Personal Edition with Multiple Initiator Support?

Software-based VM-centric and flash-friendly VM storage + free version

Moderators: anton (staff), art (staff), Max (staff), Anatoly (staff)

Post Reply
dilidolo
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 11:39 am

Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:08 pm

Is there a way to get personal edition that supports multiple initiators for home use? Or do I have to get comercial edition?

BTW. I tested StarWind 2.6.4 with Solaris 10, works like a charm. :lol:
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:46 am

dilidolo wrote:Is there a way to get personal edition that supports multiple initiators for home use? Or do I have to get comercial edition?

BTW. I tested StarWind 2.6.4 with Solaris 10, works like a charm. :lol:
Hi,

The Home version (personal) is a special proposition for home users and it's can not be extended.
You need to purchase a Commercial license with an appropriate client host count to be able to access the StarWind server from different client hosts simultaneously.

Thank you for the information about interoperability with Solaris 10!
Best regards,
Valeriy
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Tue Jan 03, 2006 1:27 pm

Guys, you're looking for enterprise-level features as part of iSCSI target package expecting to pay very small price :) StarWind Home would immediately support all of the stuff found in Enterprise level for Home price the same very day when I'll be able to swap my Subaru Impreza WRX STi for Ferrari Enzo paying 10 hundred bucks (not more!) of difference. I promise! :)
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
dilidolo
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 11:39 am

Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:32 am

Did some benchmark, got 70MB/s with ram disk and 35MB/s on image file with 3 IDE disk RAID-5 over GBE without Jumb-Frame.

Client side: XP SP2, broadcom 5704, MS Initiator 2
Server side: 2003 SP1, Intel pro 1000 CT, 3Ware 3*200G Maxtor 9 RAID-5
Switch: Dell 2724
No TCP optimization

Think performance is really depending on disk speed.
Val (staff)
Posts: 496
Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 8:38 pm

Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:30 am

dilidolo wrote:Did some benchmark, got 70MB/s with ram disk and 35MB/s on image file with 3 IDE disk RAID-5 over GBE without Jumb-Frame.

Client side: XP SP2, broadcom 5704, MS Initiator 2
Server side: 2003 SP1, Intel pro 1000 CT, 3Ware 3*200G Maxtor 9 RAID-5
Switch: Dell 2724
No TCP optimization

Think performance is really depending on disk speed.
Hi,

The performance does depend on the device's speed.

Without using of Jumbo frames the best throughput we have seen is about 72-74 MB/s, so your results for Ram disk seem to be near the best ones.

With Jumbo frames you would be able to utilize your network throughput up to 100%.
Best regards,
Valeriy
rodimus
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:26 pm

Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:13 pm

anton (staff) wrote:Guys, you're looking for enterprise-level features as part of iSCSI target package expecting to pay very small price :) StarWind Home would immediately support all of the stuff found in Enterprise level for Home price the same very day when I'll be able to swap my Subaru Impreza WRX STi for Ferrari Enzo paying 10 hundred bucks (not more!) of difference. I promise! :)

I've been looking for a software iSCSI target software for my home and I'd love to buy your product. However, the home version simply doesn't suit my needs being so connection limited, and the Enterprise edition is simply too much $$ for home use. I can't see that for many people that are considering iSCSI @ home that a single connection iSCSI solution would make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, my only option appears to be a Linux solution, which is not what I'd prefer.

Have you considered offering different licenses instead of different functionality? Meaning, for commercial use, the price is the same as it is today. But, change the 'home' edition to have the same functionality as the Enterprise, but the license is specific for non-commercial use. To use your analogy, you get the Ferrari, but you can't drive it anywhere. There are many software companies that do this today.

I suspect you're worried that people would use the 'home' use for commercial? I wouldn't. Most commercial organizations don't want to pirate software, and those that do are not going to pay for software regardless.

Even if they did, I heard a Microsoft guy say a long time ago "We don't want people to pirate software, but we'd rather they pirate our software than somebody else's". It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

I think you have a great unique product and I think you have the potential oppurtunity to create and own a 'home iSCSI market', and that would only lead to bigger & better things in the commercial market.

