Review of the iSCSI Solution from StarWind Software
Hi guys,
a few days ago, I received an eMail from StarWind Software who are asking me if I were interested in testing their product – the Enterprise Server. So they’ve send me a licence to play around with it and I took the time to do it.
By the way: It seems like they are on a war path at the moment, they also asked Sally, who is the fiance of Stefan to test it, too. Read there review on the linkes pages 
Overview about the systems I use for the test:
Server (Target):
- Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition 64bit SP2
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2.4GHz (2x)
- 8GB DDR2-800 RAM
- 6x 1TB WD Green HDDs, managed as RAID5 by an Areca 1220 PCIe x8 hardware RAID controller
Client (Initiator) 1:
- Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard
- Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GHz (2x)
- 4GB DDR3-1066 RAM
- 160GB SATA HDD
Client (Initiator) 2:
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650, 3GHz (4x)
- 8GB DDR2-800 RAM
- 2x 200GB Samsung HDDs in an “onboard” RAID0
Description:
iSCSI – that sounds like a lot of fun, right? Well, it is! iSCSI is a kind of a network protocol that includes the SCSI protocol and allows to use it inside a network. Huh – complicated stuff, I know.
Well, to explain it easily: You can create a “real” harddisk inside your computer by using your regular OS tool like the Harddisk-Utility in Mac OS X or the Device-Manager (diskmgmr.msc) in any Windows system. The client system itself needs to be ready to do this.
Mac OS X is itself NOT able to do the initator job, as far as I know, but there’s a free System Preferences Plugin with the name globalSAN iSCSI Initiator for the Mac and they give it away for free (free like free beer).
Windows 7 (and also Windows Vista previously) are able to use this server-based-service from scratch and install the iSCSI initiator with the system installation.
Installation:
My very first step (of course) was the installation of the Enterprise Server software on my Windows Server 2008. The installation was quiet easy and it turns out, that the software itself is also quiet easy to use.
The StarWind Enterprise Server console on the Windows Server
Creating an image file is just one of a lot various options
The next step was to create an image file as base for the test-HFS+ harddisk I wanted to create.
Snow Leopard connects to the iSCSI server:
That was “easy peasy” and a few minutes later, I had connected the globalSAN iSCSI initiator with the server. (Note: the globalSAN software was installed earlier).
The globalSAN iSCSI initiator for Mac is seeing the iSCSI device. Ready to rumble
The Disk Utility now also recognize the iSCSI device and allows me to do whatever I would do to a regular harddisk. In this case, I’ve removed my Test HFS+ partition and created a new one which I’ve called “Klein2″ for this test.
CMD + I shows this volume information (sorry, in German on this screenshot)
Windows 7 connects to the iSCSI server:
For my surprise it was a bit easier to use Windows 7 than to use Mac OS X – because I had just to put in the servers hostname “belldandy” and the targets where found on the fly.
The Windows 7 iSCSI initiator is able to find the targets on it’s own if you tell it hostname of the iSCSI server. No more annoying URL typing!
The diskmanager is ready to create partitions on the iSCSI device.
Explorer view of the formatted (NTFS) testvolume.
Speeds:
iSCSI performs very fast – in my tests on real computers (no VMs used for this test), I get around 100MByte/s by copying huge files (4.5GB ISO of Fedora) from the PC/Mac to the target. Max peak was around 200MByte/s from the RAID5 in the server to the RAID0 in the PC itself, but after a few seconds the speed comes down to the already mentioned peak of around about 100MByte/s.
This speed is VERY good and a bit faster than my Samba2 experiences or on the same level.
Usage:
The normal user would ask what is the benefit of using a SAN device instead of building in a normal HDD into the computer or using a NAS or use a Windows Home Server.
SAN is made for enterprise class networks like huge companys. I had explained this to a friend last Friday and I think it was a good example:
A company with 100 users uses a program that needs direct harddisk access. Instead of buying 100x 80GB HDDs (for 40$ each), they build a huge SAN server with some TByte of storage. No user would ever use the full 80GB of the storage, and so they need to buy less storage capacity overall. Additional benefits are the usage of a secure RAID5 or RAID6 (for example) storage. It’s A LOT easier to backup, because none of the 100 user PCs or ThinClients has to run over night for a backup.
I think those points are very good reasons for iSCSI usage. Additional, the management is way easier than using a shared SMB/NFS or AFP storage, because you don’t need to fight with rights.
If I would do video editing and need some very large devices (and I speak of 20,30,40TByte), I would go for iSCSI on a reliable server.
Also, Mac users would like to use iSCSI for Time Machine.
There are a lot features inside the Enterprise Server that I haven’t tested. Ok – I’ve used the RAM drive, but it just makes sense for temp. databases and scratch stuff in my mind. Maybe a 8GB scratch over the network is not bad for Photoshop? Well, sorry – but that would be mostly slower than your local harddisk.
Prices:
While there is a limited (2TB max.) version of StarWind Server for free, the regular server costs 600$ while the Enterprise server costs 2995$. A lot money, but if you want to use it in an Enterprise network, I think it’s really worth it. The absolute pro is, that you would use it in a heterogeneous network instead of adding a SUN based Solaris/OpenSolaris distribution to use iSCSI. You can easily backup the virtual drives, because – if you use file images – they are just that: simply files. Oh! Before I forget: You can also create Snapshot volumes. How cool is that?
Useful link: iSCSI on Wikipedia (EN)
