Starwind on SSD - Thin or thick provisioning better?

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fanello
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Thu May 08, 2014 1:53 pm

Hi,

If I use starwind on SSDs, is it better to use thin or thick provisioning? What about the auto-defrag feature. Should I activate it with SSDs?
In my opinion thin provisioning should be quicker on SSDs because of TRIM. If I use thick provisioning the host doesn't see the free areas on the SSDs and can't trim it. Is this correct?

Regards
Benny
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anton (staff)
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Thu May 08, 2014 7:59 pm

Use LSFS with flash to accelerate writes, make flash life longer (reduced amount of writes and erase cycles) and increase capacity (usable) because of dedupe.
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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fanello
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Wed May 14, 2014 4:16 pm

Thanks for your reply. Should I activate the auto defrag feature?
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anton (staff)
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Wed May 14, 2014 5:11 pm

YES
fanello wrote:Thanks for your reply. Should I activate the auto defrag feature?
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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fbifido
Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Sep 05, 2013 7:33 am

Wed May 14, 2014 7:29 pm

fanello wrote:Hi,

If I use starwind on SSDs, is it better to use thin or thick provisioning? What about the auto-defrag feature. Should I activate it with SSDs?
In my opinion thin provisioning should be quicker on SSDs because of TRIM. If I use thick provisioning the host doesn't see the free areas on the SSDs and can't trim it. Is this correct?

Regards
Benny
on SSD, you will use LSFS (thin)
enable auto-defrag
enable dedup

I think that's what "anton" is saying !

BTW:
1) what size is your SSD?
2) What OS are you using?
3) Are u using windows dedup?
4) Are u using HD & SSD or just all SSD?
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Anatoly (staff)
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Thu May 15, 2014 2:12 pm

fbiofido reminded me few things that is worth for you to know:
1.Don`t use any other deduplication except StarWind. Having more then one DD running will ruin the DD effect.
2.Don`t use the thin provisioning on the VM level, otherwise they won`t dedup at all.
Best regards,
Anatoly Vilchinsky
Global Engineering and Support Manager
www.starwind.com
av@starwind.com
barrysmoke
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:11 pm

Tue Jun 10, 2014 5:02 am

can you elaborate on the thin provisioning at the vm level?
I would assume that the empty space on thin provisioned vm's wouldn't matter if the starwind dedup is block level?

I want my cake, and eat it too in other words :-)
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anton (staff)
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Tue Jun 10, 2014 8:02 am

VM space would be returned to StarWind LUN but StarWind should also take care of returning LUN space to host.
barrysmoke wrote:can you elaborate on the thin provisioning at the vm level?
I would assume that the empty space on thin provisioned vm's wouldn't matter if the starwind dedup is block level?

I want my cake, and eat it too in other words :-)
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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MichelZ
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Thu Jun 12, 2014 5:36 pm

Is LSFS now out of "experimental" mode?
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anton (staff)
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Thu Jun 12, 2014 9:31 pm

Yes, GOLD now. But like with ZFS we do update it all the time.
MichelZ wrote:Is LSFS now out of "experimental" mode?
Regards,
Anton Kolomyeytsev

Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software

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