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General
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- Fully Supported
- Limitation
- Not Supported
- Information Only
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Pros
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- + Extensive platform support
- + Extensive data protection capabilities
- + Flexible deployment options
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- + Strong Cisco integration
- + Fast streamlined deployment
- + Strong container support
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- + Flexible architecture
- + Extensive platform support
- + Several Microsoft integration points
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Cons
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- - No native data integrity verification
- - Dedup/compr not performance optimized
- - Disk/node failure protection not capacity optimized
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- - Single server hardware support
- - No bare-metal support
- - Limited native data protection capabilities
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- - Minimal data protection capabilities
- - No Quality-of-service mechanisms
- - No native encryption capabilities
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Content |
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WhatMatrix
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WhatMatrix
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WhatMatrix
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Assessment |
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Name: SANsymphony
Type: Software-only (SDS)
Development Start: 1998
First Product Release: 1999
NEW
DataCore was founded in 1998 and began to ship its first software-defined storage (SDS) platform, SANsymphony (SSY), in 1999. DataCore launched a separate entry-level storage virtualization solution, SANmelody (v1.4), in 2004. This platform was also the foundation for DataCores HCI solution. In 2014 DataCore formally announced Hyperconverged Virtual SAN as a separate product. In May 2018 integral changes to the software licensing model enabled consolidation because the core software is the same and since then cumulatively called DataCore SANsymphony.
One year later, in 2019, DataCore expanded its software-defined storage portfolio with a solution especially for the need of file virtualization. The additional SDS offering is called DataCore vFilO and operates as scale-out global file system across distributed sites spanning on-premises and cloud-based NFS and SMB shares.
Recently, at the beginning of 2021, DataCore acquired Caringo and integrated its know how and software-defined object storage offerings into the DataCore portfolio. The newest member of the DataCore SDS portfolio is called DataCore Swarm and together with its complementary offering SwarmFS and DataCore FileFly it enables customers to build on-premises object storage solutions that radically simplify the ability to manage, store, and protect data while allowing multi-protocol (S3/HTTP, API, NFS/SMB) access to any application, device, or end-user.
DataCore Software specializes in the high-tech fields of software solutions for block, file, and object storage. DataCore has by far the longest track-record when it comes to software-defined storage, when comparing to the other SDS/HCI vendors on the WhatMatrix.
In April 2021 the company had an install base of more than 10,000 customers worldwide and there were about 250 employees working for DataCore.
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Name: HyperFlex (HX)
Type: Hardware+Software (HCI)
Development Start: 2015
First Product Release: apr 2016
NEW
Springpath Inc., founded in 2012, released its first Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution, Springpath Data Platform (SDP), in february 2015. Early 2016 Springpath Inc. exclusively partnered with Cisco to re-launch its SDS platform as part of a hyper-converged (HCI) offering, Cisco HyperFlex (HX), which surfaced in April 2016. In September 2016 Cisco officialy completed the acquisition of Springpath, solidyfing the core of its HCI technology.
In October 2019 Cisco HyperFlex (HX) had a customer install base of more than 4,000 customers worldwide. The number of employees working in the HyperFlex division is unknown at this time.
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Name: StarWind Virtual SAN
Type: SDS
Development Start: 2003
First Product Release: 2011
StarWind Software is a privately held company which started in 2008 as a spin-off from Rocket Division Software, Ltd. (founded in 2003). It initially provided free Software Defined Storage (SDS) offerings to early adopters in 2009. Sometime in 2011 the company released its product Native SAN (later rebranded to Virtual SAN). In 2015 StarWind executed a successful 'pivot shift' from software-only company to become a hardware vendor and brought Hyper-Convergence from the Enterprise level to SMB and ROBO. Apart of HCA solutions, StarWind keeps focus on developing and improving its Virtual SAN solution. In 2018, StarWind released Virtual SAN for vSphere - an SDS solution specifically aimed at VMware vSphere environments.
In March 2020 the company had a StarWind Virtual SAN install base of more than 4,500 customers worldwide. In June 2019 there were more than 250 employees working for StarWind.
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GA Release Dates:
SSY 10.0 PSP12: jan 2021
SSY 10.0 PSP11: aug 2020
SSY 10.0 PSP10: dec 2019
SSY 10.0 PSP9: jul 2019
SSY 10.0 PSP8: sep 2018
SSY 10.0 PSP7: dec 2017
SSY 10.0 PSP6 U5: aug 2017
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SSY 10.0: jun 2014
SSY 9.0: jul 2012
SSY 8.1: aug 2011
SSY 8.0: dec 2010
SSY 7.0: apr 2009
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SSY 3.0: 1999
NEW
10th Generation software. DataCore currently has the most experience when it comes to SDS/HCI technology, when comparing SANsymphony to other SDS/HCI platforms.
SANsymphony (SSY) version 3 was the first public release that hit the market back in 1999. The product has evolved ever since and the current major release is version 10. The list includes only the milestone releases.
PSP = Product Support Package
U = Update
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GA Release Dates:
HX 4.0: apr 2019
HX 3.5.2a: jan 2019
HX 3.5.1a: nov 2018
HX 3.5: oct 2018
HX 3.0: apr 2018
HX 2.6.1b: dec 2017
HX 2.6.1a: oct 2017
HX 2.5: jul 2017
HX 2.1: may 2017
HX 2.0: mar 2017
HX 1.8: sep 2016
HX 1.7.3: aug 2016
1.7.1-14835: jun 2016
HX 1.7.1: apr 2016
NEW
4th Generation software on 4th and 5th generation Cisco UCS server hardware.
Cisco HyperFlex is fueled by Springpath software, which is now co-developed with Cisco and renamed to HX Data Platform. Cisco HyperFlex maturity has been gradually increasing ever since the first iteration by expanding its range of features with a set of foundational and advanced functionality.
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StarWind VSAN for vSphere Release Dates:
VSAN build 13170: oct 2019
VSAN build 12859: feb 2019
VSAN build 12658: dec 2018
VSAN build 12533: sep 2018
StarWind VSAN for Hyper-V Release Dates:
VSAN build 13279: oct 2019
VSAN build 13182: aug 2019
VSAN build 12767: feb 2019
VSAN build 12658: nov 2018
VSAN build 12585 oct 2018
VSAN build 12393: aug 2018
VSAN build 12166: may 2018
VSAN build 12146: apr 2018
VSAN build 11818: dec 2017
VSAN build 11456: aug 2017
VSAN build 11404: jul 2017
VSAN build 11156: may 2017
VSAN build 11071 may 2017
VSAN build 10927 apr 2017
VSAN build 10914 apr 2017
VSAN build 10833: apr 2017
VSAN build 10811 mar 2017
VSAN build 10799: mar 2017
VSAN build 10695: feb 2017
VSAN build 10547: jan 2017
VSAN build 9996: aug 2016
VSAN build 9980 aug 2016
VSAN build 9781: jun 2016
VSAN build 9611 jun 2016
VSAN build 9052: may 2016
VSAN build 8730: nov 2015
VSAN build 8716 nov 2015
VSAN build 8198 jun 2015
VSAN build 7929 apr 2015
VSAN build 7774 feb 2015
VSAN build 7509 de 2014
VSAN build 7471 dec 2014
VSAN build 7354 nov 2014
VSAN build 7145
VSAN build 6884
Version 8 Release 10 StarWind software.
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Pricing |
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Hardware Pricing Model
Details
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N/A
SANsymphony is sold by DataCore as a software-only solution. Server hardware must be acquired separately.
The entry point for all hardware and software compatibility statements is: https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/tech/compatibility/
On this page links can be found to: Storage Devices, Servers, SANs, Operating Systems (Hosts), Networks, Hypervisors, Desktops.
Minimum server hardware requirements can be found at: https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/tech/prerequisites/
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Per Node
Bundle (ROBO)
Next to acquiring individual nodes Cisco also offers a bundle that is aimed at small ROBO deployments, HyperFlex Edge.
Cisco HyperFlex Edge consists of 3 HX220x Edge M5 hybrid nodes with 1GbE connectivity. The Edge configuration cannot be expanded.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN is sold by StarWind as a software-only solution. Server hardware must be acquired separately.
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Software Pricing Model
Details
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Capacity based (per TB)
NEW
DataCore SANsymphony is licensed in three different editions: Enterprise, Standard, and Business.
All editions are licensed per capacity (in 1 TB steps). Except for the Business edition which has a fixed price per TB, the more capacity that is used by an end-user in each class, the lower the price per TB.
Each edition includes a defined feature set.
Enterprise (EN) includes all available features plus expanded Parallel I/O.
Standard (ST) includes all Enterprise (EN) features, except FC connections, Encryption, Inline Deduplication & Compression and Shared Multi-Port Array (SMPA) support with regular Parallel I/O.
Business (BZ) as entry-offering includes all essential Enterprise (EN) features, except Asynchronous Replication & Site Recovery, Encryption, Deduplication & Compression, Random Write Accelerator (RWA) and Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with limited Parallel I/O.
Customers can choose between a perpetual licensing model or a term-based licensing model. Any initial license purchase for perpetual licensing includes Premier Support for either 1, 3 or 5 years. Alternatively, term-based licensing is available for either 1, 3 or 5 years, always including Premier Support as well, plus enhanced DataCore Insight Services (predictive analytics with actionable insights). In most regions, BZ is available as term license only.
Capacity can be expanded in 1 TB steps. There exists a 10 TB minimum per installation for Business (BZ). Moreover, BZ is limited to 2 instances and a total capacity of 38 TB per installation, but one customer can have multiple BZ installations.
Cost neutral upgrades are available when upgrading from Business/Standard (BZ/ST) to Enterprise (EN).
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Per Node
Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform (HXDP) Software is offered as an annual software subscription (1 year or 3 years).
There are 3 software editions to choose from: Edge, Standard and Enterprise.
HXDP Edge is the most limited edition and does not have the following software capabilities: Microsoft Hyper-V support, Kubernetes Container Persistent Storage, CCP, Maximum cluster scale, NVMe Flash caching, Logical Availablity Zones, Stretched Clustering and Synchronous replication, SEDs, Client Authentication and Cluster Lockdown.
HXDP Enterprise has the following advanced capabilities not available in HXDP Standard: Stretched Clustering, Synchronous replication and support for HX Hardware Acceleration Engine (PCIe).
Compute-only nodes do not require a subscription fee (free license).
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Hyper-V: Per Node + Per TB
vSphere: Per Node (storage capacity included)
There are two StarWind Virtual SAN editions: StarWind Virtual SAN for Hyper-V and StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere. StarWind Virtual SAN for Hyper-V is licensed per node + per amount of HA storage provisioned by StarWind Virtual SAN. StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is licensed per the node. There the amount of HA storage provisioned by StarWind Virtual SAN is always unlimited.
HA = Highly Available
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Support Pricing Model
Details
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Capacity based (per TB)
Support is always provided on a premium (24x7) basis, including free updates.
More information about DataCores support policy can be found here:
http://datacore.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1270/~/what-is-datacores-support-policy-for-its-products
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Per Node
Cisco provides a variety of support service offerings, including:
- Unified Computing Warranty, No Contract (non-production environments)
- Smart Net Total Care for UCS (8x5 or 24x7; with or without Onsite)
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Per Node
StarWind provides three editions of StarWind Virtual SAN Support:
1. Standard Support for business days, business hours and up to 4 hours response time
2. Premium Support covers 24x7x365 support and up to 1 hour response time
3. Proactive Support provides Premium Support and monitors the health of the system and proactively notifies about potential issues on the hardware level, hypervisor level and StarWind software-level.
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Design & Deploy
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Design |
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Consolidation Scope
Details
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Storage
Data Protection
Management
Automation&Orchestration
DataCore is storage-oriented.
SANsymphony Software-Defined Storage Services are focused on variable deployment models. The range covers classical Storage Virtualization over Converged and Hybrid-Converged to Hyperconverged including a seamless migration between them.
DataCore aims to provide all key components within a storage ecosystem including enhanced data protection and automation & orchestration.
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Compute
Storage
Network
Management
Automation&Orchestration
Both Cisco and the HyperFlex platform itself are stack-oriented.
With the HyperFlex platform Cisco aims to provide all key functionality required in a Private Cloud ecosystem as well as integrate with existing hypervisors and applications.
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Storage
Management
StarWind Virtual SAN consolidates storage from different servers by replicating and presenting it over the iSCSI protocol as a single pool.
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1, 10, 25, 40, 100 GbE (iSCSI)
8, 16, 32, 64 Gbps (FC)
The bandwidth required depends entirely on the specifc workload needs.
SANsymphony 10 PSP11 introduced support for Emulex Gen 7 64 Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs.
SANsymphony 10 PSP8 introduced support for Gen6 16/32 Gbps ATTO Fibre Channel HBAs.
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1, 10, 40 GbE
Cisco HyperFlex hardware models include redundant ethernet connectivity using SFP+. Cisco recommends at least 10GbE to avoid the network becoming a performance bottleneck.
Cisco also supports 40GbE Fabrics as of HX 2.0.
Ciso HyperFlex M4 models have 10GbE onboard; Cisco HyperFlex M5 models have 40GbE onboard.
