Service crash

[americo]

I have ver. 6.0.5228, free licence. I seems that service crashes when it tries to open image file created on a very big local drive. I have 14TB storage. In the system log I see this: "Failed to open image file [D:\Stores\store1.img]". StarWind log file is attached. I also have a minidump file if needed.

[Anatoly (staff)]

Would you be so kind to share the minidump, that was created according to the string from the logs that you can see below, with us?

Code: Select all

2/7 16:18:00.098 69c debug: Minidump 'C:\Program Files\StarWind Software\StarWind\starwind.20130207.161759.mdmp' created successfully.

Probably you need to upload it to some FTP or file hosting service.

Thank you

[americo]

Please find both the log and minidump here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/an695d7wp774l3d/udi2gBncUZ

Regards,
Andrew

[Anatoly (staff)]

Thanks! We`ll review the logs and get back to you asap.

[Anatoly (staff)]

It seams like you need to change the sector size on your RAID array to 512B instead of 4KB that you are using now.

[americo]

It seams like you need to change the sector size on your RAID array to 512B instead of 4KB that you are using now.

Anatoly,
The default cluster size for NTFS volume from 2 to 16 TB is 4kb:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140365?wa=wsignin1.0

Also this command works just fine:
D:\>fsutil file createnew test.txt 52428800000
File D:\test.txt is created
D:\>dir /l
Volume in drive D is DATA
Volume Serial Number is 6EAD-3473

Directory of D:\

02/03/2013 12:33 PM <DIR> backups
02/07/2013 05:07 PM <DIR> cps
02/07/2013 04:56 PM <DIR> stores
02/12/2013 10:00 AM 52,428,800,000 test.txt
1 File(s) 52,428,800,000 bytes
3 Dir(s) 10,450,460,237,824 bytes free

I dont see how the sector size on the RAID is relevant to the situation.

[Anatoly (staff)]

512B is StarWind requirement, not MS.

[americo]

512B is StarWind requirement, not MS.

Could you point me to this requrement? Nothing about that here: http://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements

According to Anton Kolomyeytsev, Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect, StarWind Software:
"StarWind is STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION software. We place container (flat image, CDP engine file set, TP sparse file etc) on the host file system (RAW, NTFS, FAT, EXT 2/3 etc - does not matter, it's up to OS, we rely on the file system driver here) and do EMULATE SCSI-3 compatible hard disk over iSCSI interface. So sector size on the host has NOTHING to do with what we represent to the end user. You may have 32KB sector (actually it's called "ECC block") on DVD+RW random-access formatted media on the host keeping StarWind IMG and say 8KB or 16KB or 512 byte/sector hard disk on the initiator-connected side. We can do 4096 (any size actually...) NOW, we could do it in 2003 as it's just different sector size reported in one SCSI command "read capacity"."
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/ ... t2037.html
Is it true?

[Anatoly (staff)]

Well, the topic that you have dropped the link to is pretty old - it was created 3 years ago. 512B requirement is pretty new, and it will be removed in future release since we do realize that it will be more comfortable to exist without this requirement. In other words - this is temporary.

[americo]

Well, the topic that you have dropped the link to is pretty old - it was created 3 years ago. 512B requirement is pretty new, and it will be removed in future release since we do realize that it will be more comfortable to exist without this requirement. In other words - this is temporary.

Anatoly,
With all due respect, it is not what i asked!
I did'nt find any mentioning about this CRITICAL requirement anywhere on your "System Requirements" page and asked you to point me where i CAN find it mentioned. Further more, according your own Chief Technology Officer & Chief Architect it is NOT critical for your system at all! Thus, my questions remains.

Regards,
Andrew

[Alex (staff)]

Dear americo,
We have messed two different parameters here.
Value, that Anatoly have mentioned, is a size of the logical disk sector, not the size of the file system block.
And NTFS cluster size is totally different parameter, it is a characteristic of the file system.

Standard values for logical sector size are 512 bytes and 4kBytes. Windows 2008 R2 supports only 512b size.
At the same time physical sector size can be 4k. In this case logical sector size of 512b is emulated over 4k physical sectors.

More information on supporting different drive sector sizes in Windows can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009/en-us

And of course, you can format disk volume with any size of the file system cluster.

It is interesting, that Windows 2008 R2 sees 4k drives, and works with these drives. But when it comes to some advanced disk access routines, it fails.

Sorry for the mess!

[americo]

Dear americo,
We have messed two different parameters here.
Value, that Anatoly have mentioned, is a size of the logical disk sector, not the size of the file system block.
And NTFS cluster size is totally different parameter, it is a characteristic of the file system.

Standard values for logical sector size are 512 bytes and 4kBytes. Windows 2008 R2 supports only 512b size.
At the same time physical sector size can be 4k. In this case logical sector size of 512b is emulated over 4k physical sectors.

More information on supporting different drive sector sizes in Windows can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009/en-us

And of course, you can format disk volume with any size of the file system cluster.

It is interesting, that Windows 2008 R2 sees 4k drives, and works with these drives. But when it comes to some advanced disk access routines, it fails.

Sorry for the mess!

Dear Alex!

I am aware of the difference in physical and logical disk sector sizes and I don’t mix it with file system block sizes and NTFS cluster sizes as well. All I want is to see the formal requirements for YOUR system on YOUR web page so we can finalize our decision to buy your system. So far, I was unable to get information about ANY OTHER hidden criteria that affects your system and how words of your own CTO & CA correspond to what you are trying to tell me here.

Regards,
Andrew

[Anatoly (staff)]

We have updated the System Requirements. Please see the info that you`ve requested under HDD: SATA, SAS or SSD drive-based RAID array section:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements