StarWind Software

Just installed the demo of Starwind and deployed a couple of VM's, just wondering is there a way to thin provision virtual disks? I have a 40gb vm for instance that only utilizes 8gb, is there way to create a virtual disk that is 40 gb and have it grow with the utilization?

I tried checking compressed, but it doesn't seem to work for me for some reason. I'm putting my virtual disks images on an NTFS partition. (part of a raid 10 set)

Hi, After creating the image file device you can extend it's size by simply right-clicking on it's pictogramm in the lower right panel of the management console, and selecting Extend size option. The second way to do this is to create a Snapshot and CDP device in Thin provisioning operation mode.

That was just what I was looking for.. Thanks!

You're welcome

Hello Max,

i need to know if this always requires manual action or there is a setting that allows the size to "grow as you go" i.e if i want it to grow to max 40Gb and i start with 8GB. i have used vmware workstation and their thin provisioning "grows as you go".

NM

Sparse file management is done by OS (OK, NTFS driver if you need details). CDP volume re-allocation is done by StarWind. Both don't require any manual actions from your side. If you mean extending LUN size - it's NOT thin provisioning, it's just extending LUN size and cannot be done w/o you as we need somebody to tell new LUN size. Hope this helps

nuhu wrote:Hello Max,

i need to know if this always requires manual action or there is a setting that allows the size to "grow as you go" i.e if i want it to grow to max 40Gb and i start with 8GB. i have used vmware workstation and their thin provisioning "grows as you go".

NM

Is the "extending" of an img done on the fly or do I need to power down my host servers first?

Thank you,
Eric Ritzie

On the fly, without any problems

I am trying the steps recommended in this thread and am not having any luck. I want to create an image that is using thin provisioning, however the creation of the img file always seems to fail.

My goal is to create a 1TB image, but for it to only use the physical space required as it grows with data.

Also, is there a way to make a thin provisioned image also have deduplication?

Thanks

Hi Kevin,

A deduplicated target is inherently thin provisioned, even if the engine is doing it differently - it will only consume the disk space necessary for the deduplicated data, rather than the full size of the target you specify at creation. The iSCSI clients will not know that the (say) 1TB they see only consumes a few GB of the real disk. You will still need to watch real disk space however, so that if you get close to filling the underlying storage, you can do something before it runs out!

cheers,

Aitor

Thanks for the quick response.

Any chance that Starwind dedupes now or will dedupe in the future across multiple images?

It will do it out of box. In a nutshell: you'll just either increment number of LUNs or will create new LUN pointing to existing metadata and all content should be stored in a shared deduplication database.

kevin@nextvault.com wrote:Thanks for the quick response.

Any chance that Starwind dedupes now or will dedupe in the future across multiple images?

This is great to hear, I'm glad it isn't going to have to go on my wish list.

you'll just either increment number of LUNs

What do you mean by this?

You have one LUN with a set of metadata and when you'll be running out of capacity (say you've copied 1.9TB of data and it's deduplicated to say 500GB but it's still 1.9TB written on the LUN so you have only 100GB of free space on the emulated layer) you simply add another virtual 2TB LUN sharing existing metadata (extending both volume and deduplication database). Pretty much what all of the hardware RAIDs do...

kevin@nextvault.com wrote:This is great to hear, I'm glad it isn't going to have to go on my wish list.

you'll just either increment number of LUNs

What do you mean by this?

Since Dedupe appears to still be beta, I'm confused how to setup Thin provisioning in production.
I see it available under the CDP setting, but don't see how to just setup a simple, thin provisioned image. I don't need any special features on it, just thin provision so it grows as it needs to, like you have described and we have seen in the dedupe mode.

Thanks