As of HX 3.5 Cisco HyperFlex Edge bundle supports both 1GbE and 10GbE.
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1, 10, 25, 40, 100 GbE
StarWind requires at least three dedicated network interfaces:
- one for StarWind Synchronization
- one for iSCSI traffic/Heartbeat)
- one for Management/Heartbeat
At least one Heartbeat interface must be on a separate network adapter and redundant.
For iSCSI and synchronization, minimum 1 GbE of bandwidth and latency under 5ms is a requirement.
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Overall Design Complexity
Details
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Medium
DataCore SANsymphony is able to meet many different use-cases because of its flexible technical architecture, however this also means there are a lot of design choices that need to be made. DataCore SANsymphony seeks to provide important capabilities either natively or tightly integrated, and this keeps the design process relatively simple. However, because many features in SANsymphony are optional and thus can be turned on/off, in effect each one needs to be taken into consideration when preparing a detailed design.
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Low
Cisco HyperFlex was developed with simplicity in mind, both from a design and a deployment perspective. Cisco HyperFlex uniform platform architecture is meant to be applicable to all virtualized enterprise application use-cases. With the exception of backup/restore, most capabilities are provided natively and on a per-VM basis, keeping the design relatively clean and simple. Advanced features like deduplication and compression are always turned on. This minimizes the amount of design choices as well as the number of deployment steps.
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Medium
StarWind Virtual SAN is able to meet many different use-cases because of its flexible technical architecture, however this also means there are a lot of design choices that need to be made. Also, StarWind Virtual SAN does not encompass many native data protection capabilities and data services. A complete solution design therefore requires the presence of multiple technology platforms.
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External Performance Validation
Details
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SPC (Jun 2016)
ESG Lab (Jan 2016)
SPC (Jun 2016)
Title: 'Dual Node, Fibre Channel SAN'
Workloads: SPC-1
Benchmark Tools: SPC-1 Workload Generator
Hardware: All-Flash Lenovo x3650, 2-node cluster, FC-connected, SSY 10.0, 4x All-Flash Dell MD1220 SAS Storage Arrays
SPC (Jun 2016)
Title: 'Dual Node, High Availability, Hyper-converged'
Workloads: SPC-1
Benchmark Tools: SPC-1 Workload Generator
Hardware: All-Flash Lenovo x3650, 2-node cluster, FC-interconnect, SSY 10.0
ESG Lab (Jan 2016)
Title: 'DataCore Application-adaptive Data Infrastructure Software'
Workloads: OLTP
Benchmark Tools: IOmeter
Hardware: Hybrid (Tiered) Dell PowerEdge R720, 2-node cluster, SSY 10.0
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ESG Lab (jul 2018)
SAP (dec 2017)
ESG Lab (mar 2017)
ESG Lab (Jul 2018)
Title: 'Mission-critical Workload Performance Testing of Different Hyperconverged Approaches on the Cisco Unified Computing System Platform (UCS)'
Workloads: MSSQL OLTP, Oracle OLTP, Virtual Servers (VSI), Virtual desktops (VDI)
Benchmark Tools: Vdbench (MSSQL, Oracle)
Hardware: All-flash HyperFlex HX220c M4, 4-node cluster, HX 2.6
Remark: Also impact to performance caused by deduplication and compression was measured in comparison to two SDS platforms.
SAP (Dec 2017)
Title: 'SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark'.
Workloads: SAP ERP
Benchmark Tools: SAPSD
Hardware: All-Flash HyperFlex HX240c M4, single -node, HX 2.6
ESG Lab (Mar 2017)
Title: 'Hyperconverged Infrastructure with Consistent High Performance for Virtual Machines'.
Workloads: MSSQL OLTP
Benchmark Tools: Vdbench (MSSQL)
Hardware: Hybrid+All-Flash HyperFlex HX220c M4, 4-node cluster, HX 2.0
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N/A
No StarWind Virtual SAN validated test reports have been published in 2016/2017/2018/2019.
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Evaluation Methods
Details
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Free Trial (30-days)
Proof-of-Concept (PoC; up to 12 months)
SANsymphony is freely downloadble after registering online and offers full platform support (complete Enterprise feature set) but is scale (4 nodes), capacity (16TB) and time (30 days) restricted, what all can be expanded upon request. The free trial version of SANsymphony can be installed on all commodity hardware platforms that meet the hardware requirements.
For more information please go here: https://www.datacore.com/try-it-now/
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Online Labs
Proof-of-Concept (PoC)
Cisco has a few online HyperFlex simulators within its Demo Cloud (dcloud) environment.
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Community Edition (forever)
Trial (up to 30 days)
Proof-of-Concept
There are 2 ways for end-user organizations to evaluate StarWind:
1. StarWind Free. A free version of the software-only Virtual SAN product can be downloaded for the StarWind website. The free version has full functionality but StarWind Management Console works only in the monitoring mode without the ability to create or manage StarWind. All the management is performed via PowerShell and set of script templates.
The free version is intended to be self-supported or community-supported on public discussion forums. This
2. StarWind Trial. The trial version has full functionality and all the management capabilities for StarWind Management Console and is limited to 30 days but can be prolonged if required.
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Deploy |
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Deployment Architecture
Details
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Single-Layer
Dual-Layer
Single-Layer = servers function as compute nodes as well as storage nodes.
Dual-Layer = servers function only as storage nodes; compute runs on different nodes.
Single-Layer:
- SANsymphony is implemented as virtual machine (VM) or in case of Hyper-V as service layer on Hyper-V parent OS, managing internal and/or external storage devices and providing virtual disks back to the hypervisor cluster it is implemented in. DataCore calls this a hyper-converged deployment.
Dual-Layer:
- SANsymphony is implemented as bare metal nodes, managing external storage (SAN/NAS approach) and providing virtual disks to external hosts which can be either bare metal OS systems and/or hypervisors. DataCore calls this a traditional deployment.
- SANsymphony is implemented as bare metal nodes, managing internal storage devices (server-SAN approach) and providing virtual disks to external hosts which can be either bare metal OS systems and/or hypervisors. DataCore calls this a converged deployment.
Mixed:
- SANsymphony is implemented in any combination of the above 3 deployments within a single management entity (Server Group) acting as a unified storage grid. DataCore calls this a hybrid-converged deployment.
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Single-Layer (primary)
Dual-Layer (secondary)
Single-Layer: Cisco HyperFlex is meant to be used as a storage platform as well as a compute platform at the same time. This effectively means that applications, hypervisor and storage software are all running on top of the same server hardware (=single infrastructure layer).
Cisco HyperFlex can also serve in a dual-layer model by providing storage to non-HyperFlex hypervisor hosts (Please view the compute-only scale-out option for more information).
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Single-Layer
Dual-Layer (secondary)
Single-Layer = servers function as compute nodes as well as storage nodes.
Dual-Layer = servers function only as storage nodes; compute runs on different nodes.
In a Single-Layer architecture, the servers with Virtual SAN software function as compute nodes as well as storage node; StarWind performs storage synchronous replication
In a Dual-Layer architecture, StarWind Virtual SAN software replicates data in active-active mode between the dedicated storage servers and provides HA storage for use by separate compute nodes that do not have StarWind Virtual SAN installed.
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Deployment Method
Details
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BYOS (some automation)
BYOS = Bring-Your-Own-Server-Hardware
DataCore SANsymphony is made easy by providing a very straightforward implementation approach.
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Turnkey (very fast; highly automated)
Because of the ready-to-go Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) building blocks and the setup wizard provided by Cisco, customer deployments can be executed in hours instead of days.
For initial deployment, Cisco expanded end-to-end automation across network, compute, hypervisor and storage in HX 1.8 and refined this in HX 2.0.
HX 3.0 introduced the ability for centralized global deployment from the cloud, delivered through Cisco Intersight.
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BYOS (some automation)
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Workload Support
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Virtualization |
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Hypervisor Deployment
Details
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Virtual Storage Controller
Kernel (Optional for Hyper-V)
The SANsymphony Controller is deployed as a pre-configured Virtual Machine on top of each server that acts as a part of the SANsymphony storage solution and commits its internal storage and/or externally connected storage to the shared resource pool. The Virtual Storage Controller (VSC) can be configured direct access to the physical disks, so the hypervisor is not impeding the I/O flow.
In Microsoft Hyper-V environments the SANsymphony software can also be installed in the Windows Server Root Partition. DataCore does not recommend installing SANsymphony in a Hyper-V guest VM as it introduces virtualization layer overhead and obstructs DataCore Software from directly accessing CPU, RAM and storage. This means that installing SANsymphony in the Windows Server Root Partition is the preferred deployment option. More information about the Windows Server Root Partition can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/performance-tuning/role/hyper-v-server/architecture
The DataCore software can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2019 or lower (all versions down to Microsoft Windows Server 2012/R2).
Kernel Integrated, Virtual Controller and VIB are each distributed architectures, having one active component per virtualization host that work together as a group. All three architectures are capable of delivering a complete set of storage services and good performance. Kernel Integrated solutions reside within the protected lower layer, VIBs reside just above the protected kernel layer, and Virtual Controller solutions reside in the upper user layer. This makes Virtual Controller solutions somewhat more prone to external actions (eg. most VSCs do not like snapshots). On the other hand Kernel Integrated solutions are less flexible because a new version requires the upgrade of the entire hypervisor platform. VIBs have the middle-ground, as they provide more flexibility than kernel integrated solutions and remain relatively shielded from the user level.
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Virtual Storage Controller
Cisco HyperFlex uses Virtual Storage Controller (VSC) VMs on the VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor platform.
Kernel Integrated, Virtual Controller and VIB are each distributed architectures, having one active component per virtualization host that work together as a group. All three architectures are capable of delivering a complete set of storage services and good performance. Kernel Integrated solutions reside within the protected lower layer, VIBs reside just above the protected kernel layer, and Virtual Controller solutions reside in the upper user layer. This makes Virtual Controller solutions somewhat more prone to external actions (eg. most VSCs do not like snapshots). On the other hand Kernel Integrated solutions are less flexible because a new version requires the upgrade of the entire hypervisor platform. VIBs have the middle-ground, as they provide more flexibility than kernel integrated solutions and remain relatively shielded from the user level.
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Virtual Storage Controller (vSphere)
User-Space (Hyper-V)
StarWind VSAN for vSphere is deployed by downloading an OVF template of a preconfigured Linux-based VM. It should be deployed on each VMware vSphere node that takes part in StarWind replication. The OVF contains StarWind SDS stack pre-configured and pre-installed.
StarWind VSAN for Hyper-V is deployed by downloading the latest build of StarWind. The installation process will automatically install the required components. The build should be installed on each node that will take part in StarWind replication.
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Hypervisor Compatibility
Details
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VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5-7.0U1
Microsoft Hyper-V 2012R2/2016/2019
Linux KVM
Citrix Hypervisor 7.1.2/7.6/8.0 (XenServer)
'Not qualified' means there is no generic support qualification due to limited market footprint of the product. However, a customer can always individually qualify the system with a specific SANsymphony version and will get full support after passing the self-qualification process.
Only products explicitly labeled 'Not Supported' have failed qualification or have shown incompatibility.
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VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0U3/6.5U2/6.7U2
Microsoft Hyper-V 2016/2019
NEW
Cisco HyperFlex 3.0 introduced support for Microsoft Hyper-V.
Cisco HyperFlex 3.01b added support for VMware vSphere 6.5U2.
Cisco HyperFlex 3.5.2 added support for VMware vSphere 6.7U1.
Cisco HyperFlex 4.0 introduces support for VMware vSphere 6.7U2 and Microsoft Hyper-V 2019.
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VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0-6.7
Microsoft Hyper-V 2012-2019
StarWind is actively working on supporting KVM.
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Hypervisor Interconnect
Details
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iSCSI
FC
The SANsymphony software-only solution supports both iSCSI and FC protocols to present storage to hypervisor environments.
DataCore SANsymphony supports:
- iSCSI (Switched and point-to-point)
- Fibre Channel (Switched and point-to-point)
- Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
- Switched, where host uses Converged Network Adapter (CNA), and switch outputs Fibre Channel
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NFS
SMB
In virtualized environments In-Guest iSCSI support is still a hard requirements if one of the following scenarios is pursued:
- Microsoft Failover Clustering (MSFC) in a VMware vSphere environment
- A supported MS Exchange 2013 Environment in a VMware vSphere environment
Microsoft explicitely does not support NFS in both scenarios.
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iSCSI
NFS
SMB3
iSCSI is the native StarWind VSAN storage protocol, as StarWind VSAN provides block-based storage.
NFS can be used as the storage protocol in VMware vSphere environments by leveraging the File Server role that the Windows OS provides.
SMB3 can be used as the storage protocol in Microsoft Hyper-V environments by leveraging the File Server role that the Windows OS provides.
In both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments, iSCSI is used as a protocol to provide block-level storage access. It allows consolidating storage from multiple servers providing it as highly available storage to target servers. In the case of vSphere, VMware iSCSI Initiator allows connecting StarWind iSCSI devices to ESXi hosts and further create datastores on them. In the case of Hyper-V, Microsoft iSCSI Initiator is utilized to connect StarWind iSCSI devices to the servers and further provide HA storage to the cluster (i.e. CSV).
