StarWind Software

Hi,

I have a StarWind v8 build 8730 system here. The system has 2 * 250Gb SSD's in I'd like to pool with Windows Storage Pools and create a 'Simple' virtual disk atop of those (Simple = RAID0) - and then create one large StarWind virtual disk atop of that - but it fails.

Install WS2012 R2 - install StarWind. Create a Windows Storage pool out of the two 250Gb SSD's - and create a Virtual Disk atop of that in 'Simple' (RAID0) mode - and finally (phew) create a Windows Volume on that virtual disk, for the entire ~460Gb exposed. This results in D:\ - which is then formatted as NTFS.

Fine so far - but in StarWind if I create a device on D:\ - I get the following error log in the server logs:

1/23 17:34:24.736 50c IMG: SscPort_Create: Opening device 'imagefile1', image file 'My Computer\D\SSD-Storage\SSD-Storage.img', buffering=0, async=1, readonly=0.
1/23 17:34:24.736 50c IMG: SscPort_Create: Device queue flags (0) are complemented with plugin queue flags (1).
1/23 17:34:24.736 50c Ssc: *** SscScsi_GetVolumeProperties: \\.\D:: StorageDeviceSeekPenaltyProperty failed (error 1).
1/23 17:34:24.736 50c IMG: *** ImageFile_BuildInquiry: D:: Incompatible logical volume sector size (4096 > 512)!

The file created isn't read only (i.e. Windows can quite happily copy it, rename it etc.) - I'm guessing the line "4096 >512!" is the culprit. I'd guess Windows Storage Pool has created a virtual disk with a logical sector size of 4k which StarWind doesn't like?

Looks like I can create it if I opt for 4096 byte sector size in StarWind - but the rub is our client (Xen) can't use 4k block size

Obviously de-pooling the disks - and creating them as individual 250Gb volumes 'works' - but I need to create one volume spanning both disks...

Any magic fixes I can use?

-Kp

I've found a work-around for this...

If you use Computer Manager to create a 'Spanned Disk' out of the 2 SSD's - you'll end up with 2 'Dynamic Disks' spanned into 1 NTFS volume - which can then be used by StarWind.

The only downside to this is of course you don't get any of the 'niceties' of Windows Storage Pools - it's just literally two spanned disks.

So ideally - being able to create 512 byte sector Virtual StarWind disks atop of Windows 'Virtual Disks' (from Storage Pools) would be good

-Kp

We can do 4KB blocks on top of a 512e disks but we cannot do 512e on top of a 4KB (and this is what Storage Spaces expose). So everything seems to work as expected.

anton (staff) wrote:We can do 4KB blocks on top of a 512e disks but we cannot do 512e on top of a 4KB (and this is what Storage Spaces expose). So everything seems to work as expected.

With my "lowly user cap" on - as a user, why can't you do 512byte on a 4k block? - My plaform (Xen) only supports 512byte - so it may be working as expected - but it doesn't work for me, as a lowly user

I've also noticed in a previous build of starwind, trying to bridge a 4k block device (e.g. large hard drive) would only expose it again, as 4k block [which again, our platform doesn't support].

-Karl

We can of course. In this case we'll have to do read-modify-write so it will affect performance making things SLOW. That's why if you need 512e support - use hardware RAID controller and not software RAID
being a) slow itself compared to hardware RAID and b) triggering us to implement slow access method making things even worse. At the end of the day it will be we who'll get complains from you about performance sucking whatever it can suck

kpielorz wrote:

anton (staff) wrote:We can do 4KB blocks on top of a 512e disks but we cannot do 512e on top of a 4KB (and this is what Storage Spaces expose). So everything seems to work as expected.

With my "lowly user cap" on - as a user, why can't you do 512byte on a 4k block? - My plaform (Xen) only supports 512byte - so it may be working as expected - but it doesn't work for me, as a lowly user

I've also noticed in a previous build of starwind, trying to bridge a 4k block device (e.g. large hard drive) would only expose it again, as 4k block [which again, our platform doesn't support].

-Karl

Don't bridge anything (that's why we've banned this from production and even mgmt console). Yes, there's 1:1 mapping.

kpielorz wrote:

anton (staff) wrote:We can do 4KB blocks on top of a 512e disks but we cannot do 512e on top of a 4KB (and this is what Storage Spaces expose). So everything seems to work as expected.

With my "lowly user cap" on - as a user, why can't you do 512byte on a 4k block? - My plaform (Xen) only supports 512byte - so it may be working as expected - but it doesn't work for me, as a lowly user

I've also noticed in a previous build of starwind, trying to bridge a 4k block device (e.g. large hard drive) would only expose it again, as 4k block [which again, our platform doesn't support].

-Karl