StarWind The Most Recent Version

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

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anton (staff)
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Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:04 pm

StarWind 5.3 Release notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: File format checking added. It helps to eliminate the threat of data corruption due to the use of simple disk images as HA device image files.
Core: TCP/IP interface settings changes are recognized automatically now. When host obtains new IP address or has new network interface enabled StarWind service automatically opens port on the new interface.
Mirror: Background synchronization mode added. When device initialization mode has been set to synchronize for new mirror device new device becomes available immediately. Synchronization is done at the background. Synchronization progress is displayed in mirror device properties.
RAM disk: SerialId support for the drive added. No more pseudo-MPIO issues with VMware ESX/ESXi.
High Availability: Synchronization status icon added to Management Console for HA devices.
GUI: Help file has been updated.

Fixed bugs
High Availability: HA device node BSOD issue fixed. If HA device is under heavy load and one of HA nodes hard reset other matching node could crash with BSOD under certain circumstances.
High Availability: Issue with Hyper-V cluster fixed. If HA device is used for hosting Hyper-V virtual machine and is connected to cluster using Round-Robin policy virtual machine could become unstable or crash with BSOD after HA node hard reset and following fast sync process.
High Availability: Persistent reservation processing fixed.
Caching: Hyper-V virtual machine data corruption issue fixed. This issue appeared during installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 to Hyper-V virtual machine hosted on StarWind virtual disk with Write-Back cache enabled.
Caching: Aborted tasks issue when using Write-Back cache under heavy load. Request queue processing was fixed. Under certain patterns of disk load disk requests could be stalled in the queue for a while.
Mirror: Wrong mirrors status display fixed for Mirror devices with Write-Back mode caching enabled. After the mirror had failed its status was displayed as “valid” in Management Console for some period of time.

Installation notes
Note for ESX/ESXi users: Please be sure to install ESXi400-201003401-BG patch from VMWare. This patch fixes some iSCSI-related issues in VMWare ESX/ESXi.
Download link to ESX patch: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1019492
Download link to ESXi patch:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1019497

Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Warning: existing HA devices cannot be upgraded to this version without taking storage offline.
To update existing HA devices from previous version, please follow the steps below:
- take storage offline (disconnect both HA nodes from the client)
- create backups of data files and StarWind config file (starwind.cfg)
- update StarWind on the both HA nodes
- perform full synchronization for HA devices.
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Max (staff)
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Tue Jun 01, 2010 3:44 pm

StarWind 5.3.5 Release notes

Fixed bugs:
High Availability: Problem with moving cluster shared volumes between nodes in Hyper-V cluster was fixed.
IBV: VSS snapshots fixed. Core: Task reusing fixed. Service could crash while processing connection from certain hardware initiators.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: existing HA devices of version 5.2 and older versions cannot be upgraded to this version without taking storage offline. To update existing HA devices from previous version, please follow the steps below:
- Take storage offline (disconnect both HA nodes from the client).
- Create backups of data files and StarWind config file (starwind.cfg).
- Update StarWind on the both HA nodes.
- Perform full synchronization for HA devices.
Constantin (staff)

Mon Jul 19, 2010 11:31 am

StarWind 5.4 Release Notes

New features and improvements:
High Availability: Caching added. Write-Through and Write-Back modes are supported.
High Availability: Autosync functionality added. When HA node becomes active, it is synchronized and binged online automatically if autosync option has been set.
IBVolume: Maximum device size limit of 2TB has been removed.
Core: allow responses to SendTargets=All to be greater than 8kb, up to initiator's parameter MaxRecvDataSegmentLength.
Installation: Allow rule for StarWind service is being added to Windows firewall on product install.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.
Constantin (staff)

Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:57 am

StarWind 5.4 build 2010/07/22 Release Notes

New features and improvements:
Licensing: New license types added. License format changed.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.
Constantin (staff)

Mon Nov 29, 2010 9:37 am

StarWind 5.5 Release notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: Added heartbeat feature for synchronization channel state tracking.
High Availability: Performance improvements.
High Availability: Fast sync support for devices with write-back cache mode added.
High Availability: If both nodes were down and then full sync has been initiated, device becomes available for client connections immediately. Requests are processed by the node which is selected as synchronization source.
High Availability: CHAP authentication support added.
CDP/Snapshots: GPT disks support fixed.
Virtual Tape: Image file changing fixed. Device properties information now shows correct image file name. If no Virtual Tape image file is currently loaded in the device, it reports the file name as "None - Virtual Tape device is not loaded", and the file size as zero.
GUI: Management Console updates.