In virtualized environments In-Guest iSCSI support is still a hard requirements if one of the following scenarios is pursued:
- Microsoft Failover Clustering (MSFC) in a VMware vSphere environment
- A supported MS Exchange 2013 Environment in a VMware vSphere environment
Microsoft explicitely does not support NFS in both scenarios.
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Bare Metal |
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Bare Metal Compatibility
Details
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Microsoft Windows Server 2012R2/2016/2019
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5/6.6/7.3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.0SP3+4/12.0SP1
Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS
CentOS 6.5/6.6/7.3
Oracle Solaris 10.0/11.1/11.2/11.3
Any operating system currently not qualified for support can always be individually qualified with a specific SANsymphony version and will get full support after passing the self-qualification process.
SANsymphony provides virtual disks (block storage LUNs) to all of the popular host operating systems that use standard disk drives with 512 byte or 4K byte sectors. These hosts can access the SANsymphony virtual disks via SAN protocols including iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
Mainframe operating systems such as IBM z/OS, z/TPF, z/VSE or z/VM are not supported.
SANsymphony itself runs on Microsoft Windows Server 2012/R2 or higher.
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not support any non-hypervisor platforms.
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Microsoft Windows Server 2012/2012R2/2016/2019
StarWind VSAN provides highly available storage over iSCSI between the StarWind nodes and can additionally share storage over iSCSI to any OS that supports the iSCSI protocol.
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Bare Metal Interconnect
Details
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iSCSI
FC
FCoE
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not support any non-hypervisor platforms.
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iSCSI
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Containers |
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Container Integration Type
Details
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Built-in (native)
DataCore provides its own Volume Plugin for natively providing Docker container support, available on Docker Hub.
DataCore also has a native CSI integration with Kubernetes, available on Github.
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Built-in (native)
Cisco developed its own container platform software called 'Cisco Container Platform' (CCP). CCP provides on-premises Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) in order to enable end-users to quickly adopt container services.
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) is not a hard requirement for running Docker containers and Kubernetes on top of HX, however it does make it easier to use and consume.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN relies on the container support delivered by the hypervisor platform.
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Container Platform Compatibility
Details
|
Docker CE/EE 18.03+
Docker EE = Docker Enterprise Edition
|
Docker EE 1.13+
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) supports deployment of Kubernetes clusters on HyperFlex IaaS (VMware). The Kubernetes pods leverage the Docker container platform as the runtime environment.
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) is not a hard requirement for running Docker containers and Kubernetes on top of HX, however it does make it easier to use and consume.
Docker EE = Docker Enterprise Edition
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Docker CE 17.06.1+ for Linux on ESXi 6.0+
Docker EE/Docker for Windows 17.06+ on ESXi 6.0+
Docker CE = Docker Community Edition
Docker EE = Docker Enterprise Edition
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Container Platform Interconnect
Details
|
Docker Volume plugin (certified)
The DataCore SDS Docker Volume plugin (DVP) enables Docker Containers to use storage persistently, in other words enables SANsymphony data volumes to persist beyond the lifetime of both a container or a container host. DataCore leverages SANsymphony iSCSI and FC to provide storage to containers. This effectively means that the hypervisor layer is bypassed.
The Docker SDS Volume plugin (DVP) is officially 'Docker Certified' and can be downloaded from the Docker Hub. The plugin is installed inside the Docker host, which can be either a VM or a Bare Metal Host connect to a SANsymphony storage cluster.
For more information please go to: https://hub.docker.com/plugins/datacore-sds-volume-plugin
The Kubernetes CSI plugin can be downloaded from GitHub. The plugin is automatically deployed as several pods within the Kubernetes system.
For more information please go to: https://github.com/DataCoreSoftware/csi-plugin
Both plugins are supported with SANsymphony 10 PSP7 U2 and later.
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HX FlexVolume Driver
The Cisco HX FlexVolume Driver provides persistent storage for containers running in a Cisco Container Platform (CCP) environment. The driver communicates with an API of the HX Virtual Storage Controller and provides storage request details through use of a YAML file. Storage is presented to containers by HyperFlex through in-guest iSCSI connections. This effectively means that the hypervisor layer is bypassed.
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) is not a hard requirement for running Docker containers and Kubernetes on top of HX, however it does make it easier to use and consume.
The Cisco HX FlexVolume Driver is supported with HX 3.0 and later.
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Docker Volume Plugin (certified) + VMware VIB
vSphere Docker Volume Service (vDVS) can be used with VMware vSAN, as well as VMFS datastores and NFS datastores served by VMware vSphere-compatible storage systems.
The vSphere Docker Volume Service (vDVS) installation has two parts:
1. Installation of the vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) on ESXi.
2. Installation of Docker plugin on the virtualized hosts (VMs) where you plan to run containers with storage needs.
The vSphere Docker Volume Service (vDVS) is officially 'Docker Certified' and can be downloaded from the online Docker Store.
The StarWind HA VMFS (datastore) can be used for deploying containers just as on common VMFS datastore.
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Container Host Compatibility
Details
|
Virtualized container hosts on all supported hypervisors
Bare Metal container hosts
The DataCore native plug-ins are container-host centric and as such can be used across all SANsymphony-supported hypervisor platforms (VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, XenServer, Oracle VM Server) as well as on bare metal platforms.
|
Virtualized container hosts on VMware vSphere hypervisor
Because Cisco HyperFlex currently does not offer bare-metal support, Cisco Container Platform (CCP) on HyperFlex cannot be used for bare metal hosts running containers.
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) on HyperFlex only support the VMware vSphere hypervisor at this time.
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) is not a hard requirement for running Docker containers and Kubernetes on top of HX, however it does make it easier to use and consume.
|
Virtualized container hosts on VMware vSphere hypervisor
Because the vSphere Docker Volume Service (vDVS) and vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) are tied to the VMware Sphere platform, they cannot be used for bare metal hosts running containers.
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Container Host OS Compatbility
Details
|
Linux
All Linux versions supported by Docker CE/EE 18.03+ or higher can be used.
|
Ubuntu Linux 16.04.3 LTS
A Kubernetes tenant cluster consists of 1 master and 2 worker nodes at minimum in Cisco HyperFlex environments. The nodes run Ubuntu Linux 16.04.3 LTS as the operating system.
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Linux
Windows 10 or 2016
Any Linux distribution running version 3.10+ of the Linux kernel can run Docker.
vSphere Storage for Docker can be installed on Windows Server 2016/Windows 10 VMs using the PowerShell installer.
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Container Orch. Compatibility
Details
|
Kubernetes 1.13+
|
Kubernetes
Cisco Container Platform (CCP) configuration consists of 1 master and 3 worker nodes for the CCP control plane (one VM for each HyperFlex cluster node). The CCP nodes are deployed from a VMware OVF template.
From the CCP control plane Kubernetes 1.9.2+ tenant clusters can be deployed. A Kubernetes tenant cluster consists of 1 master and X worker nodes.
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Kubernetes 1.6.5+ on ESXi 6.0+
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Container Orch. Interconnect
Details
|
Kubernetes CSI plugin
The Kubernetes CSI plugin provides several plugins for integrating storage into Kubernetes for containers to consume.
DataCore SANsymphony provides native industry standard block protocol storage presented over either iSCSI or Fibre Channel. YAML files can be used to configure Kubernetes for use with DataCore SANsymphony.
|
HX-CSI Plugin
NEW
Cisco HyperFlex 4.0 introduces support for the HyperFlex CSI plugin based on the Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) specification. The HX-CSI plugin is leveraged to provision and manage persistent volumes in Kubernetes v1.13 and later. The Cisco HyperFlex CSI plugin driver is deployed as containers.
Before CSI volume plugins were “in-tree” meaning their code was part of the core Kubernetes code and shipped with the core Kubernetes binaries. Storage vendors wanting to add support for their storage system to Kubernetes (or even fix a bug in an existing volume plugin) were forced to align with the Kubernetes release process. In addition, third-party storage code caused reliability and security issues in core Kubernetes binaries and the code was often difficult (and in some cases impossible) for Kubernetes maintainers to test and maintain. CSI is 'out-of-tree' meaning that with CSI, third-party storage providers can write and deploy plugins exposing new storage systems in Kubernetes without ever having to touch the core Kubernetes code. This gives Kubernetes users more options for storage and makes the system more secure and reliable.
The HX FlexVolume Driver, supported with HX 3.0 and HX 3.5, is hereby deprecated. The HX FlexVolume Driver was an external volume driver for Kubernetes. It ran in a K8S Node VM and provisioned a requested persistent volume that was compatible with the Kubernetes iSCSI volume.
|
Kubernetes Volume Plugin
vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) for Kubernetes allows Pods to use enterprise grade persistent storage. VCP supports every storage primitive exposed by Kubernetes:
- Volumes
- Persistent Volumes (PV)
- Persistent Volumes Claims (PVC)
- Storage Class
- Stateful Sets
Persistent volumes requested by stateful containerized applications can be provisioned on vSAN, VVol, VMFS or NFS datastores.
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VDI |
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VDI Compatibility
Details
|
VMware Horizon
Citrix XenDesktop
There is no validation check being performed by SANsymphony for VMware Horizon or Citrix XenDesktop VDI platforms. This means that all versions supported by these vendors are supported by DataCore.
|
VMware Horizon
Citrix XenDesktop
Cisco has published Reference Architecture whitepapers for both VMware Horizon and Citrix XenDesktop platforms.
|
VMware Horizon
Citrix XenDesktop
Although StarWind supports both VMware and Citrix VDI deployments on top of StarWind VSAN HA storage, there is currently no specific documentation available.
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|
|
|
VMware: 110 virtual desktops/node
Citrix: 110 virtual desktops/node
DataCore has not published any recent VDI reference architecture whitepapers. The only VDI related paper that includes a Login VSI benchmark dates back to december 2010. There a 2-node SANsymphony cluster was able to sustain a load of 220 VMs based on the Login VSI 2.0.1 benchmark.
|
VMware: up to 137 virtual desktops/node
Citrix: up to 125 virtual desktops/node
VMware Horizon 7.6: Load bearing number is based on Login VSI tests performed on all-flash HX220c M5 appliances using 2vCPU Windows 10 desktops and the Knowledge Worker profile.
Citrix XenDesktop 7.16: Load bearing number is based on Login VSI tests performed on all-flash HX220c M5 appliances using 2vCPU Windows 10 desktops and the Knowledge Worker profile.
For detailed information please view the corresponding whitepapers.
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VMware: up to 260 virtual desktops/node
Citrix: up to 220 virtual desktops/node
The load bearing numbers are based on approximate calculations of VDI infrastructure that StarWind Virtual SAN can support.
There are no LoginVSA benchmark numbers on record for StarWind Virtual SAN as of yet.
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Server Support
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|
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Server/Node |
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|
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Hardware Vendor Choice
Details
|
Many
SANsymphony runs on all server hardware that supports x86 - 64bit.
DataCore provides minimum requirements for hardware resources.
|
Cisco
NEW
Cisco HyperFlex (HX) compute+storage nodes are based on Cisco UCS C220 M5 and Cisco UCS C240 M5 rack server hardware. M4 server hardware reached End-of-Life (EOL) status on February 14th 2019. This means that end users cannot acquire M4 hardware any longer.
Cisco HyperFlex (HX) compute-only nodes are based on Cisco UCS B200 M4/M5, B260 M4/M5, B420 M4/M5 and B460 M4/M5 blade server hardware. The Cisco C220 M4/M5, C240 M4/M5 and C460 M4/M5 rack servers can optionally be used as compute-only nodes.
Cisco HyperFlex 4.0 introduces support for C480 ML compute-only nodes that serve in Deep Learning / Machine Learning environments.
|
Many
StarWind Virtual SAN is a hardware-agnostic solution and does not have a strict HCL or supported hardware platforms.
|
|
|
|
Many
SANsymphony runs on all server hardware that supports x86 - 64bit.
DataCore provides minimum requirements for hardware resources.
|
9 storage models:
HX220x Edge M5, HX220c M4/M5, HX240c M4/M5, HXAF220c M4/M5, HXAF240c M4/M5
8 compute-only models: B2x0 M4/M5, B4x0 M4/M5, C2x0 M4/M5, C4x0 M4/M5, C480 ML
NEW
HX220x Edge M5 are 1U building blocks.
HX220c M5 and HXAF220c M5 are 1U building blocks.
HX240c M5 and HXAF240c M5 are 2U building blocks.
A maximum of eight B200 M4/M5 blade servers fit in a Cisco UCS 5108 6U Blade Chassis.
|
Many
StarWind Virtual SAN is a hardware-agnostic solution and does not have a strict HCL or supported hardware platforms.
|
|
|
|
1, 2 or 4 nodes per chassis
Note: Because SANsymphony is mostly hardware agnostic, customers can opt for multiple server densities.
Note: In most cases 1U or 2U building blocks are used.
Also Super Micro offers 2U chassis that can house 4 compute nodes.
Denser nodes provide a smaller datacenter footprint where space is a concern. However, keep in mind that the footprint for other datacenter resources such as power and heat and cooling is not necessarily reduced in the same way and that the concentration of nodes can potentially pose other challenges.
|
HX2x0/HXAF2x0/HXAN2x0: 1 node per chassis
B200: up to 8 nodes per chassis
C2x0: 1 node per chassis
HX220x Edge M5 are 1U building blocks.
