starwind redundancy

[megacc]

Hi folks,

Suppose I have 2 identical storage servers and starwind iscsi target is installed in both of them, is there a way to configure starwind as a whole application to failover to other storage server automatically ?

[Robert (staff)]

Hello,

You can take a look at the below documents:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/images/ ... yper-V.pdf
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/images/ ... er2008.pdf

Please lt us know if that helps.

Thanks
Rob

[megacc]

im aware of windows clustering and that's not what i want.
i know starwind is capable for clustering and sharing volumes, that’s a side view from clients nodes whom using starwind as storage area network, what I’m talking about what if that storage area network fail(where starwind is installed), is there a way to let the clients to fail over to other starwind storage area network?

[Robert (staff)]

Hello,

Not in the current version. Fully operational automatic fail-over functionality will be implemented in one of the next versions.

Thanks,
Rob

[MBonner]

If we're willing to take the cpu hit from OS mirroring can we map two volumes, one from either server, and then use the OS to mirror them. That's not quite fail-over redundancy, but it still keeps you going if one of the servers goes down and the OS should handle the resynch when the failed server comes back up.

- Mike

[Robert (staff)]

Hello Mike,

You can use mirroring (RAID-1) feature available in StarWind Mirroring and Replication Edition (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwin ... eplication). This feature allows creating full RAID-1 emulation and sotre the virtual drives (images) over different locations. If one of the mirrors goes down, you can resync the remaining with a new one and continue the work.

Thanks
Rob

[Aitor_Ibarra]

Mike,

To RAID 1 mirroring in Windows, you need to use dynamic disks. Unfortunately you can't use iSCSI based volumes as dynamic disks.

However, in theory you could use Hyper-V (or some other virtualisation technology) to virtualise the iSCSI volumes, so that Windows running in a VM can treat them as dynamic disks. I haven't tried this, although it would be quite interesting to see if it works well. Windows RAID-1 is OK in my experience and isn't much of a CPU hit (although I wouldn't want to try RAID-5!).

You would have to be very careful when doing any work on your Starwind servers, e.g. if you have to patch/shut down/reboot one server you need to wait for resyncing to finish before doing anything with the other one. Using Starwind based RAID would be better as you'd know whether the resync had finished - doing it from the clients using Windows RAID would mean that you'd have to check from within each client - a real chore if you have lots of clients!

cheers,

Aitor

[Robert (staff)]

Greetings!

Alternatively, you can wait till we release the upcoming StarWind HA

Thanks

[that_kid]

Any projected date on Starwind HA?

[Robert (staff)]

We are working days and nights. The beta should be released soon (two-four weeks). The final version should be released in August.

Thanks

[that_kid]

Excellent, I look forward to trying the beta out.

[Robert (staff)]

We'll let everyone know!

Thanks

[PetSam]

It' s September already. What's new about StarWind HA? Аny projected date on Starwind HA?

[Robert (staff)]

Unfortunately the release dates are being delayed. We will notify everyone beforehand prior to the release.

Thanks