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: CHAP authentication is not supported for HA device images created in earlier versions of the software.
Constantin (staff)

Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:24 am

Version 5.6 Release notes

New features and improvements
Event log: Event log added. Select Server node and switch to "Events" tab to view server event records.
Event notifications: Event notifications feature added. StarWind can send event notifications by e-mail, add event records to Windows Event Log, and write messages to text files. Event notifications can be configured on the server "Configuration" tab.
Core: Log rotate functionality added.
CDP/Thin provisioning: data corruption on EXT3/EXT4 file systems issue fixed. When thin provisioned or snapshotted device has been used for storing Linux EXT3/EXT4 file systems, data corruption could occur.
GUI: Save server password feature added.
GUI: Open dialog now displays total disk space and free disk space.
GUI: Management Console updates and optimizations.
Deduplication: experimental feature "Deduplication device type" added. Deduplication device implements low-level data deduplication. It allows to save disk space significantly when user data contains several copies of similar data.
Deduplication device is in testing stage, use it on your own risk!

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: CHAP authentication is not supported for HA device images created in 5.4 and versions of the software.
Constantin (staff)

Fri Jul 22, 2011 9:37 am

Version 5.7 Release Notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: Added asynchronous device operation mode. Speed optimization.
High availability: added option to set traffic priority on sync channel during device synchronization. Device synchronization process can generate high load to disk system and partner. It affects performance of client requests processing. Now you can set priority for device synchronization traffic. Select “Sync channel priorities” option in HA device context menu.
High availability: added option to set several sessions inside sync channel. Using several sessions can speed up synchronization on fast (10GBe) connections.
Deduplication: new version of experimental deduplication plugin. Added ability to set deduplication block size (512 bytes - 256kB). Deduplication device implements low-level data deduplication. It allows saving disk space significantly when user data contains several copies of similar data.
Deduplication: Metadata caching has been made optional. Can be turned off when fast SSD drive is used for storing metadata. Data deletion support added.
Deduplication: Added option for setting deduplicated cache size.
Snapshots/CDP: Snapshot manager feature added. It allows viewing, deleting and merging exiting snapshots with convenient and simple GUI. Select “Snapshot manager” option in context menu of device with snapshots support.
Snapshots/CDP: issue with large (>2TB) cached devices fixed. When thin provisioned or snapshotted device has size greater than 2TB and uses write-back or write-through cache, data corruption could occur.
Performance monitor feature added. From StarWind management console you can monitor disk transfer rates, average number of I/O operations on targets, CPU and memory load on StarWind server.
Event log: Notifications about new records in StarWind event log in system tray.
GUI: Targets and servers can be arranged in groups.
GUI: several small tweaks and fixes.
ImageFile, DiskBridge: added support of the Mode Sense page 0x3 for compatibility with Solaris iSCSI initiator.
Core: fixed LUN Reset command processing.

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.


The latest build is 5.7.1807 was released 11/08/2011
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Anatoly (staff)
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Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:18 am

StarWind 5.8 Release Notes


Core: Multi-LUN support has been added for non-HA targets.

Deduplication:
- Plug-in has been reworked to support data journaling.
- Snapshots support has been added.
- Replication has been added as an experimental feature.

High availability:
The new plug-in version has been developed. The plug-in ensures:

- Standard raw image files can be used for creating HA devices.
- MS iSCSI transport for sync channel has been substituted by StarWind’s own transport.
- Several network interfaces can be used for synchronization and heartbeat channel.
- Heartbeat channel setting is required. It’s recommended to use a client network as the heartbeat channel. This channel is used for transfer of service messages only, so it doesn’t produce any substantial network traffic.
- Switch partner feature. A new partner node can be assigned to the existing HA device node. The old partner should not be used after switching HA device to the new partner node. Client MPIO connections should be reconfigured to use the path to the new partner instead of the old one.
- Automatic HA device synchronization after the both nodes were down. If the HA device can identify the node that has the most recent and correct data, it brings this node online automatically and synchronizes the other node. If the device cache mode is write-back and at least one node has not been turned off normally (for example, both nodes were down at the same time after power loss), the HA device cannot run the synchronization procedure automatically.
- The new option has been added that allows marking an unsynchronized HA device as synchronized without actual data synchronization. This command can be used in a disaster situation when the both HA nodes failed. Example: When the both nodes are turned on after the failure and you found out that some hardware was damaged on the second node and you are unable to replace/fix the hardware immediately. In this case, you can mark the undamaged node as "synchronized" and continue the working process. As soon as the other node is fixed and returns online, it starts copying (synchronizing) the data.
- The new option has been added for extending the size of an HA device on fly.

