Storage layout for converting a system.

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Powermage
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2018 10:40 am

Thu Jul 26, 2018 10:58 am

We are in the process of changing our old storage software for new, Starwind is on our shortlist.

we now have 2 dedicated storage servers with an traditional raid controller with 40 disk raid 10, and 4 ssd's in raid 10 with cachecade caching.
the current software takes care of the HA/Replica/ISCSI targets but does nothing in improving the performance, this is all relying on the HW controller.
no need to discuss this further: we dont like it and we want more out of our hardware.

With Starwind i think we see 2 options.

1: keep the raid 10 configuration, add some more RAM (currently 32gb?), setup windows/starwind san, add the SSD's to starwind cache.
2: Replace raid with SAS HBA (or check if we can use current raid controllers as passthrough devices), add some more ram (currently 32gb), setup windows with tiered storage spaces, probably add some more SSD drives and add Starwind to this, dont add caching ssd's to starwind, only use the RAM caching of starwind.

What option would give me the best performance or other benefits, it is a bit unclear to me.
Oleg(staff)
Staff
Posts: 568
Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2017 7:52 am

Thu Jul 26, 2018 3:10 pm

It really depends on your needs and your production environment.
L2 (SSD) cache is working in Write Through mode. It is a nice thing for read-intensive environments.
StarWind works on Tiered Storage Spaces with pretty good results and we have hybrid Hyper-Converged Appliances based on Storage Spaces as the underlying storage.
You can create Simple Storage Tier on top of the RAID arrays or Mirror Storage Tier from HBA SSDs and HDDs in order to have resiliency on the storage level.
You can use this guide for creation.
Powermage
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2018 10:40 am

Fri Jul 27, 2018 10:55 am

So then option 3: combine best of both worlds? Storage spaces with tiered ssd's (a few TB of SSD's 4x 1tb in mirror) and say 2 or 4 mirrored ones for L2 of starwind? can really make sense in high demand read enviroments.
or doesnt ik make sense since storage spaces will take care of this?

Option 1 or Option 2 doesnt really makes a difference in converting the servers we have now, we now see a lot more reads and most of the storage isnt changing that much.
but how do i make the case for what option, both options work with improvements but i dont really see guides or info how to make it more then a guess.

-Storage spaces performance: is this better than raid 10 on a lsi controller or is it the same
-Tiered spaces performance or is starwind cache an better option?
-combine both? does it make sens (or not?)

I like that with tiered storage i waste less storage, with caching you dont add it to your pools, but if the starwind cache is way better i will opt for this.
Oleg(staff)
Staff
Posts: 568
Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2017 7:52 am

Fri Jul 27, 2018 3:22 pm

No, you will have SSD cache already configured on the level of underlying storage for StarWind.
-Storage spaces performance: is this better than raid 10 on a lsi controller or is it the same
-Tiered spaces performance or is starwind cache an better option?
-combine both? does it make sens (or not?)
RAID 10 and Mirror Storage Tier are comparable in terms of performance.
If you will go with Storage Spaces, SSDs will be used to improve reads and writes and there is no need in additional SSD cache.
As I already told, L2 (SSD) cache is working in Write Through mode. It is a nice thing for read-intensive environments, you will speed up reads.
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