HX220c M5, HXAF220c M5 and HXAN220c M5 are 1U building blocks.
HX240c M5 and HXAF240c M5 are 2U building blocks.
A maximum of eight B200 M4/M5 blade servers fit in a Cisco UCS 5108 6U Blade Chassis.
Denser nodes provide a smaller datacenter footprint where space is a concern. However, keep in mind that the footprint for other datacenter resources such as power and heat and cooling is not necessarily reduced in the same way and that the concentration of nodes can potentially pose other challenges.
|
1, 2 or 4 nodes per chassis
StarWind Virtual SAN is a hardware-agnostic solution and does not have strict HCL or supported hardware platforms.
|
|
|
|
Yes
DataCore does not explicitly recommend using different hardware platforms, but as long as the hardware specs are somehow comparable, there is no reason to insist on one or the other hardware vendor. This is proven in practice, meaning that some customers run their productive DataCore environment on comparable servers of different vendors.
|
Partial
Cisco supports mixing nodes with Intel v3 and Intel v4 processors within the same storage cluster. Also M4 and M5 nodes can be mixed within the same cluster. HyperFlex Edge does not support mixed M4/M5 clusters.
Mixing of HX220c and HX240c models is not allowed inside a single storage cluster (homogenous setup).
Mixing of HX2x0c, HXAF2x0c and HXAN2x0c models is not allowed inside a single storage cluster (homogenous setup).
Multiple homogenous HyperFlex storage clusters can be used in a single vCenter environment. The current maximum is 100.
Cisco HyperFlex supports up to 8 clusters on a single HX FI Domain.
|
Yes
Although StarWind does not recommend assymetric configurations (mixing nodes with different CPUs, storage type and networks in same replica) for Virtual SAN environments, if a customer understands the possible issues with performance (any solution that provides storage active-active replication performs with the speed of the slowest component), different servers can be mixed in a single solution.
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Components |
|
|
|
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Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to: https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/tech/compatibility/
|
Flexible
NEW
M5: Choice of 1st generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Skylake) processors (1x or 2x per node).
Although Cisco does support 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake) processors in its UCS server line-up as of April 2019, Cisco HyperFlex nodes do not yet ship with 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake) processors.
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements
|
|
|
|
Flexible
|
Flexible
NEW
HX220x M5 Edge: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
HX220c M5: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
HX240c M5: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
HXAF220x M5 Edge: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
HXAF220c M5: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
HXAF240c M5: 192GB - 3.0TB per node.
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements
|
|
|
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to: https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/tech/compatibility/
|
HX220c/HXAF220c/HXAN220c: Fixed number of disks
HX240c/HXAF240c: Flexible (number of disks)
NEW
HX220c M5 and HXAF220c M5 1U appliances have 8 SFF disk slots.
HX220x M5 Edge (hybrid/all-flash) are the only systems that support less than 6 drives (3-6).
HX 3.5 adds support for Intel Optane NVMe DC SSDs and Cisco HyperFlex All-NVMe appliances. All-NVMe appliances leverage the ultra-fast Intel Optane NVMe drives for caching and Intel 3D NAND NVMe drives for capacity storage.
HX220c M5 (hybrid):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SATA SSD for system
1 x 480GB SATA SSD, 800GB SAS SSD or 800GB SAS SED SSD for caching
6-8 x 1.2TB/1.8TB/2.4TB SAS 10K HDD or 1.2TB SAS 10k SED HDD for data.
HXAF220c M5 (all-flash):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SATA SSD for system/log
1 x 375GB Optane/400GB/1.6TB SAS SSD, 1.6TB NVMe SSD or 800GB SAS SED SSD for caching
6-8 x 960GB/3.8TB SATA SSD or 800GB SAS/960GB SATA/3.8TB SATA SED SSD for data
HXAN220c M5 (all-NVMe):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 375GB NVMe for system/log
1 x 1.6TB NVMe SSD for caching
6-8 x 1.0TB/4.0TB NVMe SSD for data
HX240c M5 and HXAF240c M5 2U appliances have 24 front-mounted SFF disk slots and 1 internal SFF disk slot. The storage configuration is flexible.
HX240c M5 SFF (hybrid):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SATA SSD for system
1 x 1.6TB SAS/SATA SSD or 1.6TB SAS SED SSD for caching
6-23 x 1.2TB/1.8TB/2.4TB SAS 10K HDD or 1.2TB SAS 10k SED HDD for data
HX240c M5 LFF (hybrid):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SATA SSD for system
1 x 3.2TB SATA SSD for caching
6-12 x 6.0TB/8.0TB/12TB SATA 7.2K HDD
HXAF240c M5 (all-flash):
1 x 240GB SATA M.2 SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SATA SSD for system/log
1 x 375GB Optane/400GB/1.6TB SAS SSD, 1.6TB NVMe SSD or 800GB SAS SED SSD for caching
6-23 x 960GB/3.8TB SATA SSD or 800GB SAS/960GB SATA/3.8TB SATA SED SSD for data
AF = All-Flash
AN = All-NVMe
SED = Self-Encrypting Drive
SFF = Small Form Factor
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements
|
|
|
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to: https://www.datacore.com/products/sansymphony/tech/compatibility/
|
Flexible: M5:10/40GbE; M5 Edge:1/10GbE; FC (optional)
Cisco HyperFlex: Both HX220c and HX240c models are equipped with a dual-port SFP+ adapter for handling storage cluster data traffic. M4 Models come with a dual-port 10Gbps adapter, whereas M5 models sport 40Gbps adapters that can be converted to 10Gbps by use of Cisco QSFP to SFP or SFP+ Adapters (QSAs).
Cisco HyperFlex Edge: The HX220c models are equiped with both a dual-port 10Gbps SFP+ adapter and a dual-port 1GbE adapter. Either can be connected and actively used.
HX 3.0 added support for a second NIC in HX nodes on a RPQ basis. HX 3.5 supports this unconditionally and the second NIC is now a part of the HX installer and deployment is automated.
Initial Cisco HX configurations are always packaged and sold with Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect network switches (6200/6300 series). The HX servers can therefore be managed centrally (=Cisco UCS-managed).
Cisco HyperFlex supports FC connections from external SANs.
|
Flexible
Minimum hardware requirements need to be fulfilled.
For more information please go to:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements
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|
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|
NVIDIA Tesla
AMD FirePro
Intel Iris Pro
DataCore SANsymphony supports the hardware that is on the hypervisor HCL.
VMware vSphere 6.5U1 officially supports several GPUs for VMware Horizon 7 environments:
NVIDIA Tesla M6 / M10 / M60
NVIDIA Tesla P4 / P6 / P40 / P100
AMD FirePro S7100X / S7150 / S7150X2
Intel Iris Pro Graphics P580
More information on GPU support can be found in the online VMware Compatibility Guide.
Windows 2016 supports two graphics virtualization technologies available with Hyper-V to leverage GPU hardware:
- Discrete Device Assignment
- RemoteFX vGPU
More information is provided here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds-graphics-virtualization
The NVIDIA website contains a listing of GRID certified servers and the maximum number of GPUs supported inside a single server.
Server hardware vendor websites also contain more detailed information on the GPU brands and models supported.
|
NVIDIA Tesla (HX240c only)
AMD FirePro (HX240c only)
NEW
The following NVIDIA GPU cards can be ordered along with the Cisco HX240c M4 / HXAF240c M4 models (maximum is 2 per node):
- NVIDIA Tesla M10
- NVIDIA Tesla M60
The following NVIDIA GPU cards can be ordered along with the Cisco HX240c M5 / HXAF240c M5 models (maximum is 2 per node):
- NVIDIA Tesla M10
- NVIDIA Tesla P40
- NVIDIA Tesla P100
- NVIDIA Tesla V100
- AMD FirePro S7150X2
NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU is optimal for HPC workloads.
NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU is optimal for AI/ML workloads.
|
NVIDIA Tesla
AMD FirePro
Intel Iris Pro
StarWind Virtual SAN supports the hardware that is on the hypervisor HCL.
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|
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Scaling |
|
|
|
|
CPU
Memory
Storage
GPU
The SANsymphony platform allows for expanding of all server hardware resources.
|
HX220c/HXAF220c/HXAN220c: CPU, Memory, Network
HX240c/HXAF240c: CPU, Memory, Storage, Network, GPU
A HX220c node has 8 front-mounted SFF disk slots; In the M4 series 2 disk slots are reserved for SSDs. This effectively means that each node can have up to 6 HDDs installed; M5 series can have up to 8 HDDs installed. Initial configurations have 6 to 8 HDDs installed; exception is the Edge bundle where 3 to 6 HDDs can be installed.
A HX240c SFF node has 24 front-mounted SFF disk slots; 1 disk slot is reserved for SSD. This effectively means that each node can have up to 23 HDDs installed. Initial bundle configurations have either 11 or 15 HDDs installed. Custom configurations have 6 to 23 HDDs installed. In addition a HX240c M5 SFF node has 2 rear SFF disk slots.
A HX240c LFF node has 12 front-mounted LFF disk slots. This effectively means that each node can have up to 12 high-capacity HDDs installed. Initial bundle configurations have either 6 or 12 HDDs installed. Custom configurations have 6 to 12 HDDs installed. In addition a HX240c M5 LFF node has 2 rear SFF disk slots. 1 rear SFF disk slot is reserved for SSD.
A HXAF220c/HXAN220c node has 8 front-mounted SFF disk slots; In the M4 series 2 disk slots are reserved for non-data SSDs. This effectively means that each node can have up to 6 data SSDs installed; M5 series can have up to 8 data SSDs installed. Initial configurations have 6 to 8 SSDs installed.
A HXAF240c node has 24 front-mounted SFF disk slots; 1 is reserved for a non-data SSD. In addition a HXAF240c M5 node has 2 rear SFF disk slots for non-data SSDs. This effectively means that each node could have up to 23 data SSDs installed. However, in M4 systems only up to 10 3.8TB data SSDs can be configured.
HX 3.0 added support for a second NIC in HX nodes on a RPQ basis. HX 3.5 supports this unconditionally and the second NIC is now a part of the HX installer and deployment is automated.
LFF = Large Form Factor
SFF = Small Form Factor
|
CPU
Memory
Storage
GPU
StarWind Virtual SAN allows expansion of all server hardware resources.
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|
|
|
Storage+Compute
Compute-only
Storage-only
Storage+Compute: In a single-layer deployment existing SANsymphony clusters can be expanded by adding additional nodes running SANsymphony, which adds additional compute and storage resources to the shared pool. In a dual-layer deployment both the storage-only SANsymphony clusters and the compute clusters can be expanded simultaneously.
Compute-only: Because SANsymphony leverages virtual block volumes (LUNs), storage can be presented to hypervisor hosts not participating in the SANsymphony cluster. This is also beneficial to migrations, since it allows for online storage vMotions between SANsymphony and non-SANsymphony storage platforms.
Storage-only: In a dual-layer or mixed deployment both the storage-only SANsymphony clusters and the compute clusters can be expanded independent from each other.
|
Compute+storage
Compute-only (IO Visor)
Storage+Compute: Existing Cisco HyperFlex clusters can be expanded by adding additional HX nodes, which adds additional compute and storage resources to the shared pool.
Compute-only: The IO Visor module is a vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) that provides a network file system (NFS) mount point so that the ESXi hypervisor can access the virtual disk drives that are attached to individual virtual machines. From the hypervisor’s perspective, it is simply attached to a network file system.
The IO Visor module is installed on each storage node as well as each compute-only node in order to allow fast access the to the HX distributed file system (LogFS). Up to 8 hybrid or 16 all-flash Cisco UCS B2x0/B4x0/C2x0/C4x0 nodes can accomodate a compute-only role within a single storage cluster.
Storage-only: N/A; A Cisco HyperFlex node always takes active part in the hypervisor (compute) cluster as well as the storage cluster.
Cisco HyperFlex Edge: The initial configuration cannot be expanded beyond the default configuration, which consists of 3 HX220x Edge M5 rack-servers.
|
Storage+Compute
Compute-only
Storage-only
In case of Storage-only scale out, StarWind Virtual SAN Storage Nodes will be based on Windows Server bare metal with no hypervisor software installed eg. VMware ESXi. StarWind software will be running as a Windows-native application and providing storage to the hypervisor hosts.
|
|
|
|
1-64 nodes in 1-node increments
There is a maximum of 64 nodes within a single cluster. Multiple clusters can be managed through a single SANsymphony management instance.
|
vSphere: 2-32 storage nodes in 1-node increments + 0-32 compute-only nodes in 1-node increments
Hyper-V: 2-16 storage nodes in 1-node increments + 0-16 compute-only nodes in 1-node increments
NEW
Supported Cluster Minimums and Maximums:
vSphere non-stretched: 3-32 storage nodes + 0-32 compute-only nodes
vSphere stretched: 2-8 storage nodes + 0-8 compute-only nodes
Hyper-V non-stretched: 3-16 storage nodes + 0-16 compute-only nodes
At maximum a single storage cluster consists 32x HX220c, 32x HX240c, 32x HXAF220c or 32x HXAF240c nodes.
