StarWind Software

Hello,

We are setting up starwinds for an HA hyperv cluster and we are running into some issues with performance( 48 x ssd ). We are looking for someone who is familiar with starwind obviously as well as iscsi in general. I do not know if this is against forum rules but if there is anyone who frequents the forums that can assist from nuts to bolts on setting this environment up then please get in contact with me and I can explain further.

Of course it's a viable option to ask non-StarWind people to share their knowledge Also we'd be happy to help. Are you running bare metal (Hyper-V separated from storage layer) or converged (same hardware for Hyper-V & storage)?

The setup is as follows below.


SAN 1

Server 2012 Standard
E5-2620
16GB RAM
LSI 9216-4I
24 x Intel 180gb SSD ( RAID 10 )
2 x 2 Port Intel 10 Gbps ( Intel X520-DA2 )

SAN 2

Server 2012 Standard
1 X E5-2620
16GB RAM
LSI 9216-4I
24 X Intel 180gb SSD ( RAID 10 )
2 X 2 Port Intel 10 Gbps ( Intel X520-DA2 )

Hypervisor 1 - 6

2 X E5649
64GB AM
Dell H700
2 X WD Black 250gb 2.5" ( RAID 1 )
1 X 2 Port Intel 10 Gbps ( Intel X520-DA2 )


2 X Juniper EX2500 for switching


Each storage array is linked with 2 x 10 Gbps for replication and 2 x 10 Gbps with one of each going to separate 10g switches for ISCSi traffic.

Each hypervisor has 2 x 10Gbps with one of each going to separate 10g storage switches.

Jumbo Frames has been tested off and on across the board with minimal 10 MB changes between the two, storm control is on and flow control is on and ha been tested off as well. I have two luns showing up on the hypervisor with two connections showing on each.

I am seeing 400MB at 4k directly on the storage arrays and 80MB over iscsi to the hypervisor.

I get 3500MB at 1MB directly on the storage array and 1100MB over iscsi to the hypervisor.


My sql analyzer querys are takins 4 times as long on the iscsi setup vs the old physical machines. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

There are many possible things. I'd suggest you to take a tiny re-design and configure a Scale-Out File Server using StarWind Virtual SAN as a block back-end between your Windows Server 2012 nodes. So you'll talk SMB3 from Hyper-V hosts to your SoFS cluster and not use iSCSI for that. See:

http://starwindsoftware.com/styles-v2/p ... Out_FS.pdf

In this scenario I am still using an HA device and iscsi for my csv per vm so that I can still achieve vm failover via hyperv but I would then use the file share system you are talking about and store the databases and so forth for each vm? Or am I totally missing what you are recommending?

The environment is 3 x sql database servers and 3 x iis coldfsuion front end servers. This system runs a client facing web app. I have a vm living on each of 6 hypervisors with an HA device for each attached as csv for the hyper v cluster.

STRG01
HA-1 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-2 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-3 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-4 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-5 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-6 (300gb) (512mb cache)

STRG02
HA-1-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-2-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-3-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-4-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-5-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-6-second (300gb) (512mb cache)

You use StarWind Virtual SAN to provide a block back-end for your Scale-Out File Servers config. You create an SMB share layered on top of CSV hosted by SOFS and host Hyper-V VMs, SQL Server workload and also IIS content on that SMB3 share (everything listed *IS* supported by SOFS).

ctyree4557 wrote:In this scenario I am still using an HA device and iscsi for my csv per vm so that I can still achieve vm failover via hyperv but I would then use the file share system you are talking about and store the databases and so forth for each vm? Or am I totally missing what you are recommending?

The environment is 3 x sql database servers and 3 x iis coldfsuion front end servers. This system runs a client facing web app. I have a vm living on each of 6 hypervisors with an HA device for each attached as csv for the hyper v cluster.

STRG01
HA-1 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-2 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-3 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-4 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-5 (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-6 (300gb) (512mb cache)

STRG02
HA-1-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-2-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-3-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-4-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-5-second (300gb) (512mb cache)
HA-6-second (300gb) (512mb cache)