StarWind Software

i want to test performance/functionality running SW-VSA in 2-node with vmware hyperconverged or as storage
this is my lab:

two HP Gen8 Microserver modded with
*) 16GB RAM
*) Intel Xeon E3-1270v2 3.5GHz QuadCore CPU
*) HPE SmartArray P222/512-FBWC SAS/SATA RAID Controller, 512MB Flash Backed Write Cache
*) 2* HP 180GB SFF - LFF SSD SATA HARD DRIVE - Intel 520-Serie - Raid 1
*) 2* WD Red 3,5" / 3TB / SATA 6GB/s / 64MB Cache - Raid 1
*) 2* Broadcom BCM5720 onboard


im not getting the results im hoping.
should i sacrifice the raidcontroller and add another NIC ?
the microserver only has one pcie slot

update: just found out crystaldisk is not good - using iometer now

i did tinker a bit more, jumboframe - max ram cache
this is my setup now - if anyone has any ideas - always welcome:

hardware as in my original post, only 2 nics - 1x lan & 1x (iscsi) crosslink patched

VMWARE - storage, using 10GB from SSD as caching

VMWARE - network
jumbo enabled on vswitch1 ie mtu 9000, and also in the vmkernel nic interface assigned to that vswitch1


VMWARE - storage software iscsi , added both iscsi IPs from w2k12r2 virtual servers NICs dynamic discovery (after i set up starwind ha target)
VMWARE - storage path - fixed - local starwind iscsi IP preferred (after you set up sw and sw iscsi interface)

VM SW1&2 - 3 nic, 1x default network (HB only, or lan) using nic0@vswitch0 - 1x JUMBO-SYN using nic1@vswitch1 , 1x JUMBO-ISCSI using nic1@vswitch1 - 1x HDD @ SSD for OS/CACHE 1x HDD @ SATA for data

Windows SW1&2 nic 1 default , nic 2&3 MTU9k, removed everything but IPv4 (msclient)

SW1&2 - Added flat file 5gb on SATA with 4GB ram and added a 5GB SSD cachdisk, HA target via dns name using lan ip, HB lan IP sync on the other two nic with jumboframes

testVM: added storage, run crystaldisk posted screenshot

Hello itsecasc,

StarWind needs at least two dedicated network interfaces for High Availability - one for HA device synchronization and another for iSCSI connection. Since you have configured both on one 1Gbps interface, I assume the total storage performance is limited by network channel and it is about 50 MB/s or even less.

As for the RAID settings, try the following parameters:
Disk cache policy: default;
Read policy: read ahead;
Write policy: write back;
Stripe size: 64KB;
Also, disable Cache Cade on the RAIDs and check storage performance with DISKSPD utility: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/D ... e-6cd2f223

Additionally, it is recommended configuring disks for StarWind VMs and future StarWind storage as Thick Provision Eager Zeroed because this setting has significant influence to whole system performance.