Cisco HX Data Platform supports up to 8 hybrid storage clusters on one vCenter, that equates to 256 hybrid storage nodes.
A hybrid/all-flash storage node cluster can be extended with up to 8/16 Cisco B200 M4/M5, C220 M4/M5 or C240 M4/M5 compute-only nodes. These nodes require the 'IO Visor' software installed in order to access the HX Data Platform.
IO Visor: This vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) provides a network file system (NFS) mount point so that the ESXi hypervisor can access the virtual disk drives that are attached to individual virtual machines. From the hypervisor’s perspective, it is simply attached to a network file system.
Cisco HyperFlex Edge: The storage node cluster configuration consists of 2, 3 or 4 HX220x Edge M5 rack-servers.
|
2-64 nodes in 1-node increments
The 64-node limit applies to both VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
|
|
|
Small-scale (ROBO)
Details
|
2 Node minimum
DataCore prevents split-brain scenarios by always having an active-active configuration of SANsymphony with a primary and an alternate path.
In the case SANsymphony servers are fully operating but do not see each other, the application host will still be able to read and write data via the primary path (no switch to secondary). The mirroring is interrupted because of the lost connection and the administrator is informed accordingly. All writes are stored on the locally available storage (primary path) and all changes are tracked. As soon as the connection between the SANsymphony servers is restored, the mirror will recover automatically based on these tracked changes.
Dual updates due to misconfiguration are detected automatically and data corruption is prevented by freezing the vDisk and waiting for user input to solve the conflict. Conflict solutions could be to declare one side of the mirror to be the new active data set and discarding all tracked changes at the other side, or splitting the mirror and merge the two data sets into a 3rd vDisk manually.
|
2 Node minimum
NEW
Next to acquiring individual nodes Cisco also offers a bundle that is aimed at small ROBO deployments, HyperFlex Edge.
Previously Cisco HyperFlex Edge clusters consisted of 3 HX220x Edge M5 hybrid nodes with 1GbE or 10GbE connectivity. This configuration couldnt be expanded.
HX 4.0 introduces Cisco HyperFlex Edge clusters consisting of 2, 3 or 4 HX220x Edge M5 all-flash nodes with 1GbE or 10GbE connectivity. 2 node clusters are monitored by Cisco Intersight Invisible Cloud Witness, eliminating the need for witness VMs and the infrastructure to manage those VMs as well as life cycle management.
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1 Node minimum
StarWind Virtual SAN can be used as standalone iSCSI target providing storage from one node (no HA). For HA two nodes are required. StarWind Virtual SAN can be further scaled by adding more storage or new nodes into the storage cluster.
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Storage Support
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General |
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Block Storage Pool
SANsymphony only serves block devices to the supported OS platforms.
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Distributed File System (DFS)
The Cisco HX platform uses a Distributed Log-structured File System called StorFS.
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Block Storage Pool
StarWind VSAN only serves block devices as storage volumes to the supported OS platforms.
The underlying storage is first aggregated with hardware or software RAID. Then, the storage is replicated by StarWind at the block level across 2 or 3 nodes and further provided as a single pool (single StarWind virtual device) or as multiple pools (multiple StarWind devices).
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Partial
DataCores core approach is to provide storage resources to the applications without having to worry about data locality. But if data locality is explicitly requested, the solution can partially be designed that way by configuring the first instance of all data to be stored on locally available storage (primary path) and the mirrored instance to be stored on the alternate path (secondary path). Furthermore every hypervisor host can have a local preferred path, indicated by the ALUA path preference.
By default data does not automatically follow the VM when the VM is moved to another node. However, virtual disks can be relocated on the fly to other DataCore node without losing I/O access, but this relocation takes some time due to data copy operations required. This kind of relocation usually is done manually, but we allow automation of such tasks and can integrate with VM orchestration using PowerShell for example.
Whether data locality is a good or a bad thing has turned into a philosophical debate. Its true that data locality can prevent a lot of network traffic between nodes, because the data is physically located at the same node where the VM resides. However, in dynamic environments where VMs move to different hosts on a frequent basis, data locality in most cases requires a lot of data to be copied between nodes in order to maintain the physical VM-data relationship. The SDS/HCI vendors today that choose not to use data locality, advocate that the additional network latency is negligible.
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None
The Cixco HX platform uses full dynamic data distribution. This means that data is evenly striped across all nodes within the storage cluster, thus data is at maximum one hop away from the VM. Nodes are connected to each other through the low latency Cisco Fabric Interconnect (FI) network.
Whether data locality is a good or a bad thing has turned into a philosophical debate. Its true that data locality can prevent a lot of network traffic between nodes, because the data is physically located at the same node where the VM resides. However, in dynamic environments where VMs move to different hosts on a frequent basis, data locality in most cases requires a lot of data to be copied between nodes in order to maintain the physical VM-data relationship. The SDS/HCI vendors today that choose not to use data locality, advocate that the additional network latency is negligible.
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Partial
StarWinds core approach is to keep data close (local) to the VM in order to avoid slow data transfers through the network and achieve the highest performance the setup can provide. The solution is designed to store the first instance of all data on locally available storage (primary path) and the mirrored instance to be stored on the alternate path (secondary path). Furthermore every hypervisor host can have a local preferred path, indicated by the ALUA path preference. Data does not automatically follow the VM when the VM is moved to another node.
Whether data locality is a good or a bad thing has turned into a philosophical debate. Its true that data locality can prevent a lot of network traffic between nodes, because the data is physically located at the same node where the VM resides. However, in dynamic environments where VMs move to different hosts on a frequent basis, data locality in most cases requires a lot of data to be copied between nodes in order to maintain the physical VM-data relationship. The SDS/HCI vendors today that choose not to use data locality, advocate that the additional network latency is negligible.
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Direct-attached (Raw)
Direct-attached (VoV)
SAN or NAS
VoV = Volume-on-Volume; The Virtual Storage Controller uses virtual disks provided by the hypervisor platform.
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Direct-attached (Raw)
SAN or NAS
Direct-attached: The software takes ownership of the unformatted physical disks available each HX node.
External SAN/NAS Storage: Cisco HyperFlex supports the connection to external Fiber Channel (FC), Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI and NFS storage through the Fabric Interconnect (FI) switches. Direct connect configurations are not supported. NFS Servers have to be listed on the VMware HCL.
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Direct-attached (Raw)
SAN or NAS
Direct-attached: StarWind can take control of formatted disks (NTFS). Also, StarWind software can present RAW unformatted disks over SCSI Pass Through Interface that enables remote initiator clients to use any type of a hard drive (PATA/SATA/RAID).
External SAN/NAS Storage: SAN/NAS can be connected over Ethernet connectivity and can be used for StarWind Virtual SAN as soon as they are provided as block storage (iSCSI). In case it is required to replicate data between NAS systems, there should be 2 NAS systems connected to nodes that will be used for StarWind Virtual SAN.
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Magnetic-only
All-Flash
3D XPoint
Hybrid (3D Xpoint and/or Flash and/or Magnetic)
NEW
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Hybrid (Flash+Magnetic)
All-Flash
Hybrid hosts cannot be mixed with All-Flash hosts in the same HyperFlex cluster.
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Magnetic-only
Hybrid (Flash+Magnetic)
All-Flash
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Hypervisor OS Layer
Details
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SD, USB, DOM, SSD/HDD
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Dual SD cards
SSD (optional for HX240c and HXAF240c systems)
Each HX node comes with two internal 64 GB Cisco Flexible Flash drives (SD cards). These SD cards are mirrored to each other and can be used for booting.
The HX240c and HXAF240c models also offer the choice to boot from a local 240GB M.2 SSD drive that is connected to the motherboard.
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SD, USB, DOM, SSD/HDD
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Memory |
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DRAM
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DRAM
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DRAM
DRAM can be used for caching in a write-back or write-through mode. Additionally, it can be used for creating StarWind RAM disks.
For further information, please visit:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/high-performance-ram-disk-emulator
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Read/Write Cache
DataCore SANsymphony accelerates reads and writes by leveraging the powerful processors and large DRAM memory inside current generation x86-64bit servers on which it runs. Up to 8 Terabytes of cache memory may be configured on each DataCore node, enabling it to perform at solid state disk speeds without the expense. SANsymphony uses a common cache pool to store reads and writes in.
SANsymphony read caching essentially recognizes I/O patterns to anticipate which blocks to read next into RAM from the physical back-end disks. That way the next request can be served from memory.
When hosts write to a virtual disk, the data first goes into DRAM memory and is later destaged to disk, often grouped with other writes to minimize delays when storing the data to the persistent disk layer. Written data stays in cache for re-reads.
The cache is cleaned on a first-in-first-out (FiFo) basis. Segment overwrites are performed on the oldest data first for both read- and write cache segment requests.
SANsymphony prevents the write cache data from flooding the entire cache. In case the write data amount runs above a certain percentage watermark of the entire cache amount, then the write cache will temporarily be switched to write-through mode in order to regain balance. This is performed fully automatically and is self-adjusting, per virtual disk as well as on a global level.
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Read Cache
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Read/Write Cache
StarWind Virtual SAN accelerates reads and writes by leveraging conventional RAM.
The memory cache is filled up with data mainly during write operations. During read operations, data enters the cache only if the latter contains either empty memory blocks or the lines that were allocated for these entries earlier and have not been fully exhausted yet.
StarWind VSAN supports two Memory (L1 Cache) Policies:
1. Write-Back, caches writes in DRAM only and acknowledges back to the originator when complete in DRAM.
2. Write-Through, caches writes in both DRAM and underlying storage, and acknowledges back to the originator when complete in the underlying storage.
This means that exclusively caching writes in convential memory is optional. When the Write-Through policy is used, DRAM is used primarily for caching reads.
To change the cache size, first, the StarWind service should be stopped and change cache and then start the service and then repeat the same process on the partner node. This allows keeping VMs up and running during cache changes.
In the majority of use cases, there is no need to assign L1 cache for all-flash storage arrays.
Note: In case of using the Write-Back policy for DRAM, UPS units have to be installed to ensure the correct shutdown of StarWind Virtual SAN nodes. If a power outage occurs, this will prevent the loss of cached data. The UPS capacity must cover the time required for flushing the cached data to the underlying storage.
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Up to 8 TB
The actual size that can be configured depends on the server hardware that is used.
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Non-configurable
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Configurable
The size of L1 cache should be equal to the amount of the average working data set.
There are no default or maximum values for RAM cache as such. The maximum size that can be assigned for StarWind RAM cache is limited by the available RAM to the system; also, you need to make sure that other applications running will have enough of RAM for their operations.
Additionally, the total amount of L1 cache assigned influences the time required for system shutdown so overprovisioning of the L1 cache amount can cause StarWind service interruption and the loss of cached data. The minimum size assigned for RAM cache in either write-back or write-through mode is 1MB. However, StarWind recommends assigning a StarWind RAM cache size that matches the size of the working data set.
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Flash |
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SSD, PCIe, UltraDIMM, NVMe
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SSD, NVMe
Cisco HyperFlex supports the use of NMVe SSDs for caching in All-Flash systems and for caching as well as persistent storage in All-NVMe systems.
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SSD, NVMe
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Persistent Storage
SANsymphony supports new TRIM / UNMAP capabilities for solid-state drives (SSD) in order to reduce wear on those devices and optimize performance.
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Hybrid: Log + Read/Write Cache
All-Flash/All-NVMe: Log + Write Cache + Storage Tier
In all Cisco HX hybrid configurations 1 separate SSD per node is used for houskeeping purposes (SDS logs).
In all Cisco HX hybrid and all-flash configurations 1 separate SSD per node is used for caching purposes. The other disks (SSD or HDD) in the node are used for persistent storage of data.
In a hybrid scenario, the caching SSD is primarily used for both read and write caching. However, data written to SSD is only destaged when needed. This means that current data stays available on the SSD layer as long as possible so that reads and writes are fast.
Distributed Read Cache: All SSD caching drives within the HyperFlex storage cluster form one big caching resource pool. This means that all storage nodes can access the entire distributed caching layer to read data.
In an all-flash scenario, the caching SSD (SAS) is primarily used for write caching. Reads are always accessed directly from the capacity SSD (SATA) layer, so a read cache is not required.
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Read/Write Cache (hybrid)
Persistent storage (all-flash)
StarWind Virtual SAN supports a single Flash (L2 Cache) Policy:
1. Write-Through, caches writes in both Flash (SSD/NVMe) and the underlying storage, and acknowledges back to the originator when complete in the underlying storage.
With the write-through policy, new blocks are written both to cache layer and the underlying storage synchronously. However, in this mode, only the blocks that are read most frequently are kept in the cache layer, accelerating read operations. This is the only mode available for StarWind L2 cache.
In the case of Write-Through cached data does not need to be offloaded to the backing store when a device is removed or the service is stopped.
In the majority of use cases, if L1 cache is already assigned, there is no need to configure L2 cache.
A StarWind Virtual SAN solution with L2 cache configured should have more RAM available, since L2 cache needs 6.5 GB of RAM per 1 TB of L2 cache to store metadata.
