HARDWARE-LESS VM STORAGE
StarWind Virtual SAN
VALUE PROPOSITION
StarWind Virtual SAN clusters Microsoft Windows and Hyper-V hosts without any external storage hardware like SAS
JBOD(s), Fiber Channel, iSCSI or SMB 3.0 physical appliances. It uses internally attached hard disks and flash only, basically
“mirroring” them between multiple hosts, employing 10 Gb or newer 40/56 Gb Ethernet to establish connection to create
a virtual shared storage pool. StarWind Virtual SAN resembles VMware Virtual SAN in functionality and accomplishes
the same task on Windows platform. It works freely with high-capacity SATA and superfast PCIe flash, features absolutely
minimalistic hardware footprint and starts with just two physical Windows or Hyper-V hosts (and scales out to infinity)
connected by Ethernet. No switches, external components, FC, iSCSI, etc. are required.
Lifted Hardware Restrictions
StarWind Virtual SAN permits the usage of existing hardware to create the virtual shared storage. Flash (PCIe and SATA
included) utilization is voluntary. Data is synchronized between nodes through commodity Ethernet.
Savings in OpEx and CapEx
Less hardware means lower initial price of the system and reduced expenses on maintenance, specialized staff or training.
StarWind Virtual SAN works on cost-effective commodity equipment. In addition, it protects expensive flash memory from
wearing out too fast with the help of Log-Structuring, Space Reduction and utilization of RAM as Level 1 cache to adsorb
writes.
Ultimate Data Integrity
StarWind Virtual SAN offers Fault-tolerance and High Availability with 99.99% uptime using 2-way replica and 99.9999%
with 3-way replica. Data Recovery is implemented with Asynchronous Replication, which is cost-effective and reliable.
Hot offer: Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs), Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Microsoft Certified
Professionals (MCPs) may use the 2-node fault-tolerant FREE version of StarWind Virtual SAN together with
the 1-node version. It features unlimited served capacity and runs on a minimalistic ( just 2 hosts) hardware
profile without any ties to hardware brand.
VM 1
Microsoft
Hyper-V
SATA
VM 2 ... VM N
. . .
VM N+1 ... VM N+M
Microsoft
Hyper-V
StarWind
Virtual SAN
NIC
Heartbeat
NIC
NIC
Sync
NIC
StarWind
Virtual SAN
SATA
Mirror
VM 1
VM Z
VM 1
VM Z
2-node StarWind Virtual SAN hyper-converged configuration with Microsoft Hyper-V
www.starwind.com
©2014, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.
HARDWARE-LESS VM STORAGE
DIFFERENTIATION
Compared to Clustered Storage Spaces and Scale-Out File Servers, which Microsoft views as the future of virtual
storage, StarWind Virtual SAN has the following characteristic differences:
Hardware-less approach
StarWind Virtual SAN requires just two physical hosts running Microsoft Windows or
1
2
Hyper-V. SAS JBOD(s) or other external hardware such as FC, iSCSI or SMB 3.0 physical
appliances aren’t required. StarWind can use High-Performance, inexpensive SATA and
uberfast PCIe flash memory for flash cache and primary storage, and works with 10 Gb and
newer 40/56 Gb Ethernet for backbone instead of slower SAS. It runs on hypervisor level and
employs iSCSI, SMB 3.0 and Scale-Out File Servers approaches to create the virtual shared
storage. In a hyper-converged deployment scenario, StarWind Virtual SAN uses iSCSI to
establish handshake, and data is then routed over Loopback Fast Path driver (basically DMA).
This is similar to the way SMB Direct starts initial protocol negotiation with TCP connection
and cuts it as soon as RDMA network is created. If StarWind runs in a compute and storage
separated scenario, it acts as a fast block backbone for Scale-Out File Servers and uses SOFS
(and thus – SMB 3.0) to fit storage to SQL Server and Hyper-V.
Flash memory usage
StarWind Virtual SAN employs RAM for write-back cache to adsorb writes and reduce the
actual amount of data written on flash. It also uses PCIe and SATA flash memory, which aren’t
supported by Clustered Storage Spaces. StarWind Virtual SAN also uses Log-Structured
File System (LSFS) and In-Line Deduplication to save flash memory from wearing out too fast
under VM workload stress. LSFS eliminates the result of the VM workload I/O, which greatly
reduces system performance with random I/O. Log-structuring turns lots of small random
writes into one big write, initiating fewer (by order of magnitude!) erase cycles and reducing
flash burnout. Offline Deduplication only works well with cold data and has a great impact on
performance employing more I/O transactions while rewriting compressed data and deleting
the original. In-Line Deduplication gets hot data covered as well as leaves more IOPS to VMs,
keeping the performance high.
The combination of these differences makes StarWind Virtual SAN an outstanding primary VM storage solution for SMBs
or Enterprise ROBO typically deploying Hyper-V. Having one less server already sounds “good enough” for SMBs, while for
Enterprise ROBO it’s multiplied by the number of offices, meaning thousands of servers discarded from the bill, resulting in
enormous reduction of CapEx. OpEx is lowered as well, because there’s less hardware to maintain and no specialized staff
training is required to utilize StarWind Virtual SAN.
www.starwind.com
©2014, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.