iSCSI vs Native

[matty-ct]

Hi all,

First off, if there is already a post/thread about this I apologize in advance but I didn't find it.

Can someone tell me what the limitations of Native SAN for Hyper-V vs the full blown iSCSI SAN version are ? I installed the Native in demo mode and it looks pretty much identical to me.

What can't "Native" version do that iSCSI can? Must "Native" run on the Hyper-V host as opposed to a standalone server? If I install "Native" on a W2K8 R2 Ent server and enable clustering/csv/etc, can I still add additional nodes to the cluster, whether Windows R2 or Hyper-V R2 (free) nodes? I've gone through the docs but I'm still a bit confused about the product differences.

Thanks for any clarifications or links which explain better.

Matt

[Anatoly (staff)]

In general, products are really lookalike.
Extract from Product Overview:

Code: Select all

You need only two existing Hyper-V hosts to run highly available storage cluster. StarWind requires 1/2 of expected servers and network infrastructure. 
StarWind operates inside parent partition where hypervisor is running, so no additional hardware is required for deploying a highly available Hyper-V cluster.

This menas that you ned to install StarWind on both Hyper-V nodes to have HA storage cluster. If you will have your Hyper-V will be clustered too you wil have storage and hypervizor clusters both using only two servers.

Only those two Hyper-V servers will be able to connect to HA devices.

And one more differense of Native SAN from iSCSI SAN is price. Its cheaper. If you would like to know how much exaxctly I can suggest you to contact our sales by using email below:
sales@stawindsoftware.com

[matty-ct]

Only those two Hyper-V servers will be able to connect to HA devices.

Ah. I installed the demo of "Native" on my W7 workstation. I then was able to connect to an iSCSI target on the W7 PC via a W2K8 cluster node. I didn't go any further than that but you can see how that confused me! At that point I said, "What the heck's the difference?" I've been in contact with Robert in sales. This is for a proposed client project.

So, if I want to be able to have more than two cluster nodes, or additional cluster nodes, I need to go with iSCSI SAN and not Native SAN. Thanks for the clarifications.

Matt

[Anatoly (staff)]

No problem! Always glad to help you!

Feel free to post your questions if you`ll have some more!