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No limit, up to 1 PB per device
The definition of a device here is a raw flash device that is presented to SANsymphony as either a SCSI LUN or a SCSI disk.
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Hybrid: 2 Flash devices per node (1x Cache; 1x Housekeeping)
All-Flash: 9-26 Flash devices per node (1x Cache; 1x System, 1x Boot; 6-23x Data)
All-NVMe: 8-11 NVMe devices per node (1x Cache, 1x System, 6-8 Data)
NEW
In Cisco HyperFlex hybrid configurations each storage node has 2 or 3 SSDs.
HX220c / HX220x Edge:
1 x 240GB SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SSD for system
1 x 480GB/800GB SSD for caching
HX240c:
1 x 240GB SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SSD for system
1 x 1.6TB SSD for caching
Fully Distributed Read Cache: All SSD caching drives within the HyperFlex storage cluster form one big caching resource pool. This means that all storage nodes can access the entire distributed caching layer to read data.
In Cisco HyperFlex all-flash configurations each storage node has 8-26 SSDs.
HXAF220x Edge:
1 x 240GB SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SSD for system/log
1 x 400GB/1.6TB SSD for caching
6-8 x 960GB/3.8TB SSD for data
HXAF220c:
1 x 240GB SSD for boot
1 x 240GB SSD for system/log
1 x 375GB Optane/400GB/800GB/1.6TB SSD for caching
6-8 x 800GB/960GB/3.8TB SSD for data
HXAF240c:
1x 240GB SSD for boot
1x 240GB for system/log
1x 375GB Optane/400GB/800GB/1.6TB SSD for caching
6-23 x 800GB/960GB/3.8TB SSD for data
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No limitations
The definition of a device here is a raw flash device that is presented to Virtual SAN as either a SCSI LUN or a SCSI disk.
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Magnetic |
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SAS or SATA
SAS = 10k or 15k RPM = Medium-capacity medium-speed drives
SATA = NL-SAS = 7.2k RPM = High-capacity low-speed drives
In this case SATA = NL-SAS = MDL SAS
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Hybrid: SAS or SATA
NEW
Magnetic disks are used for storing persistent data in a deduplicated and compressed format.
HX220c M5 / HX220x M5 Edge:
- 6-8 x 1.2TB/1.8TB/2.4TB SAS 10K SFF HDD for data
HX240c M5:
- 6-23 x 1.2TB/1.8TB/2.4TB SAS 10K SFF HDD for data
- 6-12 x 6TB/8TB/12TB SATA 7.2K LFF HDD for data
SAS = 10k or 15k RPM = Medium-capacity medium-speed drives
SATA = NL-SAS = 7.2k RPM = High-capacity low-speed drives
LFF = Large Form Factor
SFF = Small Form Factor
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SAS or SATA
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Persistent Storage
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Persistent Storage
HDD is primarily meant as a high-capacity storage tier.
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Persistent Storage
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Magnetic Capacity
Details
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No limit, up to 1 PB (per device)
The definition of a device here is a raw flash device that is presented to SANsymphony as either a SCSI LUN or a SCSI disk.
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HX220x Edge M5: 3-6 capacity devices per node
HX220c: 6-8 capacity devices per node
HX240c: 6-23 capacity devices per node
Option for 3-6 HDDs in HX220x M5 Edge hybrid nodes.
Option for 6 HDDs in HX220c M4 nodes.
Option for 6-8 HDDs in HX220c M5 nodes.
Option for 6-23 SFF HDDs or 6-12 LFF HDDs in HX240c M4/M5 nodes.
SFF = Small Form Factor
LFF = Large Form Factor
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No limitations
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Data Availability
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Reads/Writes |
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Persistent Write Buffer
Details
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DRAM (mirrored)
If caching is turned on (default=on), any write will only be acknowledged back to the host after it has been succesfully stored in DRAM memory of two separate physical SANsymphony nodes. Based on de-staging algorithms each of the nodes eventually copies the written data that is kept in DRAM to the persistent disk layer. Because DRAM outperforms both flash and spinning disks the applications experience much faster write behavior.
Per default, the limit of dirty-write-data allowed per Virtual Disk is 128MB. This limit could be adjusted, but there has never been a reason to do so in the real world. Individual Virtual Disks can be configured to act in write-through mode, which means that the dirty-write-data limit is set to 0MB so effectively the data is directly written to the persistent disk layer.
DataCore recommends that all servers running SANsymphony software are UPS protected to avoid data loss through unplanned power outages. Whenever a power loss is detected, the UPS automatically signals this to the SANsymphony node and write behavior is switched from write-back to write-through mode for all Virtual Disks. As soon as the UPS signals that power has been restored, the write behavior is switched to write-back again.
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Flash Layer (SSD, NVMe)
The caching SSDs contain two write logs with a size of 12GB each. At all times 1 write log is active and 1 write log is passive. Writes are always performed to the active write log at the SSD cache layer and when full it gets de-staged to the HDD/SSD capacity layer.
During destaging the data is optimized by deduplication and compression before writing it to the persistent HDD/SSD layer.
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DRAM (mirrored)
Flash Layer (SSD, NVMe)
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Disk Failure Protection
Details
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2-way and 3-way Mirroring (RAID-1) + opt. Hardware RAID
DataCore SANsymphony software primarily uses mirroring techniques (RAID-1) to protect data within the cluster. This effectively means the SANsymphony storage platform can withstand a failure of any two disks or any two nodes within the storage cluster. Optionally, hardware RAID can be implemented to enhance the robustness of individual nodes.
SANsymphony supports Dynamic Data Resilience. Data redundancy (none, 2-way or 3-way) can be added or removed on-the-fly at the vdisk level.
A 2-way mirror acts as active-active, where both copies are accessible to the host and written to. Updating of the mirror is synchronous and bi-directional.
A 3-way mirror acts as active-active-backup, where the active copies are accessible to the host and written to, and the backup copy is inaccessible to the host (paths not presented) and written to. Updating of the mirrors active copies is synchronous and bi-directional. Updating of the mirrors backup copy is synchronous and unidirectional (receive only).
In a 3-way mirror the backup copy should be independent of existing storage resources that are used for the active copies. Because of the synchronous updating all mirror copies should be equal in storage performance.
When in a 3-way mirror an active copy fails, the backup copy is promoted to active state. When the failed mirror copy is repaired, it automatically assumes a backup state. Roles can be changed manually on-the-fly by the end-user.
DataCore SANsymphony 10.0 PSP9 U1 introduced System Managed Mirroring (SMM). A multi-copy virtual disk is created from a storage source (disk pool or pass-through disk) from two or three DataCore Servers in the same server group. Data is synchronously mirrored between the servers to maintain redundancy and high availability of the data. System Managed Mirroring (SMM) addresses the complexity of managing multiple mirror paths for numerous virtual disks. This feature also addresses the 256 LUN limitation by allowing thousands of LUNs to be handled per network adapter. The software transports data in a round robin mode through available mirror ports to maximize throughput and can dynamically reroute mirror traffic in the event of lost ports or lost connections. Mirror paths are automatically and silently managed by the software.
The System Managed Mirroring (SMM) feature is disabled by default. This feature may be enabled or disabled for the server group.
With SANsymphony 10.0 PSP10 adds seamless transition when converting Mirrored Virtual Disks (MVD) to System Managed Mirroring (SMM). Seamless transition converts and replaces mirror paths on virtual disks in a manner in which there are no momentary breaks in mirror paths.
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1-2 Replicas (2N-3N)
HyperFlexs implementation of replicas is called Replication Factor or RF in short (RF2 = 2N; RF3 = 3N). Maintaining 2 replicas (RF3) is the default method for protecting data that is written to the HyperFlex cluster. It applies to both disk and node failures. This means the HX storage platform can withstand a failure of any two disks or any two nodes within the storage cluster.
An Access Policy can be set to determine how the storage cluster should behave when a second failure occurs and effectively a single point of failure (SPoF) situation is reached:
- The storage cluster goes offline to protect the data.
- The storage cluster goes into read-only mode to facilitate data access.
- The storage cluster stays in read/write mode to facilitate data access as well as data mutations.
The self-healing process after a disk failure kicks in after 1 minute.
Replicas: Before any write is acknowledged to the host, it is synchronously replicated to the active Log on another node. All nodes in the cluster participate in replication. This means that with 3N one instance of data that is written is stored on one node and other instances of that data are stored on two different nodes in the cluster. For all instances this happens in a fully distributed manner, in other words, there is no dedicated partner node. When a disk fails, it is marked offline and data is read from another instance instead. At the same time data re-replication of the associated replicas is initiated in order to restore the desired Replication Factor.
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1-2 Replicas (2N-3N)
+ Hardware RAID (1, 5, 10)
StarWind Virtual SAN replicates the storage to protect data within the cluster. In addition, hardware or software RAID is implemented to enhance the robustness of individual nodes.
Replicas+Hardware RAID: Before any write is acknowledged to the host, it is synchronously replicated to one or two designated partner nodes. This means that with 2N one instance of data that is written is stored on the local node and another instance of that data is stored on the designated partner node in the cluster. With 3N one instance of data that is written is stored on the local node, and two other instances of that data are stored on designated partner nodes in the cluster. When a physical disk fails, hardware RAID maintains data availability.
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Node Failure Protection
Details
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2-way and 3-way Mirroring (RAID-1)
DataCore SANsymphony software primarily uses mirroring techniques (RAID-1) to protect data within the cluster. This effectively means the SANsymphony storage platform can withstand a failure of any two disks or any two nodes within the storage cluster. Optionally, hardware RAID can be implemented to enhance the robustness of individual nodes.
SANsymphony supports Dynamic Data Resilience. Data redundancy (none, 2-way or 3-way) can be added or removed on-the-fly at the vdisk level.
A 2-way mirror acts as active-active, where both copies are accessible to the host and written to. Updating of the mirror is synchronous and bi-directional.
A 3-way mirror acts as active-active-backup, where the active copies are accessible to the host and written to, and the backup copy is inaccessible to the host (paths not presented) and written to. Updating of the mirrors active copies is synchronous and bi-directional. Updating of the mirrors backup copy is synchronous and unidirectional (receive only).
In a 3-way mirror the backup copy should be independent of existing storage resources that are used for the active copies. Because of the synchronous updating all mirror copies should be equal in storage performance.
When in a 3-way mirror an active copy fails, the backup copy is promoted to active state. When the failed mirror copy is repaired, it automatically assumes a backup state. Roles can be changed manually on-the-fly by the end-user.
DataCore SANsymphony 10.0 PSP9 U1 introduced System Managed Mirroring (SMM). A multi-copy virtual disk is created from a storage source (disk pool or pass-through disk) from two or three DataCore Servers in the same server group. Data is synchronously mirrored between the servers to maintain redundancy and high availability of the data. System Managed Mirroring (SMM) addresses the complexity of managing multiple mirror paths for numerous virtual disks. This feature also addresses the 256 LUN limitation by allowing thousands of LUNs to be handled per network adapter. The software transports data in a round robin mode through available mirror ports to maximize throughput and can dynamically reroute mirror traffic in the event of lost ports or lost connections. Mirror paths are automatically and silently managed by the software.
The System Managed Mirroring (SMM) feature is disabled by default. This feature may be enabled or disabled for the server group.
With SANsymphony 10.0 PSP10 adds seamless transition when converting Mirrored Virtual Disks (MVD) to System Managed Mirroring (SMM). Seamless transition converts and replaces mirror paths on virtual disks in a manner in which there are no momentary breaks in mirror paths.
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Logical Availability Zone
HyperFlex 3.0 introduced the concept of Logical Availability Zones (LAZs). It is an optional feature and is turned off by default. LAZ is not user-configurable at this time; the system intelligently assigns nodes to a specific LAZ (4 nodes per LAZ).
Logical Availability Zones (LAZs): When using LAZs, one instance of the data is kept within the local LAZ and another instance of the data is kept within another LAZ. Because of this, the cluster can sustain a greater number of node failures until the cluster shuts down to avoid data loss.
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1-2 Replicas (2N-3N)
Replicas: Before any write is acknowledged to the host, it is synchronously replicated to one or two designated partner nodes. This means that with 2N one instance of data that is written is stored on the local node and another instance of that data is stored on the designated partner node in the cluster. With 3N one instance of data that is written is stored on the local node, and two other instances of that data are stored on designated partner nodes in the cluster.
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Block Failure Protection
Details
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Not relevant (usually 1-node appliances)
Manual configuration (optional)
Manual designation per Virtual Disk is required to accomplish this. The end-user is able to define which node is paired to which node for that particular Virtual Disk. However, block failure protection is in most cases irrelevant as 1-node appliances are used as building blocks.
SANsymphony works on an N+1 redundancy design allowing any node to acquire any other node as a redundancy peer per virtual device. Peers are replacable/interchangable on a per Virtual Disk level.
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Not relevant (1-node chassis only)
Cisco HyperFlex (HX) compute+storage building blocks are based on 1-node chassis only. Therefore multi-node block (appliance) level protection is not relevant for this solution as Node Failure Protection applies.
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Not relevant (usually 1-node appliances)
In a 3-node cluster, StarWind can provide 3-way mirroring, allowing the cluster to withstand a failure of two nodes without loosing data accessibility. In a cluster of more than 3 nodes, a grid architecture can be configured to withstand the failure of two nodes.
