StarWind Software

Hello,

I am very impressed with starwind native san for hyper-v and am considering implementing it soon (as soon as I receive the hardware). I came across a product called ILIO persistent vdi and ILIO diskless vdi by atlantis computing. From what I understand it is software that transforms host system memory into tier 1 storage to accelerate vm i/o tremendously and I was wondering how close that is to starwind write back caching? this way I could use RAM for a vdi deployment and SATA hds for persistent storage instead of SSDs.

I would very much appreciate any input on whether or not the ILIO solution complements starwind or if starwind might consider (or is) implementing system RAM as highly available shared storage in a 2 or 3 node configuration...like a glorified RAMDISK that does not just disappear when a host is powered down inadvertently (by having some kind of synchronous HA and SATA hd synchronous backup maybe?).

In-memory computing seems to be the way forward in database technology such as SAP's HANA database and microsoft's upcoming SQL 2014 in-memory capabilities.

Any insight is highly appreciated

Making long story short the idea behind the whole thing is pretty much the same: "el cheapo" backend storage (SATA) + uber-fast front storage (RAM).
Atlantis (it's not the first or second time we get a possible COI with these guys, they do a great job and I respect their technology a lot) keep everything in
RAM and just load-store the content on virtual device destroy-create sequence. We fire back transactions from RAM to SATA in a lazy writer thread. + they
are much more VDI centric with golden images and so on. We'll see how our in-line dedupe, LSFS and flash caching will play with VDI after V8 release. We're
considering the idea to basically provide a RAM disk (deduped of course) with an ability to load-store the content for VDI scenarios. I've contacted you in private
to discuss the whole thing so please check your PM and e-mail Thanks!

anton (staff) wrote:Making long story short the idea behind the whole thing is pretty much the same: "el cheapo" backend storage (SATA) + uber-fast front storage (RAM).
Atlantis (it's not the first or second time we get a possible COI with these guys, they do a great job and I respect their technology a lot) keep everything in
RAM and just load-store the content on virtual device destroy-create sequence. We fire back transactions from RAM to SATA in a lazy writer thread. + they
are much more VDI centric with golden images and so on. We'll see how our in-line dedupe, LSFS and flash caching will play with VDI after V8 release. We're
considering the idea to basically provide a RAM disk (deduped of course) with an ability to load-store the content for VDI scenarios. I've contacted you in private
to discuss the whole thing so please check your PM and e-mail Thanks!

I would like to know more about the curent capabilities Starwind offers in this area.

I did some research in Atlantis, and I would really like to know if Starwind V8 can do something like they do?

I am really interested in using your software for IN-RAM VDI.

Please share your knowledge about this subject!

Thanks!

-BB

Bad news: In the current production version of V8 you cannot do in-memory storage.

Good news: After we'll stabilize some features and roll out update for V8 (next few weeks) we'll seriously push in-memory storage scenario (data pinpointed to deduplicated cache, cache pre-heating etc) so very soon you'll be able to build VDI setups with Hyper-V nearly free of charge.

anton (staff) wrote:Bad news: In the current production version of V8 you cannot do in-memory storage.

Good news: After we'll stabilize some features and roll out update for V8 (next few weeks) we'll seriously push in-memory storage scenario (data pinpointed to deduplicated cache, cache pre-heating etc) so very soon you'll be able to build VDI setups with Hyper-V nearly free of charge.

Woha great! Could you tell me some more about the features/options?

Did you model your solution after the atlantis solution?

I really hope I can get VM'S completely in-ram, with diferenting disks on my normal starwind storage. That would be uber-fast, AND economical!

Please keep me updated, I will buy your product the second you are adding support for in-ram VDI

Pretty much the same StarWind Virtual SAN V8 but with an ability to use RAM as a back-end storage

No it's not developed with Atlantis in mind it's 100% own design with all the components developed in-house.

You will pretty soon

bacterialbag wrote:

anton (staff) wrote:Bad news: In the current production version of V8 you cannot do in-memory storage.

Good news: After we'll stabilize some features and roll out update for V8 (next few weeks) we'll seriously push in-memory storage scenario (data pinpointed to deduplicated cache, cache pre-heating etc) so very soon you'll be able to build VDI setups with Hyper-V nearly free of charge.

Woha great! Could you tell me some more about the features/options?

Did you model your solution after the atlantis solution?

I really hope I can get VM'S completely in-ram, with diferenting disks on my normal starwind storage. That would be uber-fast, AND economical!

