Can you create HA devices atop of Storage Spaces?

[kpielorz]

Hi,

We're evaluating StarWind for Hyper-V (6.0.5713)

We've got three identical WS2012 R2 servers - they boot off of one SSD, and they have two other SSD's in them for storage. We've found if we RAID these (e.g. RAID0) with the on board controller (embedded LSI) - write performance is poor.

If we create a Storage Space from them - and then create a 'Simple' (i.e. Striped) Virtual Disk on top of that - the performance is very good, but if we try and create a StarWind HA device on top of the Storage Space virtual disk - in the StarWind Management Console we get:

"An error occurred configuring the second partner." More details shows just "Error: Internal error".

If we remove the Storage Space - and just create the device on one of a 'raw' NTFS volume on the SSD - it works fine.

Technically on the servers - both the Storage Space virtual disk, and 'regular' disk appear as D:\ - is creating HA volumes atop of Storage Space backing store not supported?

Thanks,

-Karl

[anton (staff)]

Creating StarWind file-based volumes on top of any Windows logical volume manager *is* supported. So please capture the StarWind log and send zipped to support so we could figure out why it did not work for you this time.

Hi,

We're evaluating StarWind for Hyper-V (6.0.5713)

We've got three identical WS2012 R2 servers - they boot off of one SSD, and they have two other SSD's in them for storage. We've found if we RAID these (e.g. RAID0) with the on board controller (embedded LSI) - write performance is poor.

If we create a Storage Space from them - and then create a 'Simple' (i.e. Striped) Virtual Disk on top of that - the performance is very good, but if we try and create a StarWind HA device on top of the Storage Space virtual disk - in the StarWind Management Console we get:

"An error occurred configuring the second partner." More details shows just "Error: Internal error".

If we remove the Storage Space - and just create the device on one of a 'raw' NTFS volume on the SSD - it works fine.

Technically on the servers - both the Storage Space virtual disk, and 'regular' disk appear as D:\ - is creating HA volumes atop of Storage Space backing store not supported?

Thanks,

-Karl

[Anatoly (staff)]

Hi!

I just want to confirm that we`ve received your message, and I`d like to ask you to provide us with the complete logs from starwind (not copypasted from console) and specify the time of the issue.

Thank you

[kpielorz]

Hi,

Which logs do you want? - Any pointers where I can get them from (i.e. if there's some other logs from within StarWind) - I'm only aware of the 'Server Log' tab in the StarWind Management Console.

Thanks

-Karl

[anton (staff)]

These are right ones!

Hi,

Which logs do you want? - Any pointers where I can get them from (i.e. if there's some other logs from within StarWind) - I'm only aware of the 'Server Log' tab in the StarWind Management Console.

Thanks

-Karl

[simonga]

From my experiences:

You cannot currently use StarWind atop of Storage Spaces because Storage Spaces creates 4k Blocks. StarWind needs 512bytes.

I tried this yesterday on Server 2012 R2 with Storage Spaces. Had to switch to LSI RAID based card instead.

[anton (staff)]

Native 4KB underlying blocks should work with V8.

From my experiences:

You cannot currently use StarWind atop of Storage Spaces because Storage Spaces creates 4k Blocks. StarWind needs 512bytes.

I tried this yesterday on Server 2012 R2 with Storage Spaces. Had to switch to LSI RAID based card instead.

[simonga]

Native 4KB underlying blocks should work with V8.

From my experiences:

You cannot currently use StarWind atop of Storage Spaces because Storage Spaces creates 4k Blocks. StarWind needs 512bytes.

I tried this yesterday on Server 2012 R2 with Storage Spaces. Had to switch to LSI RAID based card instead.

That is still in Beta though.

Topic creator was trying v6 (just like i did)

[anton (staff)]

You're correct. Sorry for confusion.

[Klas]

Native 4KB underlying blocks should work with V8.

From my experiences:

You cannot currently use StarWind atop of Storage Spaces because Storage Spaces creates 4k Blocks. StarWind needs 512bytes.

I tried this yesterday on Server 2012 R2 with Storage Spaces. Had to switch to LSI RAID based card instead.

That is still in Beta though.

Topic creator was trying v6 (just like i did)

When are you supporting 4k used in Storage Spaces on Starwind v6?

[delocx]

In one breath you say "Storage Spaces is supported" and in another you say "V8" which is beta.

So basically, Storage Spaces is not supported in a production environment, because what kind of admin uses beta products in production.

Any ETA on a final release for V8? Will our current V6 licence allow for a free upgrade (it's less than a year old and wasn't exactly affordable)?

[anton (staff)]

Software is in beta and we actively discover incompatibility issues. So flash cache was working in Beta-2 but was removed in Beta-3 (for example, data corruption found). The same
about Storage Spaces and 4KB blocks - issues found and now it's not possible to use this combination now. But we're working on the fix.

Release Candidate - end of January. Release - February.

If you have valid ASM you'll get a free update V6 -> V8 update.

In one breath you say "Storage Spaces is supported" and in another you say "V8" which is beta.

So basically, Storage Spaces is not supported in a production environment, because what kind of admin uses beta products in production.

Any ETA on a final release for V8? Will our current V6 licence allow for a free upgrade (it's less than a year old and wasn't exactly affordable)?

[Klas]

Software is in beta and we actively discover incompatibility issues. So flash cache was working in Beta-2 but was removed in Beta-3 (for example, data corruption found). The same
about Storage Spaces and 4KB blocks - issues found and now it's not possible to use this combination now. But we're working on the fix.

Release Candidate - end of January. Release - February.

If you have valid ASM you'll get a free update V6 -> V8 update.

My question is still unanswered. When are you supporting 4k used in Storage Spaces on Starwind v6?

Regarding v8 and that Starwind removed flash cache. Does that mean that you don’t support SSD as L2-cache/ automatic tiering?

MS Storage spaces – no support
Flash cache – no support/availability

We run v6 in production, we trust v6 and need the support for 4k in Storage Spaces in Windows server 2012 R2.

In short;
1. When will Starwind support Microsoft server 2012 R2 Storage spaces in v6?
2. Were can we read feature list of v8 and computability list of v8?

[anton (staff)]

1) We're not going to backport anything to V6 so no flash cache with V6 and no third-party virtualization support with V6 either. Upgrade to V8.

2) You'll have complete features list with RC. There's no compatibility list yet as it's not clear would we fix some issues (including sitting on top of storage spaces and doing this
RELIABLY) with vanilla V8 or not. If not we'll do it with a post-release as in general placing StarWind content on top of SS is just making things work SLOW.

Software is in beta and we actively discover incompatibility issues. So flash cache was working in Beta-2 but was removed in Beta-3 (for example, data corruption found). The same
about Storage Spaces and 4KB blocks - issues found and now it's not possible to use this combination now. But we're working on the fix.

Release Candidate - end of January. Release - February.

If you have valid ASM you'll get a free update V6 -> V8 update.

My question is still unanswered. When are you supporting 4k used in Storage Spaces on Starwind v6?

Regarding v8 and that Starwind removed flash cache. Does that mean that you don’t support SSD as L2-cache/ automatic tiering?

MS Storage spaces – no support
Flash cache – no support/availability

We run v6 in production, we trust v6 and need the support for 4k in Storage Spaces in Windows server 2012 R2.

In short;
1. When will Starwind support Microsoft server 2012 R2 Storage spaces in v6?
2. Were can we read feature list of v8 and computability list of v8?

[anton (staff)]

We had removed flash cache from Beta-3 because we've found a major bug in it leading to data corruption. Release Candidate (and Release) would have flash cache.