Hardware VSS provider for Deduplication and CDP devices: This is now available as a separate download.

StarWindX: COM-object and set of PowerShell commandlets that allow management of the StarWind virtual devices by the third-party scripts and software. This is now available as a separate download.

RAM disk: Serial ID generation algorithm has been changed. Now, serial ID is unique across different machines on the network. You can still add predefined IDs to a configuration file for RAM devices.

SPTI: Buffer alignment parameter is used when checking the device properties during the service initialization.

Backup Plug-in for Hyper-V virtual machines

- Agentless architecture
- VHD archives’ format
- Network Centralized Management
- Single-click backup
- Global Deduplication
- Restore for the entire virtual machine
- Sandbox mode for VM test
- VM cloning

The latest builds are:
StarWind iSCSI SAN - 5.8.2059
StarWind Native SAN - 5.8.2060
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
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Anatoly (staff)
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Wed Aug 29, 2012 10:53 am

StarWind 6.0 Release Notes


New Features and Improvements

High availability:
- 3-node HA configuration. Synchronous mirroring between 3 nodes of an HA storage cluster. Such storage architecture ensures higher uptime and higher performance compared to a 2-node HA configuration.
- HA device nodes manager. You can add, remove, or switch nodes of HA cluster on the running device instead of the creation of a new HA device from scratch.
- An HA device can now use other types of StarWind devices (deduplicated, thin-provisioned IBV, or DiskBridge devices) for storing data. Thus, you can apply deduplication, thin provision, snapshot technologies, etc., for the data stored on the HA device. Experimental feature.
- ALUA. Asymmetric logical unit access is required for cases when individual nodes use very different by performance metrics storage types like SATA on one node and SSD on another. With ALUA enabled most of I/Os are served by faster node resulting less latency for I/O intensive applications.

Deduplication:
- Asynchronous replication to remote iSCSI Target over WAN as an experimental feature.
- Data deletion support (experimental feature). Unused data blocks are overwritten by the new actual data.
- Memory usage reduced by 30%. When the dedupe block size is set to 4kb, 2MB of memory are required per 1GB of stored data.

iSCSI Boot:
- StarWind can be used to build and configure environment for iSCSI boot.
- Two modes added for Snapshot and CDP device: redirect on write and redirect on write with discard. These options can be used for booting multiple clients from one image.

Event notifications:
- Free space low watermarks are now reported for thin-provisioned and deduplicated volumes.

StarWind SMI-S agent: This is now available as a separate download (The product is on the stage of Beta-Testing).

Backup Plug-in for Hyper-V virtual machines:
- Incremental backup and delta data saving features added.

Backup Plug-in for ESX virtual machines (experimental feature):
- Full and incremental backup of virtual machines.
- ESX VMs management.
- Backup archives are saved in the native VMware format – VMDK.

UPDATE:
27.09.2012
The iSCSI SAN edition build was updated. Minor Release Notes:
Snapshot and CDP device:
- iSCSI Boot functionality with IBV devices in ROW mode has been fixed.

Core:
-Buffer alignment for several commands has been added. Unaligned buffer could lead to errors during command execution in some rare cases.
-Fix for reservation commands processing to conform Windows Server 2012 requirements. Now virtual devices pass "Storage Spaces Persistent Reservation" test on Windows Server 2012 with success.
-VAAI support has been disabled in this build. We had implementation for two of four VAAI commands in the previous build, and ESX not liked it. We have implemented all VAAI commands now, and this feature will be released with the next update of 6.x.

UPDATE:
15.11.2012
1. Unified installer for iSCSI SAN and Native SAN for Hyper-V products.
Single installation file for both products. Product type is define by the license. License must be applied during installation.
If license is already installed on the machine, installer will not ask for the license file.

