Starwind vs ZFS (Nexenta/OI)

[awedio]

In a recent thread, user lohelle, suggested to Anton "Now we just need ZFS for Windows" http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/ ... t2704.html

I read Anton's response & PM'ed him with more questions:

Me: Anton, Does that mean that Starwind has done performance testing vs Nexenta & OpenIndiana?

Anton:

YES OF COURSE. We notoriously run benchmarking tests against competitors

Anton, Can you provide some more detailed info regarding benchmarking against competitors (including Windows/Linux/ZFS type iSCSI SAN software products)

[anton (staff)]

In a nutshell: we cannot complete nexenta tests as we put ZFS on knees. In a situation where StarWind can create 3TB data store using 4KB dedupe blocks (8GB RAM total, 6GB allocated for dedupe hash tables and 2GB used by system) nexenta cannot do even 20GB (YES, GIGABYTES).

You can read more on nexenta own forum here here:

http://www.nexentastor.org/boards/2/top ... ssage-5532

as they don't control ZFS and memory footprint is ZFS fundamental requirement I don't think they can do anything with it in the future.

You have hardware, you have access to both trials (and free versions, all of them include dedupe) so go run your face-to-face test run and publish and let us know IOPS, MBPS and dedupe final ratios. Othere people do it on the web comparing StarWind with MS target and FreeNAS (another ZFS based solution). Check this link (and corresponding 3 parts on the same blog). Here:

http://blogs.jakeandjessica.net/post/20 ... art-1.aspx

Good luck!

[awedio]

Thx for the update.

Do you have any other test comparisons without using dedup?

[anton (staff)]

What type of tests are you interested in?

Thx for the update.

Do you have any other test comparisons without using dedup?

[awedio]

Any type of performance related tests!

[anton (staff)]

We're not always a winner

I'll talk to QA and legal depts to find out 1) what reports we have being up-to-date and 2) what we can publish without spawning another "holy war".

Any type of performance related tests!

[awedio]

OK, thx.

I'll look forward to your update

[anton (staff)]

I'll ping you when we'll have something

[anton (staff)]

While we're busy with a national holidays I have a tiny update... Did you actually check Nexenta EULA? Do you use them in production?

http://www.nexenta.com/corp/eula-nexent ... ty-edition

2.9. Production Use.
The Product may only be used for development or evaluation purposes as described in this EUELA and may not be used in a production environment.

[awedio]

That link is for the FREE community edition.

This edition is supported via the forums only.

You can not purchase any of the available plug-ins http://nexenta.com/corp/products/what-i ... s-plug-ins

[anton (staff)]

I know. I'm talking about Free version limitations. It appears they not only limit served capacity but don't allow any production use.

That link is for the FREE community edition.

This edition is supported via the forums only.

You can not purchase any of the available plug-ins http://nexenta.com/corp/products/what-i ... s-plug-ins

[awedio]

Max capacity (free version) is 18TB

In a production setup, If I had that much capacity (whether it's Starwind/Nexenta etc) I would not use anyone's free version.

I would buy the "real" product & PAY for support!

[Max (staff)]

Well, I'd say it's more a matter of running the software in a production.
It appears that with StarWind you can run a free SAN in production, while Nexenta is not allowing that.
PS: If I had 18 TB of data I'd also go for a commercial version that's 1000% sure.

[anton (staff)]

Why not?

Max capacity (free version) is 18TB

In a production setup, If I had that much capacity (whether it's Starwind/Nexenta etc) I would not use anyone's free version.

I would buy the "real" product & PAY for support!

[awedio]

Anton, at 18TB (that's a lot of data) if it was production data, I would be willing to pay for support.

That's just my opinion.