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Rack Failure Protection
Details
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Manual configuration
Manual designation per Virtual Disk is required to accomplish this. The end-user is able to define which node is paired to which node for that particular Virtual Disk.
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N/A
HyperFlex 3.0 introduced the concept of Logical Availability Zones (LAZs). It is an optional feature and is turned off by default. LAZ is not user-configurable at this time and therefore cannot be used to align each rack to a different LAZ.
Logical Availability Zones (LAZs): When using LAZs, one instance of the data is kept within the local LAZ and another instance of the data is kept within another LAZ. Because of this, the cluster can sustain a greater number of node failures until the cluster shuts down to avoid data loss.
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N/A
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Protection Capacity Overhead
Details
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Mirroring (2N) (primary): 100%
Mirroring (3N) (primary): 200%
+ Hardware RAID5/6 overhead (optional)
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Replicas (2N): 100%
Replicas (3N): 200%
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Replica (2N) + RAID1/10: 200%
Replica (2N) + RAID5: 125-133%
Replica (3N) + RAID1/10: 300%
Replica (3N) + RAID5: 225-233%
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Data Corruption Detection
Details
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N/A (hardware dependent)
SANsymphony fully relies on the hardware layer to protect data integrity. This means that the SANsymphony software itself does not perform Read integrity checks and/or Disk scrubbing to verify and maintain data integrity.
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Read integrity checks
While writing data checksums are created and stored. When read again, a new checksum is created and compared to the initial checksum. If incorrect, a checksum is created from another copy of the data. After succesful comparison this data is used to repair the corrupted copy in order to stay compliant with the configured protection level.
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N/A (hardware dependent)
StarWind Virtual SAN fully relies on the hardware layer to protect data integrity. This means that the StarWind software itself does not perform Read integrity checks and/or Disk scrubbing to verify and maintain data integrity.
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Points-in-Time |
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Built-in (native)
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Built-in (native)
HyperFlexs native snapshot mechanism is meta-data based, space-efficient (zero-copy) and VMware VAAI / Microsoft Checkpoint-integrated.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have native snapshot capabilities. Hypervisor-native snapshot capabilities can be leveraged instead.
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Local + Remote
SANsymphony snapshots are always created on one side only. However, SANsymphony allows you to create a snapshot for the data on each side by configuring two snapshot schedules, one for the local volume and one for the remote volume. Both snapshot entities are independent and can be deleted independently allowing different retention times if needed.
There is also the capability to pair the snapshot feature along with asynchronous replication which provides you with the ability to have a third site long distance remote copy in place with its own retention time.
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Local
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have native snapshot capabilities. Hypervisor-native snapshot capabilities can be leveraged instead.
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Snapshot Frequency
Details
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1 Minute
The snapshot lifecycle can be automatically configured using the integrated Automation Scheduler.
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GUI: 1 hour (Policy-based)
Timing options of the HX native snapshot capability include:
- Hourly
- Daily
- Weekly
and works in 15 minute increments.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have native snapshot capabilities. Hypervisor-native snapshot capabilities can be leveraged instead.
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Snapshot Granularity
Details
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Per VM (Vvols) or Volume
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
Although DataCore SANsymphony uses block-storage, the platform is capable of attaining per VM-granularity if desired.
In Microsoft Hyper-V environments, when a VM with vdisks is created through SCVMM, DataCore can be instructed to automatically carve out a Virtual Disk (=storage volume) for every individual vdisk. This way there is a 1-to-1 alignment from end-to-end and snapshots can be created on the VM-level. The per-VM functionality is realized by installing the DataCore Storage Management Provider in SCVMM.
Because of the per-host storage limitations in VMware vSphere environments, VVols is leveraged to provide per VM-granularity. DataCore SANsymphony Provider v2.01 is certified for VMware ESXi 6.5 U2/U3, ESXi 6.7 GA/U1/U2/U3 and ESXi 7.0 GA/U1.
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Per VM or VM-folder
The Cisco HX Data Platform uses metadata-based, zero-copy snapshots of files. In VMware vSphere these files map to individual drives in a virtual machine.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have native snapshot capabilities. Hypervisor-native snapshot capabilities can be leveraged instead.
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Built-in (native)
DataCore SANsymphony incorporates Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and leverages this as an advanced backup mechanism. As the term implies, CDP continuously logs and timestamps I/Os to designated virtual disks, allowing end-users to restore the environment to an arbitrary point-in-time within that log.
Similar to snapshot requests, one can generate a CDP Rollback Marker by scripting a call to a PowerShell cmdlet when an application has been quiesced and the caches have been flushed to storage. Several of these markers may be present throughout the 14-day rolling log. When rolling back a virtual disk image, one simply selects an application-consistent or crash-consistent restore point from just before the incident occurred.
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External
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
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External
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Local or Remote
All available storage within the SANsymphony group can be configured as targets for back-up jobs.
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Continuously
As Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is being leveraged, I/Os are logged and timestamped in a continous fashion, so end-users can restore to virtually any-point-in-time.
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Backup Consistency
Details
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Crash Consistent
File System Consistent (Windows)
Application Consistent (MS Apps on Windows)
By default CDP creates crash consistent restore points. Similar to snapshot requests, one can generate a CDP Rollback Marker by scripting a call to a PowerShell cmdlet when an application has been quiesced and the caches have been flushed to storage.
Several CDP Rollback Markers may be present throughout the 14-day rolling log. When rolling back a virtual disk image, one simply selects an application-consistent, filesystem-consistent or crash-consistent restore point from (just) before the incident occurred.
In a VMware vSphere environment, the DataCore VMware vCenter plug-in can be used to create snapshot schedules for datastores and select the VMs that you want to enable VSS filesystem/application consistency for.
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Restore Granularity
Details
|
Entire VM or Volume
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
Although DataCore SANsymphony uses block-storage, the platform is capable of attaining per VM-granularity if desired.
In Microsoft Hyper-V environments, when a VM with vdisks is created through SCVMM, DataCore can be instructed to automatically carve out a Virtual Disk (=storage volume) for every individual vdisk. This way there is a 1-to-1 alignment from end-to-end and snapshots can be created on the VM-level. The per-VM functionality is realized by installing the DataCore Storage Management Provider in SCVMM.
Because of the per-host storage limitations in VMware vSphere environments, VVols is leveraged to provide per VM-granularity. DataCore SANsymphony Provider v2.01 is VMware certified for ESXi 6.5 U2/U3, ESXi 6.7 GA/U1/U2/U3 and ESXi 7.0 GA/U1.
When configuring the virtual environment as described above, effectively VM-restores are possible.
For file-level restores a Virtual Disk snapshot needs to be mounted so the file can be read from the mount. Many simultaneous rollback points for the same Virtual Disk can coexist at the same time, allowing end-users to compare data states. Mounting and changing rollback points does not alter the original Virtual Disk.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Restore Ease-of-use
Details
|
Entire VM or Volume: GUI
Single File: Multi-step
Restoring VMs or single files from volume-based storage snapshots requires a multi-step approach.
For file-level restores a Virtual Disk snapshot needs to be mounted so the file can be read from the mount. Many simultaneous rollback points for the same Virtual Disk can coexist at the same time, allowing end-users to compare data states. Mounting and changing rollback points does not alter the original Virtual Disk.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
Veeam is a strategic partner of Cisco.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any backup/restore capabilities of its own. Therefore it relies on existing 3rd party data protection solutions.
VMwares free-of-charge backup software that comes with any vSphere license, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), has been declared End-of-Availability and is not supported for VMware vSphere 6.7 and up.
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Disaster Recovery |
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Remote Replication Type
Details
|
Built-in (native)
DataCore SANsymphonys remote replication function, Asynchronous Replication, is called upon when secondary copies will be housed beyond the reach of Synchronous Mirroring, as in distant Disaster Recovery (DR) sites. It relies on a basic IP connection between locations and works in both directions. That is, each site can act as the disaster recovery facility for the other. The software operates near-synchronously, meaning that it does not hold up the application waiting on confirmation from the remote end that the update has been stored remotely.
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Built-in (native)
Cisco HyperFlex is capable of protecting individual VMs and groups of VMs by using a-synchronous remote replication techniques.
Once protection has been set up on a VM, Cisco HyperFlex periodically takes a replication snapshot of a running VM on the local cluster and replicates (copies) the snapshot to the paired remote cluster. In the event of a disaster at the local cluster, the most recently replicated snapshot of each protected VM is used to recover and run the VM at the remote cluster.
Optionally Cisco HyperFlex can quiesce the virtual machines through VMware vCenter integration before taking the replication snapshot.
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Built-in (native; stretched clusters only)
External
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have any remote replication capabilities of its own. Stretched Clustering with synchronous replication is the exception.
Therefore in non-stretched setups it relies on external remote replication mechanisms like the ones natively available in the hypervisor platform (VMware vSphere Replication, Microsoft Hyper-V Replica) or any 3rd party remote replication application (eg. Zerto VR, Veeam VM replica, Azure Site Recovery).
vSphere Replication requires the deployment of virtual appliances. No specific integration exists between StarWind VSAN and VMware vSphere VR.
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Remote Replication Scope
Details
|
To remote sites
To MS Azure Cloud
On-premises deployments of DataCore SANsymphony can use Microsoft Azure cloud as an added replication location to safeguard highly available systems. For example, on-premises stretched clusters can replicate a third copy of the data to MS Azure to protect against data loss in the event of a major regional disaster. Critical data is continuously replicated asynchronously within the hybrid cloud configuration.
To allow quick and easy deployment a ready-to-go DataCore Cloud Replication instance can be acquired through the Azure Marketplace.
MS Azure can serve only as a data repository. This means that VMs cannot be restored and run in an Azure environment in case of a disaster recovery scenario.
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To remote sites
Cisco HyperFlex remote replication happens between two clusters. Clusters can be either all-flash or hybrid. Mixed configurations are supported. This means that remote replication can take place between an all-flash cluster and a hybrid cluster.
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VR: To remote sites, To VMware clouds
HR: To remote sites, to Microsoft Azure (not part of Windows Server 2019)
VMware vSphere Replication (VR): VMware vSphere Replication allows for replication of VMs to a different vSphere cluster on a remote site or to any supported VMware Cloud Service Provider (vSphere Replication to Cloud). This includes VMware on AWS and VMware on IBM Cloud.
Hyper-V Replica (HR): Hyper-V Replica is an integral part of the Hyper-V role. This feature enables block-level log-based replication of an active source VM to a passive destination VM located on another Hyper-V server or to Microsoft Azure (requires Azure Site Recovery, which is a paid external service, i.e. not part of Windows Server 2019).
Because Hyper-V Replica operates on the hypervisor layer, it is storage agnostic. This means that on one site you can have Hyper-V 2019 on SAN, whereas on the other site you can have Hyper-V 2019 on S2D.
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Remote Replication Cloud Function
Details
|
Data repository
All public clouds can only serve as data repository when hosting a DataCore instance. This means that VMs cannot be restored and run in the public cloud environment in case of a disaster recovery scenario.
In the Microsoft Azure Marketplace there is a pre-installed DataCore instance (BYOL) available named DataCore Cloude Replication.
BYOL = Bring Your Own License
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not support replication to hyperscale public cloud targets (AWS, Azure, GCP) at this time.
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VR: DR-site (VMware Clouds)
HR: DR-site (Azure)
VMware vSphere Replication (VR): Because VMware on AWS and VMware on IBM Cloud are full vSphere implementations, replicated VMs can be started and run in a DR-scenario.
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Remote Replication Topologies
Details
|
Single-site and multi-site
Single Site DR = 1-to-1
Multiple Site DR = 1-to many, many-to 1
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Single-site
Cisco HyperFlex remote replication happens between two clusters. Both clusters must be either all-flash or hybrid. Mixed configurations are not supported. This means that remote replication cannot take place between an all-flash and a hybrid cluster.
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VR: Single-site and multi-site
HR: Single-site and chained
Single Site DR = 1-to-1
Multiple Site DR = 1-to many, many-to 1
Hyper-V Replica (HR): Besides 1-to-1 replications Hyper-V Replica allows for extended (chained) replication. A VM can be replicated from a primary host to a secondary host, and then be replicated from the secondary host to a third host. Please note that it is not possible to replicate from the primary host directly to the second and the third (1-to-many).
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Remote Replication Frequency
Details
|
Continuous (near-synchronous)
SANsymphony Asynchronous Replication is not checkpoint-based but instead replicates continuously. This way data loss is kept to a minimum (seconds to minutes). End-users can inject custom consistency checkpoints based on CDP technology which has no minimum time slot/frequency.
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5 minutes (Asynchronous)
Replication intervals can range between 5 minutes and 24 hours.
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VR: 5 minutes (Asynchronous)
HR: 30 seconds (Asynchronous)
SW: Continuous (Stretched Cluster)
Hyper-V Replica (HR): With Hyper-V Replica replication frequency can be set to 30 seconds, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes on a per-VM basis.
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Remote Replication Granularity
Details
|
VM or Volume
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
Although DataCore SANsymphony uses block-storage, the platform is capable of attaining per VM-granularity if desired.