With respect & regards,
jb
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:27 pm

Hold on... You need at least 2 concurrent connections so this means you have at least 3 PCs. Each one is say $1000 ($3000 altogether). At the same time pure commercial version priced less then $200 (it DOES have 2 concurrent connections enabled) is expensive for you??? So you'll install another PC running Linux (another $1000) not to pay $200 to RDS for Windows version of iSCSI target? Is it what you want to say?
rodimus wrote:
anton (staff) wrote:Guys, you're looking for enterprise-level features as part of iSCSI target package expecting to pay very small price :) StarWind Home would immediately support all of the stuff found in Enterprise level for Home price the same very day when I'll be able to swap my Subaru Impreza WRX STi for Ferrari Enzo paying 10 hundred bucks (not more!) of difference. I promise! :)

I've been looking for a software iSCSI target software for my home and I'd love to buy your product. However, the home version simply doesn't suit my needs being so connection limited, and the Enterprise edition is simply too much $$ for home use. I can't see that for many people that are considering iSCSI @ home that a single connection iSCSI solution would make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, my only option appears to be a Linux solution, which is not what I'd prefer.

Have you considered offering different licenses instead of different functionality? Meaning, for commercial use, the price is the same as it is today. But, change the 'home' edition to have the same functionality as the Enterprise, but the license is specific for non-commercial use. To use your analogy, you get the Ferrari, but you can't drive it anywhere. There are many software companies that do this today.

I suspect you're worried that people would use the 'home' use for commercial? I wouldn't. Most commercial organizations don't want to pirate software, and those that do are not going to pay for software regardless.

Even if they did, I heard a Microsoft guy say a long time ago "We don't want people to pirate software, but we'd rather they pirate our software than somebody else's". It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

I think you have a great unique product and I think you have the potential oppurtunity to create and own a 'home iSCSI market', and that would only lead to bigger & better things in the commercial market.

With respect & regards,
jb
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
n00dles
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Mar 18, 2006 7:02 am

Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:40 am

Your maths isn't quite correct - if I built a Linux box and installed one of the freely available Linux iSCSI Target pacakges, I would have a box that was the equivalent of your $3000US product.

I'm sure there are many pc enthusiasts that have old P3/P4 boxes lying around just being used as little fileservers or backup or whatever. These are the kind of people that might want to play around with iSCSI in the home, not some Joe Average, which the home user license seems to be aimed at. That kind of user isn't going anywhere near iSCSI anytime soon, and in most cases probably only has one pc anyway.

But to pose the question in your forums and be mocked by the staff... well, that's no way to get customers is it?
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:07 pm

Oh, really? You think you'd find a Linux iSCSI target with a lot of enterprise level features (can you point to at least one with volume snapshots for example?), fancy local GUI, nice remote control, good performance, stable and with someone who'd do support for it for you? If it would be true I think RDS should be out of business long time ago...

Guys I continue: if you have a lot of free time and don't want to spend money - get Linux, install Linux iSCSI target and have fun. If you're serious about *Windows* iSCSI but it's still a hobby for you - I don't understand why should I pay for you hobby from my own pocket? Development is not cheap and support guys don't work for free. That's why we'll not sell "home" edition any more (current license holders would get free update to full commercial version). We'll still have 50% discount for educational use and will try to find a solution for home users but we don't have it so far. If you have an ideas - please drop me a message to anton@rocketdivision.com :)

You're not mocked by the staff! You just got absolutely honest answer on your question. On your place I'd appreciate this. Having true picture is much better then "We'll think about this..." or "Sure, some nice day after a couple of years..." Don't you think so?

In this particular case I think we've got a deal with the original poster and everybody is happy with it so far :)

If you want to continue the discussion - you're welcomed to do it by e-mail. Thanks!
n00dles wrote:Your maths isn't quite correct - if I built a Linux box and installed one of the freely available Linux iSCSI Target pacakges, I would have a box that was the equivalent of your $3000US product.

I'm sure there are many pc enthusiasts that have old P3/P4 boxes lying around just being used as little fileservers or backup or whatever. These are the kind of people that might want to play around with iSCSI in the home, not some Joe Average, which the home user license seems to be aimed at. That kind of user isn't going anywhere near iSCSI anytime soon, and in most cases probably only has one pc anyway.

