Need help setting up a interesting application.

Thu Jul 28, 2005 1:08 pm

OK

DJ_Datte wrote:Okay Anton! I will do that when the time is right

/Damir

Val (staff) · Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:41 pm

DJ_Datte wrote:Okay, thanks for keeping me updated !

I will try and find something to busy myself with :)

/Damir

Damir,

I've sent you a link to the recent preview version.

Your feedback is appreciated.

DJ_Datte · Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:07 pm

Thankyou very much !

I will get to setting it up then! I'll report in a few days with how it went!

/Damir

Fri Jul 29, 2005 1:44 pm

Looking forward hearing back from you

DJ_Datte wrote:Thankyou very much !

I will get to setting it up then! I'll report in a few days with how it went!

/Damir

DJ_Datte · Fri Jul 29, 2005 3:43 pm

I am not completly done, and am reworking a little bit strategy to comply with what starwind can and cannot do, but here are some things for you to think about so-far :

First of all, all of my testing has been done in "Mode 3" of the IBV.

1) Only 1 connection, the Info in the .conf states there is a "-clustered" option, but its being ignored, log file states only one connection allowed.

Is this by design, or a miss in the construction ?
(The above pertains to the IBV plugin.)

2) Clients are not being disconnected properly, so when a client reboots, it can not reconnect to the target, as it thinks there is a session already going on.

TIP: Make it so that if a client reconnects from the same IP, there is a option to either make him continue the session (if it was a timeout, and not a real requested disconnect by the initiator) or he creates a new session.

3) I have not been able to make StarPort 2.6.0 connect to the Client with the IBV plugin (normal Images connect without problem). All my testing has been done with the MS-Initiator 2.0 becouse of that.

/Damir

Fri Jul 29, 2005 8:25 pm

Thanks a lot for your report. We'd verify what's wrong with StarWind ASAP.

DJ_Datte wrote:I am not completly done, and am reworking a little bit strategy to comply with what starwind can and cannot do, but here are some things for you to think about so-far :

First of all, all of my testing has been done in "Mode 3" of the IBV.

1) Only 1 connection, the Info in the .conf states there is a "-clustered" option, but its being ignored, log file states only one connection allowed.

Is this by design, or a miss in the construction ?
(The above pertains to the IBV plugin.)

2) Clients are not being disconnected properly, so when a client reboots, it can not reconnect to the target, as it thinks there is a session already going on.

TIP: Make it so that if a client reconnects from the same IP, there is a option to either make him continue the session (if it was a timeout, and not a real requested disconnect by the initiator) or he creates a new session.

3) I have not been able to make StarPort 2.6.0 connect to the Client with the IBV plugin (normal Images connect without problem). All my testing has been done with the MS-Initiator 2.0 becouse of that.

/Damir

Val (staff) · Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:20 pm

Hi Damir,

Thank you for the feedback!

FYI to use 'Mode3' (Auto-restored snapshot) you should fill in the disk's filesystem to be provided to the clients on login. This can be done using a base ImageFile attached to the IBVolume or creating the IBVolume in the Mode 2 after that remounting it in the Mode 3.

1) To enable multiple connections to the target you need manually add '-clustered:yes' to the end of the device's add rule in StarWind.conf.
We'll add the feature in the next build.

2) Yes, this is a known issue with not terminating sessions in recent StarWind build. We'll try to fix it before the next release.

Thank you for the suggestion. We added it to the wish list and will try to implement it ASAP.

3) My StarPort 2.6.1 connects to a IBVolume without problems.

DJ_Datte wrote:I am not completly done, and am reworking a little bit strategy to comply with what starwind can and cannot do, but here are some things for you to think about so-far :

First of all, all of my testing has been done in "Mode 3" of the IBV.

1) Only 1 connection, the Info in the .conf states there is a "-clustered" option, but its being ignored, log file states only one connection allowed.

Is this by design, or a miss in the construction ?
(The above pertains to the IBV plugin.)

