2) ESX initiator is branched out old Cisco one (also Linux-based) so I expect there's some mis-config between Windows and Linux initiator settings. Again, let us compare Vs. OpenFiler.
3) So no heavy swap. This is good. Can cross this out
4) I understand. So doing Write-Back Cache helps but not completely. Let's run cross-tests here and complete cache line size changes.
Thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate it!
CyberNBD wrote:1) It's an atto setting. You can check the "direct IO" box or not within atto before testing.
2) The other target software I tested was OpenFiler. Works very well and performs well out of the box but it but it doesn't support Windows 2008 R2 Clustering (something to do with persistent reservations etc) so that made me look for other solutions. I have no specific preference for Linux or Windows OS SAN software BUT is has to perform well for both Win and ESX(i) initiators. Some windows boxes are going to connect directly through MS initiator because of the Clustering. All other hosts (mixed Win and Linux) will use ESXi disks and thus ESXi iSCSI initiator.
Allright. Most of the time I have a taskmanager window open during testing but i haven't seen anything abnormal on the Starwind box. CPU usage around 0-3%, sometimes peaks to 10%. No swapping memory neither. Fills up nicely when testing using cache mode. Also took a look at the resource monitor (disk queue length etc) but also nothing abnormal there.
I'm testing using the 2048MB WB cache right now. Some improvement using atto. Clean W2k8 install is going faster compared to no cache but it still took about 40 minutes to complete where I'm expecting 15 to max 20 mins based on previous tests.
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