Please keep me updated, I will buy your product the second you are adding support for in-ram VDI

Will I be able to make Ram HA?

And serve x amount of pooled VM's without having to have the same amount of gold images taking up ram? so multiple vm's with one in-ram gold image, like atltis?

can i make the whole thing HA/auto restart?

if that would be possible i definately will be buying soon!!!

anton (staff) wrote:Pretty much the same StarWind Virtual SAN V8 but with an ability to use RAM as a back-end storage

No it's not developed with Atlantis in mind it's 100% own design with all the components developed in-house.

You will pretty soon

bacterialbag wrote:

anton (staff) wrote:Bad news: In the current production version of V8 you cannot do in-memory storage.

Good news: After we'll stabilize some features and roll out update for V8 (next few weeks) we'll seriously push in-memory storage scenario (data pinpointed to deduplicated cache, cache pre-heating etc) so very soon you'll be able to build VDI setups with Hyper-V nearly free of charge.

Woha great! Could you tell me some more about the features/options?

Did you model your solution after the atlantis solution?

I really hope I can get VM'S completely in-ram, with diferenting disks on my normal starwind storage. That would be uber-fast, AND economical!

Please keep me updated, I will buy your product the second you are adding support for in-ram VDI

Yes, the same bunch of features as V8 has but with an ability to use RAM as a back-end storage.

No golden images used. With an in-line dedupe and 4KB dedupe block they are not needed.

Yes, you can auto-restart and whatever.

Are you targeting Hyper-V or VMware setup?

bacterialbag wrote:Will I be able to make Ram HA?

And serve x amount of pooled VM's without having to have the same amount of gold images taking up ram? so multiple vm's with one in-ram gold image, like atltis?

can i make the whole thing HA/auto restart?

if that would be possible i definately will be buying soon!!!

I am targeting Hyper-V

I want to be able to run a lot of VM's with in-ram performance, without needing to use loads of ram for the whole process.

Do you happen to know how Atlantis does this? I thought they just used a few deduped in-ram golden images that can serve up a big amount of VM's ?

Or is there a golden image for each VM, and is the dedupe making to ram-load acceptable?

Would you say your inline dedupe is as high quality as theirs? 8x more storage ?

Also, Can I use starwind dedupe on storage that is outside my HA licensed storage pool? like JBOD?

Last but not least: A 3 Node cluster 1TB license means I can take 1tb of storage from all 3 servers, and serve this as 1tb of HA storage right? How will this work with the ram? Will it be like this;

Use 200gb as ram as storage and only 800gb of other local storage make up 1 TB in total for the license. Or would it be able to use 1tb of local storage, and use ram as an "extra" ?

Could you give me some more info about features/tips regarding high performance (in-ram) VDI using SW?

anton (staff) wrote:Yes, the same bunch of features as V8 has but with an ability to use RAM as a back-end storage.

No golden images used. With an in-line dedupe and 4KB dedupe block they are not needed.

Yes, you can auto-restart and whatever.

Are you targeting Hyper-V or VMware setup?

bacterialbag wrote:Will I be able to make Ram HA?

And serve x amount of pooled VM's without having to have the same amount of gold images taking up ram? so multiple vm's with one in-ram gold image, like atltis?

can i make the whole thing HA/auto restart?

if that would be possible i definately will be buying soon!!!

You'll still need quite a lot of RAM to move on. So we may ask for less then Atlantis does (64GB per node?) but it's not going to be 4 or 8.

I'm not very comfortable discussing other companies and their products on my company discussion forum (long list of reasons starting with legal ones).

Atlantis has no own deduplication rather they license [s]Permabit one. And yes StarWind engine is both faster and has better dedupe ratio (and we did not even add compression on top of dedupe yet).

We don't use concept of a "golden images".

Yes you can run LSFS and pre-heated RAM / flash caches with any types of storage: non-HA and 2-way and 3-way replication.

We license *destination* HA capacity only. Non-HA is always unlimited.

No it's not going to be licensed like you think. Again public forum is not the best place to talk about this as you make engineers do sales rep job (and do it quite poorly I need to say). Please contact sales rep who's working with you and he'll be happy to help.

What kind of features/tips you want? It's ±100-150K IOPS per virtual LUN and all the features working with V8 would work with In-Memory scenario (I think I've already told this).

bacterialbag wrote:I am targeting Hyper-V

I want to be able to run a lot of VM's with in-ram performance, without needing to use loads of ram for the whole process.