2) Clients are not being disconnected properly, so when a client reboots, it can not reconnect to the target, as it thinks there is a session already going on.

TIP: Make it so that if a client reconnects from the same IP, there is a option to either make him continue the session (if it was a timeout, and not a real requested disconnect by the initiator) or he creates a new session.

3) I have not been able to make StarPort 2.6.0 connect to the Client with the IBV plugin (normal Images connect without problem). All my testing has been done with the MS-Initiator 2.0 becouse of that.

/Damir

DJ_Datte · Sat Jul 30, 2005 12:21 pm

FYI to use 'Mode3' (Auto-restored snapshot) you should fill in the disk's filesystem to be provided to the clients on login. This can be done using a base ImageFile attached to the IBVolume or creating the IBVolume in the Mode 2 after that remounting it in the Mode 3.

Hmm, you just mean that I should have "something" on the image ? Becouse that is no problem, I have first made a standard Image and filled it with apps. So if I am reading you correctly, that shouldnt be a problem.

About Starport:
I will test to mount the IBVolumes again with StarPort, and report back.

/Damir

Val (staff) · Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:51 pm

DJ_Datte wrote:Hmm, you just mean that I should have "something" on the image ? Becouse that is no problem, I have first made a standard Image and filled it with apps. So if I am reading you correctly, that shouldnt be a problem.

Yes, this is what I tried to say.

About Starport:
I will test to mount the IBVolumes again with StarPort, and report back.
/Damir

Ok.

DJ_Datte · Mon Aug 01, 2005 10:13 am

Hey !

Just wondering how the bugfixing is comming along ?

Also, I have a few other questions regarding performance...

What is the best mix of raid type / stripe block size / ntfs block size, to service a lot of clients at the same time ?

Also, what windows mods should be done to increase performance, and what utility do you recommend for testing performance ? TCP/IP settings, buffering on the server, mods to clients and servers ?

Thankyou,
Damir

Mon Aug 01, 2005 4:16 pm

We're working on it (bugfix). However it's not the single issue we're busy with right now

Stripe size less then 64KB does not make sense usually. So if you're dealing with large files you can increase it to 128-256 KB. Allocation unit for NTFS is recommended to be page size in size (4K).

We would publish TCP stack optimizing setting soon.

DJ_Datte wrote:Hey !

Just wondering how the bugfixing is comming along ?

Also, I have a few other questions regarding performance...

What is the best mix of raid type / stripe block size / ntfs block size, to service a lot of clients at the same time ?

Also, what windows mods should be done to increase performance, and what utility do you recommend for testing performance ? TCP/IP settings, buffering on the server, mods to clients and servers ?

Thankyou,
Damir

DJ_Datte · Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:38 pm

I am assuming you are talking about Raid-0 ?

Is that the *most* effective raid for large-scale multiple access scenarios ?

/Damir

Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:58 pm

Sure. Stripe.

Yup. 1 GbE can push up to 250 MB/sec in full-duplex configuration. Never seen a hard disk capable of such a transfer rates.

DJ_Datte wrote:I am assuming you are talking about Raid-0 ?

Is that the *most* effective raid for large-scale multiple access scenarios ?

/Damir

DJ_Datte · Mon Aug 01, 2005 10:49 pm

I have them

..... My problem is that, becouse its RAID-0, all heads are busy reading same file, so when I get multiple clients accesses, it melts down... thats why I am considering alternate ways... hmmm...

/Damir

Tue Aug 02, 2005 12:24 am

Get SATA drives with NCQ (Native Command Queueing) or replace Parallel/Serial ATA with higher performance SCSI (also capable of doing so-called "elevator sorting"). Also createing ImageFile and not mapping whole drive would enable Windows to use extra RAM installed as cache memory.

DJ_Datte wrote:I have them ..... My problem is that, becouse its RAID-0, all heads are busy reading same file, so when I get multiple clients accesses, it melts down... thats why I am considering alternate ways... hmmm...

/Damir