StarWind Software

Hi,

I'm new to your product and are testing it out for now...

I've created 3 Logical drives for a 4 physical discs RAID 5 set. This is done within the management for the RAID controller. I've only initialized all the logical disc sets. After that I'm trying to apply them in StarWind iSCSI SAN (trial). I want to use Physical disc Bridge to each logical volume and that seems OK, but I cant alter the LUN id to each, so when I then assign them i my vSphere hosts (ESX 4.0), they see the same LUN id and think its the same LUN but on different paths... I want to use them all and be accessable from all my host i VMware vCenter. The reason for this is Best Practice from VMware to use multiple LUNs on small Logical volumes instead of 1 large Logical Volume because of speed etc... How can I get this working and what is best practice to set this up? I've read all your papers but doesn't say how to set this up with physical discs (DiscBridge). Do you recommend a different approach... I want speed!

We've been fixing LUN enumeration and unique IDs some time ago. What version do you use for your experiments? Can you send us both configuration file and StarWind logs?

geriksen wrote:Hi,

I'm new to your product and are testing it out for now...

I've created 3 Logical drives for a 4 physical discs RAID 5 set. This is done within the management for the RAID controller. I've only initialized all the logical disc sets. After that I'm trying to apply them in StarWind iSCSI SAN (trial). I want to use Physical disc Bridge to each logical volume and that seems OK, but I cant alter the LUN id to each, so when I then assign them i my vSphere hosts (ESX 4.0), they see the same LUN id and think its the same LUN but on different paths... I want to use them all and be accessable from all my host i VMware vCenter. The reason for this is Best Practice from VMware to use multiple LUNs on small Logical volumes instead of 1 large Logical Volume because of speed etc... How can I get this working and what is best practice to set this up? I've read all your papers but doesn't say how to set this up with physical discs (DiscBridge). Do you recommend a different approach... I want speed!

I'm using version 5.5 just downloaded a few days ago... Do you have a best practice towards vSphere and multiple hosts and also pros and cons regarding physical disk (bridge), Image etc... FYI; I've tested with Image setup and that works... But, I see that each Target I create still gets LUN0... but don't know if this will be an issue.

Thank you for your feedback. Support techies should look at this issue ASAP.

Thanks!

But, regarding my questions about Physical or Virtual, best practice etc... BTW; Do I need to use "mutiple connections..." option when using it in VMware? In my head it should, but in your guide it's not used...???

Physical or virtual - does not matter, performance is the same with newer builds.

Multiple connections should be enabled for HA and VMotion. You can keep them disabled for safety if you have only one VMware ESX / ESXi host.

Back to guide and best practicies - support should contact you and put more light on this Including personal webinar

geriksen wrote:Thanks!

But, regarding my questions about Physical or Virtual, best practice etc... BTW; Do I need to use "mutiple connections..." option when using it in VMware? In my head it should, but in your guide it's not used...???

OK, thanks! Final question; If using virtual, then I need to format it with NTFS and then place the .IMG file there. There are no other way of doing this in my case, correct? Then it should be formated with highest possible Cluster size, 64KB and turn of indexing etc for that Windows Drive or? Finally, what should I use for the cahce option when creating the virtual Image file? Thinking about Write-Back and Cache size... Do this have any impact of what I set here?

Thanks for quick feedback... Hope support are replying quick as well!

1) Any file system Windows "sees" should work for placing IMG files. Unformatted RAW partiticion can be only "bridged".

2) Yes, using big cluster size lowers down overhead. But it's minimal in any case so could be neglected.

3) Use Write-Back with HUGE cache size for HA configurations only (StarWind HA, not ESX in HA, don't confuse these two different things). Using single node storage with big cache is pretty unsafe...
Lost power and a couple of gigabytes of your latests fresh transactions will go directly to the middle of the Black Universe.

geriksen wrote:OK, thanks! Final question; If using virtual, then I need to format it with NTFS and then place the .IMG file there. There are no other way of doing this in my case, correct? Then it should be formated with highest possible Cluster size, 64KB and turn of indexing etc for that Windows Drive or? Finally, what should I use for the cahce option when creating the virtual Image file? Thinking about Write-Back and Cache size... Do this have any impact of what I set here?

Thanks for quick feedback... Hope support are replying quick as well!

Hi,

Still waiting for support regarding this matter. Can we plz speed things up? I not I'm affraid I need to have a look at another solution... Need this to "act" as it does with FC HBA and LUNs we use. Why do we need to add, lets say 3 targets, when with FC towards our SAN, I add one target and get 3 LUNs shown in vCenter. But, with StarWind i need to add 3 targets for each "Logical Volume", so I get 3 targets in vCenter??? Could be I misunderstand how iSCSI works, but shouldn't it be the same as with FC HBAs?

Finally, I still need some best practices and guidens to set this up for speed and performance in our environment. Can support contact me ASAP!!!

BTW; Need prices as well, so let your Sales Dep contact me as well ASAP!

Mr. Eriksen,
According to my logs you have been contacted by our support dept twice, first by Aziz Keissi, then by me
However none of us has got a reply from you, considering the letters may have been considered as spam.
I have forwarded the letter to you once again, please confirm when you receive it.
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The serial ID for such devices can be manually edited in starwind.cfg
Open the file and search your targets by their alias
after this edit each target by putting in Serial Id="1111111111111111"<-16 unique dights for each target (111... 2222.... 333... etc)
like this
<device name="ImageFile0" target="img" file="My Computer\D\test.img" asyncmode="yes" clustered="no" readonly="no" CacheMode="wt" CacheSizeMB="300" CacheBlockExpiryPeriodMS="5000"/>
<device name="ImageFile0" target="img" file="My Computer\D\test.img" asyncmode="yes" clustered="no" readonly="no" CacheMode="wt" CacheSizeMB="300" Serial Id="1111111111111111" CacheBlockExpiryPeriodMS="5000"/>

After this save the file and restart the starwind service (find it in services.msc manager and press the restart button)
In case the service refuses to start - remove the space between Serial & Id for all targets specified and try again.

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