StarWind Software

I comefrom Virtual Server now moving over to Hyper-V and I think about moving all our and our soon customers hard discs over to a central storage server that runs a lot of cache ram, it's own separate USV and use StarWind as iscsi target.

I have all these hard discs as VHD files, and I am a little surprised that StarWind does not seem to support .vhd file format. I mean, after all - vhd files are "standard" and an open one as well (ms published the specifications, and anyone is allowed to implement it).

In regards of portability it would be wonderfull if I would just mount a .vhd file into StarWind and expose it. This would mean we could easily migrate existing customer hard discs. Especially given Hyper-V... that is definitly something I see more people doing.

If that is not possible or planned (when is the next version out?) the next question then is...
...how can I transform a .vhd file into your image format?

Actually as followup - what is the best way to transform a server hard disc into iscsi? I can see some customers moving server data over

We really plan to support VHD. The only problem every time we're putting "alien" file format into our schedule - something else attrackts attention... For now we plan to have a "migration" tool from other VMs file formats to our own.

Better fast It is a pretty high prioerity thing fo me - may even decide starwind or acompetitor. The way we plan to set things up is for virtual servers, and having the possibility to deploy by copying a vhd file... means i can jut also download a copy to my local machine and run it in hyper-v. I can also have customers send me in vhd files for deployment.

There will be no native VHD support from the very beginning. We'll have "migration tool" converting VHD -> StarWind IMG format. A bit waste of time but you'll have complete backup

Thona wrote:Better fast It is a pretty high prioerity thing fo me - may even decide starwind or acompetitor. The way we plan to set things up is for virtual servers, and having the possibility to deploy by copying a vhd file... means i can jut also download a copy to my local machine and run it in hyper-v. I can also have customers send me in vhd files for deployment.

And the other way? If customers ask for a copy of their data I can hardly send them your image file and tell them to get up with an ISCSI setup. Seirously, although it slowly gets into the knowledge of people, most even in IT have no idea what ISCSI even is.

Personally I think you should abandon your formats and stick with VHD, unless you have a serious technical reason that I dont see at the moment. Anyhow, i will have to live with that When is the converter ready?

Don't have any ETA yet. We're busy with VTL & CDP things ATM.

Thona wrote:And the other way? If customers ask for a copy of their data I can hardly send them your image file and tell them to get up with an ISCSI setup. Seirously, although it slowly gets into the knowledge of people, most even in IT have no idea what ISCSI even is.

Personally I think you should abandon your formats and stick with VHD, unless you have a serious technical reason that I dont see at the moment. Anyhow, i will have to live with that When is the converter ready?

Hm,

VTL? CTP?

And that means you DONT have, contrary to your statement.

So, what IS the proposed way NOW to get the content of existing hard discs over to your product? More important, what is the proposed way to transfer the content of VHD files (which we have plenty of, fomr our use of Virtual Server) into StarWind?

I'm very sorry but we don't have any solution to your issue at this moment.

I have a Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 and I have mounted with Starwind the VHD file that the Microsoft iSCSI Target have created and it look like it works (the only thing is that I rename the VHD for IMG extention in the files)
You have tested this? Is this ok or it shuld not work? Your IMG files are compatible with the VHD files that the WSS iSCSI Target create?

This is a kludge. It may work and may not. Formats are different in general (trailers, headers etc).

Thank for the reply and I'll wait for your converter from VHD to IMG.
Keep the great work.

Hope it will not take us too long...

pega2k wrote:Thank for the reply and I'll wait for your converter from VHD to IMG.
Keep the great work.

Don't mean to bug you while you are busy with other things, but just wondering if you are making progress with this or if the idea has been shelved?

Thanks

You're correct. We're busy with the other things and don't have this one on the schedule yet.

Travelcard wrote:Don't mean to bug you while you are busy with other things, but just wondering if you are making progress with this or if the idea has been shelved?

Thanks

No probs, thanks for the quick reply.