But to pose the question in your forums and be mocked by the staff... well, that's no way to get customers is it?
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
n00dles
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Mar 18, 2006 7:02 am

Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:19 pm

Anton, I'm glad you can at least see my point about who your home package is aimed at - a 'single client iSCSI solution' is a market that simply does not exist. Otherwise I'm guessing you wouldn't be dropping the product.

But if you want to talk about enterprise solutions, let me tell you as someone who has for the last 4 years worked in several companies (the smallest of which had 10000 users) at the top of the Windows technical food chain, unless your software is Windows Logo Certified, and certified by whatever hardware vendor I will run it on, then you won't get a second look. Companies like EMC, Cisco and HP already have offerings in this space. And so too will Microsoft now that is has acquired String Bean. Where does that leave you?

imho, you would be better off targeting small to medim business and geeks like me and the other 2 original posters, rather than offering enterprise class functionality without the vendor supported certifications to back it up.

But hey, what would I know.
rodimus
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:26 pm

Sat Mar 18, 2006 5:04 pm

n00dles wrote:Your maths isn't quite correct - if I built a Linux box and installed one of the freely available Linux iSCSI Target pacakges, I would have a box that was the equivalent of your $3000US product.

I'm sure there are many pc enthusiasts that have old P3/P4 boxes lying around just being used as little fileservers or backup or whatever. These are the kind of people that might want to play around with iSCSI in the home, not some Joe Average, which the home user license seems to be aimed at. That kind of user isn't going anywhere near iSCSI anytime soon, and in most cases probably only has one pc anyway.

But to pose the question in your forums and be mocked by the staff... well, that's no way to get customers is it?
Anton and I have been exchanging emails since the original post. He's been extremely polite and engaging, and has considered much of what I've said.

I think you and me are looking at this from the same perspective, and I've stressed the same points you've made here. I'm a geek with a bunch of machines I've gathered over years and years in the industry and I like to play with stuff at home, but I'm also a decision maker at fairly high levels in large IT organizations. Having people like you and me familiar with your product can only be a good thing.

I've said from the begining, I think they have an opportunity here, it's just about positioning the product to capture it.
User avatar
anton (staff)
Site Admin
Posts: 4008
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:03 am
Location: British Virgin Islands
Contact:

Sat Mar 18, 2006 5:52 pm

Well... You're not exactly correct upon this :) Quite a lot of people do need to f.e. burn their files to desktop attached internal DVD burner from notebook using home network, share still expensive DLT drive and so on. But we perfectly cover such a market with OEM products so don't want to mess with end user sales of such a stuff any more.

It leaves us quite a lot. Maybe 2% from market but from multi-billon market. With MS got SBS target there is virtually no competion in SMB/SOHO market left (as ex-WinTarget would be part of Windows 2003 Storage Server and it's even more expensive then just generic Windows 2003 Server + either SANmelody from DataCore or iSCSI Server from FalconStor, and both these companies offer better set of features still).

Oh, you've got me wrong :) I was talking about "enterprise leve features" and not "enterprise market". Quite a different things, don't you think so? B/s small companies get bigger and need something they did not need yesterday (like f.e. snapshots and replication today and they just did use plain shared disk storage yesterday). We perfectly understand our chances in this world :)

About certification... We'll have iSNS running this or next week and it would be last milestone passed between us and "Certified for Windows" in MS hardware compatibility test. We'll see - would MS give us such a certificate after SBS + MS deal. I'm very excited upon the result :)

Thanks for sharing your ideas with us. Your opinion is valuable.
n00dles wrote:Anton, I'm glad you can at least see my point about who your home package is aimed at - a 'single client iSCSI solution' is a market that simply does not exist. Otherwise I'm guessing you wouldn't be dropping the product.

But if you want to talk about enterprise solutions, let me tell you as someone who has for the last 4 years worked in several companies (the smallest of which had 10000 users) at the top of the Windows technical food chain, unless your software is Windows Logo Certified, and certified by whatever hardware vendor I will run it on, then you won't get a second look. Companies like EMC, Cisco and HP already have offerings in this space. And so too will Microsoft now that is has acquired String Bean. Where does that leave you?

imho, you would be better off targeting small to medim business and geeks like me and the other 2 original posters, rather than offering enterprise class functionality without the vendor supported certifications to back it up.

But hey, what would I know.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

Image
Post Reply