New to Starwind Virtual SAN – Looking for some advice

[Rikuto]

Hello,

after looking through most forum threads and KB articles, some things are still a bit unclear to me:

1) What are the recommended filesystem settings for the underlying storage and for the image?
Best practice seems to be 4k (CSVFS-)NTFS for everything, is that correct?
Are there any drawbacks to using (CSVFS-)REFS 64k on either one?

2) Our HyperV host has 2 SSDs and 4 HDDs on a HBA.
Should I go for one Storage Space without L2 cache or one SDD Storage Space and one HDD Storage Space and use L2 cache?

3) We have a lot of different VMs (File, Exchange, SQL, Web,…).
It seems LSFS would be the way to go?

4) With 2x 10GBit RDMA NICs for Storage, what is the preferred configuration?
Separate subnets (iSCSI+Sync) or LACP teaming?

5) Does Veeam require Starwind VSS providers for backups?

Thanks in advance!

[Oleg(staff)]

Hi Rikuto,
Let me try to answer your questions.

1) What are the recommended filesystem settings for the underlying storage and for the image?
Best practice seems to be 4k (CSVFS-)NTFS for everything, is that correct?
Are there any drawbacks to using (CSVFS-)REFS 64k on either one?

Yes, it is better to use 4k (CSVFS-)NTFS for everything.

2) Our HyperV host has 2 SSDs and 4 HDDs on a HBA.
Should I go for one Storage Space without L2 cache or one SDD Storage Space and one HDD Storage Space and use L2 cache?

Actually, L2 cache is working in Write Through mode, so it will increase only read operations.
You can use this guide for and create, for example, Mirror Storage Tier from HBA SSDs and HDDs in order to have resiliency on the storage level.

3) We have a lot of different VMs (File, Exchange, SQL, Web,…).
It seems LSFS would be the way to go?

No, LSFS is not an option in your case. Over-provisioning is 200% (LSFS files can occupy 3 times more space compared to initial LSFS size). Snapshots require having additional space to store them.
You can find additional infohere.

4) With 2x 10GBit RDMA NICs for Storage, what is the preferred configuration?
Separate subnets (iSCSI+Sync) or LACP teaming?

Separate subnets (iSCSI+Sync) are preffered.

5) Does Veeam require Starwind VSS providers for backups?

No, there is no need on StarWind VSS for Veeam.

[Rikuto]

No, LSFS is not an option in your case. Over-provisioning is 200% (LSFS files can occupy 3 times more space compared to initial LSFS size). Snapshots require having additional space to store them.
You can find additional infohere.

Maybe I am missing the point, but I thought that's exactly what LSFS is for?
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resour ... io-blender

Aside from that, I was really looking forward to the dedupe feature.

[Boris (staff)]

Indeed, deduplication is what makes LSFS very attractive, together with I/O Blender elimination. But as Oleg has outlined earlier LSFS does have additional requirements in terms of RAM and disk capacity overprovisioning. You will feel the effect of deduplication when you use not several VMs, but rather dozens of them. This is why Oleg said you would simply cut your available space by 200%, while your deduplication ratio was not going to be impressive, I assume, because of too little storage to run a considerable number of VMs. But if you feel you might benefit when using LSFS, give it a try. You know your environment better.