Do you happen to know how Atlantis does this? I thought they just used a few deduped in-ram golden images that can serve up a big amount of VM's ?

Or is there a golden image for each VM, and is the dedupe making to ram-load acceptable?

Would you say your inline dedupe is as high quality as theirs? 8x more storage ?

Also, Can I use starwind dedupe on storage that is outside my HA licensed storage pool? like JBOD?

Last but not least: A 3 Node cluster 1TB license means I can take 1tb of storage from all 3 servers, and serve this as 1tb of HA storage right? How will this work with the ram? Will it be like this;

Use 200gb as ram as storage and only 800gb of other local storage make up 1 TB in total for the license. Or would it be able to use 1tb of local storage, and use ram as an "extra" ?

Could you give me some more info about features/tips regarding high performance (in-ram) VDI using SW?

anton (staff) wrote:Yes, the same bunch of features as V8 has but with an ability to use RAM as a back-end storage.

No golden images used. With an in-line dedupe and 4KB dedupe block they are not needed.

Yes, you can auto-restart and whatever.

Are you targeting Hyper-V or VMware setup?

bacterialbag wrote:Will I be able to make Ram HA?

And serve x amount of pooled VM's without having to have the same amount of gold images taking up ram? so multiple vm's with one in-ram gold image, like atltis?

can i make the whole thing HA/auto restart?

if that would be possible i definately will be buying soon!!!

So how is it going to be licensed? (this is a simple question even an engineer should know? )

Will i have to buy 3x 1TB license so i have all my servers licensed for 1tb, and then i can only offer 1tb of total HA storage?

Please help me on this topic...

By the way, I got about 400gb ram per node... will 100gb be enough for 100vm's (storage wise, the other 300 i'll use for the vm's actual ram, and management shizzle etc. )

We charge for licensed HA capacity. We don't care about number of replicas (2 or 3) and what you use as a back-end storage (RAM or flash or spindle). With the initial release In-Memory Storage is *NOT* going to be a Premium offering so basic price would include it.

With a typical deduplication ratio of 1:10 your 100GB would be equivalent of a 1TB of storage. So if your raw VMs do fit into 1TB you'll be fine.

bacterialbag wrote:So how is it going to be licensed? (this is a simple question even an engineer should know? )

Will i have to buy 3x 1TB license so i have all my servers licensed for 1tb, and then i can only offer 1tb of total HA storage?

Please help me on this topic...

By the way, I got about 400gb ram per node... will 100gb be enough for 100vm's (storage wise, the other 300 i'll use for the vm's actual ram, and management shizzle etc. )

The 1tb license HA is BEFORE dedupe right?

anton (staff) wrote:We charge for licensed HA capacity. We don't care about number of replicas (2 or 3) and what you use as a back-end storage (RAM or flash or spindle). With the initial release In-Memory Storage is *NOT* going to be a Premium offering so basic price would include it.

With a typical deduplication ratio of 1:10 your 100GB would be equivalent of a 1TB of storage. So if your raw VMs do fit into 1TB you'll be fine.

bacterialbag wrote:So how is it going to be licensed? (this is a simple question even an engineer should know? )

Will i have to buy 3x 1TB license so i have all my servers licensed for 1tb, and then i can only offer 1tb of total HA storage?

Please help me on this topic...

By the way, I got about 400gb ram per node... will 100gb be enough for 100vm's (storage wise, the other 300 i'll use for the vm's actual ram, and management shizzle etc. )

We license served capacity. So dedupe would decrease space on the underlying disk and you'll still pay for 1TB.

bacterialbag wrote:The 1tb license HA is BEFORE dedupe right?

anton (staff) wrote:We license served capacity. So dedupe would decrease space on the underlying disk and you'll still pay for 1TB.

bacterialbag wrote:The 1tb license HA is BEFORE dedupe right?

I do not quite understand you here,

When i have a three way cluster, each with 800gb ssd, and 200gb ram, would I pay for 1TB ha 3way license, or would I pay for 3tb? Or even for 30TB because after dedupe I maybe increase my storage by 10 times?

As I understand right now; 1tb 3 way license would give me 800gb SSD 200gb ram drive for 3 servers, so 1 TB HA served. If dedupe would increase my efficiency 5 times, I wont have to buy extra 4TB for that, Am I right?

Please clarify this for me.