StarWind Software

Good morning, I’m trying in a little lab StarWind Deduplication LUN feature with vSphere 6.
On a single Windows Server 2012 R2, I have install StarWind and create a 400GB deduplicated iSCSI device and connected to a ESXi 6.
I have moved several VMs on this StarWind Datastore and after a comparison between VMware Datastore space usage and StarWind files, I see:
VMware Datastore 380 GB used, StarWind summation size 180 GB with deduplication ratio 2.25.
I’m very satisfied for these tests with this product, simple and efficient!
I have a couple of questions to deepen the capabilities of this product to successfully address any customers requests:
- I have created a deduplicated device of 400 GB and with deplication the space physically used is only 180GB, but VMware datastore seems full; how I can continue to use from VMware this datastore until it will be really full (physical size 400GB)?
- I run comparison performance test between StarWind deduplicated device and thick device, both with 4 GB L1 cache write-back: the deduplicated device IO speed results half compared to seped of thick device. How can I improve performance of thin deduplicated device?

Thank you in advance

Hi Link,

The problem of VMWare working with thin provisioned devices is weird but known
For now, the only reasonable way would be to create a larger LSFS device initially or create a second one near existing. In early 2016 we are going to release an LSFS-expand feature so you will be able to expand your existing LSFS devices.

Tarass (Staff) wrote:Hi Link,

The problem of VMWare working with thin provisioned devices is weird but known
For now, the only reasonable way would be to create a larger LSFS device initially or create a second one near existing. In early 2016 we are going to release an LSFS-expand feature so you will be able to expand your existing LSFS devices.

Thank you Tarass for your reply; what about performance comparison between Thick provisioned and LSFS volumes?

Greetings

Testing performance depends on testing pattern/scenario. Try 4k random blocks (if you are virtualized, it's the worst scenario) and see what happens

I have moved several VMs on this StarWind Datastore and after a comparison between VMware Datastore space usage and StarWind files, I see:
VMware Datastore 380 GB used, StarWind summation size 180 GB with deduplication ratio 2.25.

Which version of Virtual SAN, are you using ?
What's the actual lsfs disks space used ?

if it's 180 GB, then that means the 3.5x storage problem was fixed.
https://forums.starwindsoftware.com/vie ... =15#p23200

Thanks.

Thank you all for valuable contribution. Anything else I can help here with?