2. Changes in licensing policy:
New free license:
- 2 servers and HA with limitation of 128GB. Single-node devices are not limited by storage size at all.
- Cache size per device is limited by value of 512MB.

New CDP license: 1 server and HA with limitation of 128GB. Single-node devices are not limited by storage size at all.

Both licenses allow HA devices with 2 nodes and don’t allow 3 nodes.

Existing (old) licenses are fully supported.

3. Native SAN for Hyper-V 6.0
This version if Native SAN is fully identical to iSCSI SAN 6.0. 3 nodes are supported. Free license for Native SAN added.
Limitations:
1) HA devices accept client connections from MS Initiator only (no ESX, Xen etc.).
2) Hyper-V role must be present on the StarWind server. This check is performed during installation only.

4. Fixes.
Snapshot and CDP device, RAM Disk, Deduplication:
- Fixes for compatibility with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
Virtual devices could appear as read-only when connected to Windows 2012 machine.

Caching:
- Issue with memory management has been fixed. In some cases free memory has not been reported to system properly after the device has been deleted.

Backup updates:
- New backup GUI integrated to StarWind Management Console.
GUI is unified to control Hyper-V and VMWare backup.
-New remote installation procedure to install Hyper-V/VMWare backup plug-in.
-Added VMWare backup plug-in.
-New network interface to improve connection between all backup
modules.
-It is not compatible with previous versions of StarWind Management Console and previous versions of backup plug-in.

New features of Hyper-V backup.
- Incremental backup was added.
- Archive autotest was added.
- Additional restore modes were implemented (restore with parameters from archive, with parameters from VM, with unique parameters).
- A lot of bug fixes.

VMWare backup plug-in features.
- vSphere 5.0, 5.1 support.
- Archives in native VMMare format (vmdk files).
- Agentless architecture.
- Simultaneous backup of several VMs from several hosts.
- Full and incremental archives (CBT procedure is used).
- Restore by one click.
- Sandbox and archive autotest modes.
- Global deduplication of archves by StarWind.
- Control of VMs (start, stop, remove, copy, remote desktop).

15.11.2012
This update contains localizations for Management Console – French, German, Japanese, Russian.

Also there are a couple for updates for the server part:
- Fix for ALUA functionality with ESX 5.1 in HA devices;
- Now it's possible to specify starting target LUN for a device (syntax: devices="[DevName1[:{start_lun}][,...]]"). This feature has been implemented for VMware certification tests.

14.01.2013
High availability:
- Fix for ALUA functionality. When client Windows Server 2008 R2/2012 is connected to three-noded HA device,
it could crash to blue screen when user opens "Devices" dialog in MPIO settings of MS iSCSI Initator.

11.04.2013
List of changes:
Core:
- Fix for memory leak on processing connection to non-existing targets.

- Accelerator for local connections. It is actual in scenarios when StarWind iSCSI Target and client (iSCSI Initiator) are located on the same machine.
For example, in Native SAN scenario. This is experimental feature, it is available only for Windows 2012 Server OS.

High availability:
- Fix for synchronous replication transport for processing large data packets from Xen hypervisor.
This error affects only previous release build 20130131. Older versions are not affected.
This issue could lead to unstable functioning of Xen virtual machines.

- Fix for processing "add partner" command in replication manager. In cases when node had several network interfaces in the same network, this operation could be finished with error.

22.05.2013
List of changes:
-CHAP processing for HA devices. Previous release build had issues which prevented normal functioning of HA device with CHAP authentication. Builds affected: 6.0.5437 (20130329), 6.0.5275 (20130131).
-Event notifications fixed. Some events were reported without parameters. Now all the parameters are filled in properly.
-Fix for processing time-outs on partner's storage device. In previous versions very slow command processing on partner's storage device could lead to loss of synchronization state on HA device.

27.06.2013
- Fix for issue with installing PowerShell extension. Installation finished with errors, when PSModulePath environment variable contained paths to more than one module.

20.08.2013
The build has one fix in High Availability - fix for processing distributed critical section in specific situations.
Symptoms of the problem are as follows:
HA device become not synchronized without any obvious reason like failure of network or of underlying storage.
Service log contains messages with reservation commands in a period of several seconds before HA became unsynchronized.

