Software Based Storage: Thoughts and local storage tests

by

It has occurred to me that all these comparisons are not exactly equal…while the VM configurations, test procedures, and testing hardware are all identical – there are certainly ways to improve performance…some methods could be applied to all comparisons (adding a storage controller card with battery-backed write cache, and several 15K SAS spindles), and some are specific to the software presenting the storage (using an SSD to house the ZIL and\or l2ARC – only applies … Read more…

Windows 7 Streaming: Media on an External Drive

by

In an effort to preserve some functionality of not having a dedicated Media Center PC (see this post for more), I have a Windows 7 VM with media streaming enabled. What does that mean? It means that any DLNA enabled device can see my media library and stream its contents. I recently needed to add more storage space to said VM, and in doing so moved all media to the new E:\ drive. Then the problems … Read more…

FreeNAS Performance Part 1: NFS Storage

by

EDIT 1/8/2013: This post should be titled FreeNAS: The performance you will get when you don’t allocate enough RAM, or enough disk resources. These results are not a true representation of what FreeNAS can do. Here’s a better example: FreeNAS Performance Part 2 Following the Microsoft iSCSI VS. StarWind iSCSI, I would like to also compare another option that offers FreeBSD based network storage – FreeNAS. It supports AFP, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and has a … Read more…

Software iSCSI Targets: Part 2B – StarWind, Multiple VMs

by

Part 2B: 3 VM IOMeter load on a StarWind iSCSI datastore. Same procedure as previous testing – Complete install time: 32 minutes, 39 seconds – 3.5 minutes faster than the Microsoft iSCSI target software. Here’s the setup: Here’s the CPU\RAM of the iSCSI server during OS install: Just as previously, RAM is allocated to cache and CPU is heavily utilized. Here is the network utilization during OS install: The utilization graph looks strikingly similar to … Read more…

Software iSCSI Targets – Part 2a: MS iSCSI – Multiple VMs

by

In Part 2 of this series, we will look at the performance of the Software iSCSI targets under a heavier load – more specifically, 3 server VMs. While this may not seem like very much load, keep in mind that the backend storage is still just a single 7200RPM spindle, and all networking is over a single 1GbE link. All of the hardware from test 1 is the same, but here are the specs for … Read more…

StarWind iSCSI vs. Microsoft iSCSI – Part 1

by

*NEW* StarWind V8 [BETA] is here!! and it looks VERY promising!! For some small to medium sized businesses and even some home power users, shared storage is a must-have. Unfortunately, standard high performance SANs carry with them a hefty price tag and a massive administrative overhead – so an EMC or NetApp filer is often out of the question. What is the answer? Turn an everyday server into an iSCSI storage server using iSCSI software target … Read more…

Windows Server 8: Offline servicing

by

From the little that I’ve looked into Windows Server 8, my favorite new built-in feature is offline servicing. This was possible in the past with Windows Images (WIM files) using the dism.exe tool, but this new feature looks much more promising – the VHD is becoming a very powerful format.     This will make servicing VMs even easier.  

BE.net 2.5

by

After a lengthy period of downtime the blog is back up, and is now running on BlogEngine.net 2.5!! Now that we’ve moved in to our new place, there should not be any other major interuptions.  

SnapMirror from FAS to StoreVault

by

First, a few warnings:   This is NOT supported by NetApp. At all. In any way shape or form. Using anything other than the StoreVault Manager GUI can cause data loss.   You have been warned – do this at your own risk!   First some background – setting aside the fact that FAS to StoreVault is not supported at all – lets go Back to Basics: SnapMirror –   Volume SnapMirror operates at the physical block level. … Read more…

The Case of the Print Spooler That Stops Running

by

Recently, I had cleaned up a virus from a user’s laptop – it was a fairly straightforward cleanup, and I thought I was done. Not quite. The user had said that her husband had been trying to print and was getting a print spooler error…had the spooler randomly stopped? I sent the command to restart the spooler. This did not work as it seemed the spooler continually stopped running. I then sent the path for … Read more…