Multiple Connections

[venom]

Hello,

Does the free version of Starwind allow multiple connections to a shared resource? I was trying Xen out and unfortunately it kept saying that the other Xen server (out of 2 in a Pool) was using the iSCSI interface. I am trying to test out Xen and ESX shared resources to get familiar with their advanced features.

Also, I was able to share and an multi connect to an NTFS shared iSCSI share. However the data would not appear on either end if a system wrote to it. Meaning if System1 connected to the Starwind iSCSI NTFS 10 gig share and made a folder, System2 would not see it unless it disconnected and reconnected. This also happened in reverse.

Is this a MS NTFS limitation or a Starwind limitation?

Thank you!

[Robert (staff)]

Hello,

The free version of StarWind supports multiple concurrent iSCSI connections.

As for NTFS file system on a shared storage, please note that if you are creating concurrent connection and data read/write mode by simultaneous access of several initiators to the same image file or an image file, this is not recommended. This will cause data corruption and make the data inside the file inconsistent. In other words, you need cluster file system on a shared storage.

In order to avoid this, you can do one of the following:

- Either create separate image files per every initiator and allow one
connection only per image, or
- Use Cluster services (such as MS Cluster Service), dedicated SAN file
systems (Data Plow SFS, etc.) or software, allowing NTFS to be used as SAN
file system (MetaSAN, or alike).

You can refer to the documentation on using MetaSAN and Dataplow to share
iSCSI targets:

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/images/ ... etaSAN.pdf
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/images/ ... nd_SFS.pdf

Thanks
Rob