25.03.2014
The build contains fix for cases when HA turns unsynchronized without any visible cause with loss of partner connection. This situation occurs when two reservation commands come to both partners at same time. Sometimes it can cause a deadlock and loss of partner connection.


Installation notes

Installation: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over the existing installation.
Warning: The existing HA devices from version 5.7 and earlier cannot be upgraded to version 6.0 without bringing the storage offline for a short time.
Please, take the following steps to update the existing HA devices:
1. To prevent data loss, disconnect clients from HA (if it is possible).
2. Update StarWind service on the first HA node. Wait until the service starts. At this step the HA node is unable to synchronize its HA devices and is not accepting the client connections. Client requests are processed by the second HA node. The next step will disconnect the existing client connections.
3. Update the StarWind service on the second HA node. Wait until the service starts.
4. Start synchronization on the first HA node. The second node changes its state to “ready” and starts processing client connections. Now, you can safely connect to the HA device.
5. Wait for synchronization to finish. Now the first HA node can process the client connections too.




The latest build is 6.0.6399 , 20140213
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
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Max (staff)
Staff
Posts: 533
Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2010 9:03 am

Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:55 am

StarWind Virtual SAN V8 Release notes

New Features and Improvements

New Log-structured File System container
  • It implements thin-provisioning, snapshots, optional deduplication. Synchronous and asynchronous replication can also be configured for a Log-structured File System (LSFS) device.
  • LSFS is flash-friendly – it eliminates multiple rewrites of same data blocks.
  • LSFS provides high performance for random write access patterns, eliminating I/O blender effect in virtualized environments.
  • LSFS requires disk space overprovisioning up to 2-3 times in the worst case, and even more if snapshots are used.
Flash cache
  • L2 cache can be used with LSFS or flat storage devices for acceleration.
  • It’s recommended to use write-through mode for L2 cache. Example of storage configuration: L1 cache in write-back mode, L2 cache on SSD in write-through mode, flat storage on spinning disks.
  • Important: setting the write-back mode for L2 cache sends all writes through L2 storage. When L2 cache is stored on SSD, it results in additional wearing of flash memory.
Asynchronous replication
  • Asynchronous mode added to replication engine. Asynchronous replication can be used to replicate data to remote site. All information on snapshots, that are stored on the primary storage, is also replicated. Snapshot history can be stored on replica while primary storage keeps only a short list of snapshots.
  • Slow replication channels are supporte. Replication channel bandwidth doesn’t affect the performance of primary storage which is replicated. State of the primary storage can be easily restored from replica.
  • Heartbeat channel is not required for asynchronous replication.
Scale-out architecture and management console
  • User interface has been reworked to provide simple and positive user experience.
  • StarWind Management Console allows the managing of StarWind clusters in order to create multi-node devices across the cluster easily.
  • Single-node virtual device with target can be created in three steps.
  • Default storage pool path can be set up for the server. This path will be used for all new devices. Synchronous and asynchronous replication can be added to any existing device by adding replication partner through replication manager.
  • NAS Configurator utility helps to export storage as SMB or NFS network share by means of StarWind High Availability and MS Cluster.
  • V2V Converter utility added to StarWind Management console. It is a V2V conversion tool for virtual machines. You can use it to convert VMDK to VHD files and VHD to VMDK as well as to IMG file, which is a native StarWind format.
High-availability
  • High-availability devices now support snapshots.
  • Network settings for replication can be changed on the fly without rebuilding replication partners.
Virtual Tape
  • New VTL plugin provides virtual devices with functionality of tape library.
Core
  • VAAI commands are supported.
  • NUMA – aware resource management.
  • SMI-S and VSS functionality is supported on singlenode and multi-node devices.
Installation notes

Installation: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over the existing application.
Warning: Mirror, IBV and Deduplication devices of version 6.x and earlier versions are not supported in v8.0!
Data from existing Mirror, IBV and Deduplication devices must be migrated to new ImageFile or LSFS devices after installation.
Use replication manager to add synchronous/asynchronous replication functionality for your device. Use LSFS virtual device type
when thin-provisioning and snapshots features are required.

