StarWind Software

Using starwind version 6.0.5189 on windows storage server 2008 r2

4 GB RAM - Western Digital Sentinel server

Two - 1 GB links (one management, one iscsi)

I have setup two devices, and two targets:
- Image File - 500 GB
- Deduplicated Disk - 1 TB

This array is connected up to two VMware ESXi 4.1.0 servers. Those VMware servers have two 1 GB links teamed with ip hash, also getting iscsi targets from an openfiler server.

For some reason two issues are occurring:

1. The image file target keeps automatically switching to Deny in the access list after I switch it to allow. The default rule is deny, I have setup this rule pretty simply on the iscsi interface only and attached to the one esxi server it needs to be on

2. The deduplicated volume has gone offline two times in the last day, making all vms unavailable and hanging tasks.

The WD server is up and continues to be up, so not sure what is causing the issue, but openfiler has been up for almost 500 days and have never seen any issues with volumes going offline.

Wondering if I have something wrong settings wise for this to work reliably. I was hoping to rebuild my openfiler server with starwind, but this is giving me pause.

Appreciate any thoughts.

I see in the release notes for the WD firmware update I applied that iscsi target management is now provided ootb in the WD dashboard from starwind, so wondering if my full install of starwind software on here is causing the issue.

Can they both work together?

I am guessing not and I am not able to select my deduplicated disk as a choice in the windows storage dashboard iscsi plugin, nor am I able to use my existing image file as there is an error saying it can't be renamed.

1) WDC OEM version has a subset of features from our production product so some features (like deduplication) will be missing.

2) You can make them co-exist on the same hardware. Just make sure they will not try to share the same iSCSI and control ports.

billk wrote:I see in the release notes for the WD firmware update I applied that iscsi target management is now provided ootb in the WD dashboard from starwind, so wondering if my full install of starwind software on here is causing the issue.

Can they both work together?

I am guessing not and I am not able to select my deduplicated disk as a choice in the windows storage dashboard iscsi plugin, nor am I able to use my existing image file as there is an error saying it can't be renamed.

it is grayed out for me in the full starwind interface on all 3 network interfaces to switch it from 3260.

You should change the string in the starwind.cfg file, save changes and restart the starwind service after. Please make sure that anything else is using the port that you will assign.

The problem with all of this was that I previously had Starwind Free installed on the WD Sentinel prior to Western Digital including your software in the latest release. Unfortunately, updating the firmware without reading the release notes is my fault, but both were attempting to be installed under the same c:\program files location, making things act very strangely.

I uninstalled if all off the system and re-installed everything, and am now successfully just using the Starwind iSCSI plugin within the OOTB dashboard. VMware ESXi 4.1 is able to use this store as a backup volume successfully.

Glad to know that the issue is solved! And thank's for the update!