StarWind Software

Hi all,

I have a small Hyper-V 2012 R2 hyperconvergent cluster with Starwind Virtual SAN Free storage.
Briefly about each node config:
2xXeon 6cores 2.1GHz
32GB RAM
2x1Gb builtin NICs
2x1Gb addon NICs
2x1TB SATA 7200 in mirror volume via Storage Spaces for data
1GB L1 cache in StarWind flat fixed size(300GB) HA device, placed on this mirror volume.
Jumbo on.
Two builtin NICs used for cluster and clients, one addon NIC - iSCSI and SW sync, second - SW sync. SW heartbeat - on all four NICs.

It works. I have several VM running on it. Of course storage subsystem is expectedly slow.

I'm wondering - if I want to speed up the storage, then what is the best way to spend money: to replace an addon NIC with 10Gb one or replace a mirror with single enterprise SSD?

Currently storage shows such results(diskspd -c500M -w100 -t1 -o1 -b64K -Su ...):
1. SS Mirror drive itself: 110 MB/sec
2. C:\ClusterStorage created using SW HA device: 25 MB/sec
3. Inside of one of 2012 R2 VM: 20 MB/sec

My opinion: replacing NIC with 10Gb will significantly rise 2) and 3) speeds.
Am I right?
How much can acceleration be?

Davis,

I believe 10 Gbit card would be a good investment. Replace your 2x1Gbps sync connections with at least one 10Gbps NIC and you will be good to go.

Thank you!

Thank you as well!

Just for Info.
I've upgraded addon NICs to Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro dual ports 10Gb cards on both nodes.
So now both Sync channels are 10Gb/sec.

Transfer rate for ClusterStorage raised to 53MB/sec
Speed inside VM have not changed significantly: 20-35MB/sec. From test to test.

Test with RAM drive over 10Gb iSCSI ( client->iscsi->10Gb->RAM drive) shows 330 MB/sec for single thread or full saturated 1150MB/sec for 8 thread

Speed inside VM have not changed significantly: 20-35MB/sec. From test to test.

Make sure you use fixed disks for your VMs, but not dynamic ones. With dynamic disks performance is far from the best one.

fixed, sure

Can you run the test on several VMs simultaneously? What is the summed up result?