version

Moderators: anton (staff), art (staff), Max (staff), Anatoly (staff)

Post Reply
zhenxu_zj
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 1:36 pm

Sun Feb 08, 2009 1:52 pm

What is the realistic performance that I could expect with StarWind without jumbo frame?

I have a dual xeon server with 4-cores per CPU. The system is configured with 4G RAM running 64bit Windows 2003. The iperf testing in both TCP and UDP mode showed about 550M/s bandwidth. The system has a PERC 5/i RAID5 volume with 6 drives. The OS is on another RAID1 volume with 2 drives. iSCSI is on the RAID5 volume with IBV. Running SQLIO on the server directly yield about 300M in both read and write. However, iSCSI connections seem to be capping at 30M/s. The IBV is setup with cluster mode with multiple VMWARE ESX connections. I have seen way better performance with the same hardware on Openfiler with IET.

Thanks!
Mitschele
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:02 pm

Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:14 pm

Hi,

i have a Quad Xeon System running with Starwind iSCSI and use it with an ESX Server 3.5

Regarding Performance:

I have 1 Virtual machine on a Starwin iSCSI Target and cloned it to the other Starwind iSCSI Target. Both Targets are on the same Starwind server. I ended up with a max Bandwidth of 340 Mbit. Anyway, no Tuning applied so far.

Regards

Harry
zhenxu_zj
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 1:36 pm

Wed Feb 11, 2009 1:19 pm

Harry,

Are you using image file or IBV. With two days intensive testing, here is what I found out.

* StarWind does not work well with LACP teamed/bonded NIC. With LACP enabled on the NIC, the write performance drops 3 folds
* IBV performance is really poor compared to the image file. With image file, I can get wire speed of gigabit. However, with IBV, I am getting really poor performance.

With image file and no LACP, I am getting 85%-95% network utilization on gigabit ethernet default setting.

I am still having other issues such as ESXi took forever to start when logging into the target though.

Thanks,

Zhen
Mitschele
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:02 pm

Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:43 pm

I have used Diskbridging on SATA Disks. I will do a test on Imagefiles as well, thx for the hint.

I have ESX Server hanging on Boot only if i have removed iSCSI Targets without doing a Rescan on the VMkernel iSCSI initiater. There are some threads in VMware Forum about ESX hangs.

regards

harry
Robert (staff)
Posts: 303
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:42 am

Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:40 am

Hello,

We will be glad to resolve any technical issue should they exist in your environment.

Please send it to support@starwindsoftware.com OR submit a form on our web site:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/support

Thanks,
Rob
Robert
StarWind Software Inc.
http://www.starwindsoftware.com
Post Reply