StarWind VSAN crashes with USB device attached

muhfugen · Wed Nov 23, 2016 11:46 pm

I'm trying to run StarWind VSAN 8, when the StarWindService.exe service tries to start, it gets stuck in a Starting state, and is unable to be stopped or manually killed with Task Manager, Process Hacker or pskill64.exe. Windows is unable kill the process when it tries to shutdown/reboot as well.

It is running on a Windows 10 build 1607 VM which has the two USB 2 controllers from a Intel C602 chipset and two NEC uPD720200 USB 3 controllers on a SuperMicro X9DAE motherboard passed through to it. The host OS is VMware ESXi 6.0 U2. To the USB 3 controllers are attached a Bluetooth dongle, LogiTech wireless mouse dongle and a Pluggable USB 3 SATA HDD enclosure (model # USB3-SATA-UASP1). On the USB 2 controllers are attached a Aquaero 6 XT fan controller and a Unicomp keyboard.

I've tried adding and removing the USB controllers and attached devices and narrowed down the incompatible device to the HDD enclosure. The enclosure uses a ASMedia 1053E chip and USB Attached SCSI Protocol. And to it is attached a Seagate 4TB TeraScale HDD (model # ST4000NC000). As soon as the enclosure is powered off, the StarWindService manages to finish starting and works fine.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is SATA enclosure is causing StarWind to crash? I was hoping to use StarWind's VTL feature to enable me to use Veeam Backup & Replication to backup a 24TB volume to virtual tapes stored on external USB HDDs. I've also tried attaching the enclosure to another VM, and storing the VTL files on a symlink to a network share and it doesnt work either.

muhfugen · Thu Nov 24, 2016 1:30 am

I've playing around with it some more and discovered that there appears to be a compatibility issue with Seagate disks specifically. I also tried it with a 3TB Seagate Constellation CS (ST3000NC002) which causes the same problem. I have multiple TeraScale disks and they all cause this behavior. And I tried a 2TB Hitachi DeskStar 7K2000 (model # HDS722020AL330) and it does not cause VSAN to hang. I also have not experienced any issues in the past with other software in the same VM which accessed the Seagate disks in the USB enclosure.

Thu Nov 24, 2016 4:30 pm

Let me bring in engineers. I think it's closer to SATA-USB bridge issues so we may try to find a workaround even if it's not our issue directly.

Fri Nov 25, 2016 5:31 pm

Hello Muhfugen,

Could you please submit support case and attach logs from your system? You can do it here: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/support-form

muhfugen · Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:41 am

I just submitted a case. Just a FYI but after playing with this a bit more I was mistaken and this is not an issue with Seagate disks in this dock specifically, but it effects any disk over 2TB. I tried it with a 3TB Hitachi DeskStar 5K3000 (model # hds5c3030ala630) and it happened as well.

Tue Nov 29, 2016 10:07 am

These are good news actually, making lots more sense (repro = OK). I've put this into bug tracker as well

P.S. We owe you a free version for that

muhfugen wrote:I just submitted a case. Just a FYI but after playing with this a bit more I was mistaken and this is not an issue with Seagate disks in this dock specifically, but it effects any disk over 2TB. I tried it with a 3TB Hitachi DeskStar 5K3000 (model # hds5c3030ala630) and it happened as well.

Fri Dec 09, 2016 7:16 pm

Update for the community:

We have sent new license without SPTI driver and it fixed the issue.

This issue is going to be fixed in upcoming build