Auto Tiering

mphilli7823 · Sat May 03, 2014 4:40 pm

So is auto tiering making it into V8?

Sat May 03, 2014 9:38 pm

Minor post-update (together with persistent flash cache). V8 we plan to publish Gold on May 12th will have only write-back flash cache.

Good news: integration with MSFT Storage Spaces is done so you can layer StarWind FLAT images on top of a tiered Storage Spaces (as a workaround).

We're done with actual implementation of our tiering just a bit late with intensive tests...

mphilli7823 wrote:So is auto tiering making it into V8?

oscaru · Thu Mar 09, 2017 1:30 am

Hello,

Is this feature planned on implementing?

I've been evaluating your Virtual SAN against Datacore, and that's the only feature deal breaker.

I also remember asking your team about using Storage Spaces Auto Tiering but they told me that hardware raid was preferred.

Is Storage Spaces with ReFS supported?

Thu Mar 09, 2017 1:59 pm

Just like was said integration with MSFT Storage Spaces is already implemented, so you can configure tiering there any put our flat image on top

Unfortunately native StarWind tearing is being tested right now, so we are still waiting on that to be released.

oscaru · Fri Mar 10, 2017 1:06 am

Hello Oles, thanks for your reply,

A few questions:

Oles (staff) wrote:Just like was said integration with MSFT Storage Spaces is already implemented, so you can configure
tiering there any put our flat image on top

Ok, I'll try this then on our PoC Servers. I think it is very good news.
Why flat image? why not an LSFS target? If we use flat image, I think we would lost all the "Io-Blender killer" magic. Wouldn't we?
On Server 2016 with new Storage Spaces, and ReFS 3.0, is still NTFS the preferred filesystem? 64KB blocks?

Unfortunately native StarWind tearing is being tested right now, so we are still waiting on that to be released.

So you can officially confirm it's a new feature on your roadmap. Any ETA on this?

Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:26 am

Yes, we do have this feature in our roadmap, although there is no ETA for it yet. As soon as I will have any additional information about tearing feature, I will make sure to update the thread.

oscaru · Sat Mar 11, 2017 7:48 am

Just like was said integration with MSFT Storage Spaces is already implemented, so you can configure
tiering there any put our flat image on top

Ok, I'll try this then on our PoC Servers. I think it is very good news.
Why flat image? why not an LSFS target? If we use flat image, I think we would lost all the "Io-Blender killer" magic. Wouldn't we?
On Server 2016 with new Storage Spaces, and ReFS 3.0, is still NTFS the preferred filesystem? 64KB blocks?

Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:05 pm

Technically we don't care about file system at all. ReFS is log-structured by it's nature (with a hash sums enabled) so NTFS is preferred. We don't do any file system level I/O so file system is for file locking and allocation only.

oscaru wrote:
Just like was said integration with MSFT Storage Spaces is already implemented, so you can configure
tiering there any put our flat image on top
Ok, I'll try this then on our PoC Servers. I think it is very good news.
Why flat image? why not an LSFS target? If we use flat image, I think we would lost all the "Io-Blender killer" magic. Wouldn't we?
On Server 2016 with new Storage Spaces, and ReFS 3.0, is still NTFS the preferred filesystem? 64KB blocks?

oscaru · Mon Mar 13, 2017 9:55 pm

Hello Anton and Oles,

Thanks for your replies

I want to try Virtual San on top of a Server 2016 Tiered Storage Space (will this config be Starwind supported?)

Now it's clear that NTFS is preferred over ReFS

Current hardware is:
2 Proliant DL380p Gen8 Servers
2 Fusion-io ioDrive Duo 1.28 TB (one on each server)
6 Intel S3710 400GB SSD Drives in RAID 5
Hypervisor is ESXi 6.5

For the Virtual Disk should I use Flat or LSFS?

Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:00 am

Hello!
LSFS was designed for slow spindle-based storage, thus in your case, it makes sense using Image devices.
Please find more details about LSFS in Anton's blog here:
https://slog.starwindsoftware.com/a-sho ... call-lsfs/

oscaru · Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:59 am

Thanks for the reply

Great read, and that was the response I was looking.

I'll use flat image then over this tiered storage space.

Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:58 pm

We are always happy to help you