Please, take the following steps to update the existing HA devices:
  1. To prevent data loss, disconnect clients from HA (if possible).
  2. Update StarWind service on the first HA node. Wait until the service starts. At this step the HA node is unable to synchronize its HA devices and is not accepting the client connections. Client requests are processed by the second HA node.
  3. The next step will disconnect the existing client connections.
  4. Update the StarWind service on the second HA node. Wait until the service starts.
  5. Start synchronization on the first HA node. The second node changes its state to “ready” and starts processing client connections. Now, you can safely connect to the HA device.
  6. Wait for synchronization to finish. Now the first HA node can process the client connections too.
Max Kolomyeytsev
StarWind Software
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Max (staff)
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Wed Jun 18, 2014 10:55 am

StarWind Virtual SAN V8 build 6884

Fixes and updates in this build:

Licensing:
  • Free license now have no limitations for single-node devices, as it was in V6.
Management interface for Virtual Tape devices:
  • Fixed bug with display of Virtual tape devices in Management Console.
  • They could be created but was not displayed properly in case of Virtual SAN for Hyper-V license.
LSFS container:
  • Fixed bug in LSFS plugin. Deduplication could stop processing duplicated blocks in some cases.
    This had two consequences:
    1) slowdown of storage performance on writes
    2) deduplication ratio stays around 1-1.1 even when disk stores a lot of duplicated data.
  • Fixes on LSFS container compatibility with beta-2 and beta-3 versions.
  • In some cases LSFS devices that are created with beta-2 and beta-3 versions of StarWind could not be mounted properly with release V8 version.
Core:
  • Fixed issue with processing of stacked devices on license registration.
    Stacked devices are devices which use one or more underlying simple devices. Example: HA on LSFS with L2 cache (ImageFile).
    If service started without license and license is registered, these devices become functional only after restart of the service.
  • Fix for error with processing information about physical format of existing physical devices on server.
    Service could crash on start when some of existing storage devices report incorrect sector size with values more than 1 megabyte.
Max Kolomyeytsev
StarWind Software
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Max (staff)
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Mon Sep 22, 2014 2:56 pm

Release Notes V8 build 7145

Fixes and updates in this build:

- Performance fixes for ImageFile (including usage with SSDs).

- VTL now works with MS DPM. It still can’t make backup that use several tapes with DPM.
It is not major issue, as DPM has the same problem with other tape libraries ( for example, Falconstore VTL).
Also BackupExec and ArcServe write multi-tape backups to StarWind VTL without any issues.

- Replication manager: fixes for networks validation on adding third node. In some cases this error led to error messages on adding third node to 2-node HA devices.

- Replication manager: ability to select network interfaces that reside in different subnetworks.

- Physical tape autoloader export: in some cases tape drive selection list was empty on the second step of Autoloader exporting wizard. Now filtering can be turned off in this list to make possible selection of tape drive.

- Fix for error on updating existing 6.0 HA devices that use CHAP authentication.

- Fixes in GUI.
Max Kolomyeytsev
StarWind Software
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Anatoly (staff)
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Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:34 am

Release Notes V8 build 7354 (5 November 2014)

Fixes and updates in this build:

Core

Fix for issue with service stopping. In some cases service could hang up when stopped under high load. In case of update from build 7145 it's recommended to disconnect clients before update to prevent old version from hanging up. Fix for processing VAAI XCOPY command. When used with VMWare vSphere, virtual device could fail during migration of virtual machines. Performance optimizations for SSD-based flat devices.
Caching

Fix for working with extremely small cache size.
Management console

Fix for error on managing target groups.
Replication

Fix for saving changes in list of network interfaces.
Virtual Tape Library

Fixes for reporting device properties to client software. Now different serial IDs are used for tape drive and changer devices.
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
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Anatoly (staff)
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Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:34 am

Release Notes V8 build 7471 (11 December 2014)

Fixes and updates in this build:

Fixed processing for UNMAP/TRIM commands. Virtual device was failing in cases when underlying storage doesn't support UNMAP/TRIM commands, but client use these commands to manage storage.
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
User avatar
Anatoly (staff)
Staff
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Mon Jan 05, 2015 10:35 am

Release Notes V8 build 7509 (29 December 2014)

Fixes and updates in this build:

Core

Fixed processing for UNMAP/TRIM commands. Virtual device was failing in cases when underlying storage doesn't support UNMAP/TRIM commands, but client use these commands to manage storage.
In the same situation, Windows system that is connected to Target with iSCSI Initiator was reporting to system log event with ID 7: "The device, , has a bad block".
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
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