In Microsoft Hyper-V environments, when a VM with vdisks is created through SCVMM, DataCore can be instructed to automatically carve out a Virtual Disk (=storage volume) for every individual vdisk. This way there is a 1-to-1 alignment from end-to-end and snapshots can be created on the VM-level. The per-VM functionality is realized by installing the DataCore Storage Management Provider in SCVMM.
Because of the per-host storage limitations in VMware vSphere environments, VVols is leveraged to provide per VM-granularity. DataCore SANsymphony Provider v2.01 is VMware certified for ESXi 6.5 U2/U3, ESXi 6.7 GA/U1/U2/U3 and ESXi 7.0 GA/U1.
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VM
Cisco HyperFlex allows for each virtual machine to be individually protected by assigning its protection attributes.
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VR: VM
HR: VM
Both vSphere Replication (VR) and Hyper-V Replica operate on the VM level.
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Consistency Groups
Details
|
Yes
SANsymphony provides the option to use Virtual Disk Grouping to enable end-users to restore multiple Virtual Disks to the exact same point-in-time.
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
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No
A new per-cluster construct called a Protection Group, groups protected VMs and assigns them the same protection attributes. A VM can be protected simply by adding it to a protection group for which attributes have already been defined.
A virtual machine can only belong to one protection group.
Currently HyperFlex Protection Groups exist for administrative purposes only. Protection Groups should not be confused with Consistency Groups. VMs are configured as part of a Consistency Group in order to guarantee that all VMs in the group reflect exactly the same point-in-time and thus guaranteeing write-fidelity across VMs.
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VR: No
HR: No
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VMware SRM (certified)
DataCore provides a certified Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM). DataCore SRA 2.0 (SANsymphony 10.0 FC/iSCSI) shows official support for SRM 6.5 only. It does not support SRM 8.2 or 8.1.
There is no integration with Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR). However, SANsymphony can be used with the control and automation options provided by Microsoft System Center (e.g. Operations Manager combined with Virtual Machine Manager and Orchestrator) to build a DR orchestration solution.
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HX Connect (native)
VMware SRM (certified)
NEW
HX Connect provides the following DR Orchestration capabilities for Cisco HyperFlex:
- Test Recovery
- Recovery
- Re-protect
With Test Recovery as well as Recovery network mappings can be used to avoid problems from occurring. Also there is a choice to leave VMs powered off after recovery.
When using HC Connect Test Recovery, replication is not interupted and as such does not impact ongoing data protection processes. The intent is to verify if individual VMs are recoverable.
Recovering virtual machines is restoring a most recent replication snapshot from the target (recovery) cluster. The maximum number of concurrent recovery operations on a cluster is 20. Recovery works for both Protection Groups and standalone VMs.
Re-protect is reversing the direction of protection and is used after disaster recovery has taken place and the DR site is effectively being used for Production purposes. The re-protect process cannot be rolled back. Performing disasater recovery orchestration entirely through the HX Connect user interface requires a separate vCenter server being used in both geoographical sites.
HX Connect does not require separate software licenses.
HX 4.0 introduces new HyperFlex DR PowerShell Runbooks.
HX 4.0 introduces a Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) v1.0.0 for integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 8.1 and 6.5.
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have a-synchronous native remote-replication capabilities and does not provide a Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware SRM implementations.
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Stretched Cluster (SC)
Details
|
VMware vSphere: Yes (certified)
DataCore SANsymphony is certified by VMware as a VMware Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) solution. For more information, please view https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2149740.
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vSphere: Yes
Hyper-V: No
Cisco HyperFlex has no VMware vMSC certification.
Cisco HyperFlex does not (yet) support stretched clustering for Microsoft Hyper-V.
Cisco HyperFlex Stretched Clustering is only supported for fresh HX 3.0+ installs. Upgrade or expansion of HX 2.x based clusters is not supported.
In HX 3.5 vSphere node expansion workflow is included and supported. HX 3.5 also adds support for HX compute-only nodes as well as HX native replication.
Cisco HyperFlex Stretched Cluster hardware restrictions:
- only M5 supported (no M4 or M5+M4 mix)
- only homogeneus models supported (no HX220+HX240 mix)
- no support for self-encrypting drives (SED)
- external storage is supported, but synchronous replication is the responsibility of the external storage solution.
HX Connect UI (HTML5) is used for managing HyperFlex stretched clusters:
- Cross site HX cluster creation
- Non-disruptive online rolling cluster upgrades
- Site awareness
- Site specific Alarm and Events on a single Dashboard
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vSphere: Yes
Hyper-V: Yes
StarWind Virtual SAN supports active-active Stretched Clustering which leverages native synchronous block-level replication.
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2+sites = two or more active sites, 0/1 or more tie-breakers
Theoretically up to 64 sites are supported.
SANsymphony does not require a quorum or tie-breaker in stretched cluster configurations, but can be used as an optional component. The Virtual Disk Witness can provide a tie-breaker role if for instance redundant inter site paths are not implemented. The tie-breaker node (server or device) must be other than the two nodes presenting a virtual disk. Access to the Virtual Disk Witness is leading for storage node behavior.
There are 3 ways to configure the stretched cluster without any tie-breakers:
1. Default: in a split-brain scenario both sides stay active allowing upper infrastructure layers (OS/database/application) to make a decision (eg. clustering principles). In any case SANsymphony prevents a merge when there is a risk to data integrity, and the end-user has to make the choice on how to proceed next (which side is true)
2. Select one side to go inaccessible
3. Select both sides to go inaccessible.
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vSphere: 3-sites = two active sites + tie-breaker in 3rd site
The use of a Witness Server automates failover decisions in order to avoid split-brain scenarios like network partitions and remote site failures. The witness is deployed as a small VM on a third site.
The RTT to the third site should not exceed 200ms and there should be at least 100Mbps of bandwidth available.
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vSphere: 2+ sites = minimum of two active sites + optional tie-breaker in 3rd site
Hyper-V: 2+ sites = minimum of two active sites + optional tie-breaker in 3rd site
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<=5ms RTT (targeted, not required)
RTT = Round Trip Time
In truth the user/app with the least tolerated write latency defines the acceptable RTT or distance. In practice
|
<=5ms RTT / 10Gbps
Cisco HyperFlex Stretched Clustering supports sites that located a few 100KMs from eachother.
RTT = Round Trip Time
|
<=5ms RTT
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<=32 hosts at each active site (per cluster)
The maximum is per cluster. The SANsymphony solution can consist of multiple stretched clusters with a maximum of 64 nodes each.
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2-16 converged hosts + 0-16 compute hosts at each active site
Cisco HX allows a single cluster up to 64 nodes to be placed across two datacenters in a symmetric configuration (16cn+16co)+(16cn+16co).
sn = converged node (compute+storage)
cn = compute-only node
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No set maximum number of nodes
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SC Data Redundancy
Details
|
Replicas: 1N-2N at each active site
DataCore SANsymphony provides enhanced stretched cluster availability by offering local fault protection with In Pool Mirroring. With In Pool Mirroring you can choose to mirror the data inside the local Disk Pool as well as mirror the data across sites to a remote Disk Pool. In the remote Disk Pool data is then also mirrored. All mirroring happens synchronously.
1N-2N: With SANsymphony Stretched Clustering, there can be either 1 instance of the data at each site (no In Pool Mirroring) or 2 instances of the data a each site (In Pool RAID-1 Mirroring).
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Replicas: 2N at each active site
In the case of stretched clustering, 2N means that there are two instances of the data available at each of the active sites (effectively RF4). HX Stretched Clustering leverages synchronous data replication.
RF= Replication Factor
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Replicas: 0-3 Replicas at each active site
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Data Services
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Efficiency |
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Dedup/Compr. Engine
Details
|
Software (integration)
NEW
SANsymphony provides integrated and individually selectable inline deduplication and compression. In addition, SANsymphony is able to leverage post-processing deduplication and compression options available in Windows 2016/2019 as an alternative approach.
|
Software
The deduplication and compression techniques used by the HX Data Platform have a very low performance impact.
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vSphere: Software (native)
Hyper-V: Software (integration)
StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere provides inline deduplication and compression at the software level. In Hyper-V environments, post-process deduplication and compression can be used by leveraging Windows Server OS native capabilities.
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Dedup/Compr. Function
Details
|
Efficiency (space savings)
Deduplication and compression can provide two main advantages:
1. Efficiency (space savings)
2. Performance (speed)
Most of the time deduplication/compression is primarily focussed on efficiency.
|
Efficiency and Performance
Deduplication and compression can provide two main advantages:
1. Efficiency (space savings)
2. Performance (speed)
Most of the time deduplication/compression is primarily focussed on efficiency.
Key performance metrics of the Cisco HyperFlex (HX) platform architecture include minimizing storage latency and maximizing storage throughput. With HX a write is logged in low-latency flash (NVMe SSDs) and immediately acknowledged to the client, minimizing latency. A full dedup lookup and verification is not performed prior to acknowledging a write, because this can potentially increase latency. However, incoming data is compressed before logging to NVMe flash using a lightweight algorithm to minimize impact to latency. As many typical write patterns that might benefit from dedup also compress well, this reduces the amount of data written to the write log and thus optimizes NVMe flash capacity.
|
Efficiency (space savings)
Deduplication and compression can provide two main advantages:
1. Efficiency (space savings)
2. Performance (speed)
Most of the time deduplication/compression is primarily focussed on efficiency.
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Dedup/Compr. Process
Details
|
Deduplication: Inline (post-ack)
Compression: Inline (post-ack)
Deduplication/Compression: Post-Processing (post process)
NEW
Deduplication can be performed in 4 ways:
1. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and before the write is ackowledged back to the originator of the write (pre-ack).
2. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and in parallel to the write being acknowledged back to the originator of the write (on-ack).
3. A short time after the write is processed (inline) so after the write is acknowleged back to the originator of the write - eg. when flushing the write buffer to persistent storage (post-ack)
4. After the write has been committed to the persistent storage layer (post-process).
The first and second methods, when properly integrated into the solution, are most likely to offer both performance and capacity benefits. The third and fourth methods are primarily used for capacity benefits only.
DataCore SANSymphony 10 PSP12 and above leverage both inline deduplication and compression, as well as post process deduplication and compression techniques.
With inline deduplication incoming writes first hit the memory cache of the primary host and are replicated to the cache of a secondary host in an un-deduplicated state. After the blocks have been written to both memory caches, the primary host acknowledges the writes back to the originator. Each host then destages the written blocks to the persistent storage layer. During destaging, written blocks are deduplicates and/or compressed.
Windows Server 2019 deduplication is performed outside of IO path (post-processing) and is multi-threaded to speed up processing and keep performance impact minimal.
|
Deduplication: Inline (post-ack)
Compression: Inline (post-ack)
Deduplication can be performed in 4 ways:
1. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and before the write is ackowledged back to the originator of the write (pre-ack).
2. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and in parallel to the write being acknowledged back to the originator of the write (on-ack).
3. A short time after the write is processed (inline) so after the write is acknowleged back to the originator of the write - eg. when flushing the write buffer to persistent storage (post-ack)
4. After the write has been committed to the persistent storage layer (post-process).
The first and second methods, when properly integrated into the solution, are most likely to offer both performance and capacity benefits. The third and fourth methods are primarily used for capacity benefits only.
Key performance metrics of the Cisco HyperFlex (HX) platform architecture include minimizing latency and maximizing throughput.
The HX approach is aimed at minimizing latency of writes (and thus improving workload performance) by avoiding a dedup lookup prior to logging a write and acknowledging the write to the client. Further, maximum throughput is improved by eliminating flushing of duplicate blocks to the backend storage.
|
vSphere: Inline
Hyper-V: Post-Processing
Deduplication can be performed in 4 ways:
1. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and before the write is ackowledged back to the originator of the write (pre-ack).
2. Immediately when the write is processed (inline) and in parallel to the write being acknowledged back to the originator of the write (on-ack).
3. A short time after the write is processed (inline) so after the write is acknowleged back to the originator of the write - eg. when flushing the write buffer to persistent storage (post-ack)
4. After the write has been committed to the persistent storage layer (post-process).
The first and second methods, when properly integrated into the solution, are most likely to offer both performance and capacity benefits. The third and fourth methods are primarily used for capacity benefits only.
StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere inline deduplication works in the following manner:
1. In the initial phase, any blocks that consist entirely of zeros are identified and recorded only in metadata.
2. In the second phase, the incoming data is processed to determine whether it is redundant data (data that has been written before) or not. The redundancy of this data is checked through metadata maintained by the kernel module. Any block of data that is found to be redundant will not be written out. Instead, metadata will be updated to point to the original copy of the block already stored on media.
3. Once the initial and second phases are completed, compression is applied to the remaining individual data blocks. The compressed data blocks are then packed together into fixed length (4KB) blocks and stored on media.
Windows Server 2019 deduplication is performed outside of IO path (post-processing) and is multi-threaded to speed up processing and keep performance impact minimal.
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Dedup/Compr. Type
Details
|
Optional
NEW
By default, deduplication and compression are turned off. For both inline and post-process, deduplication and compression can be enabled.
For inline deduplication and compression the feature can be turned on per node. The entire node represents a global deduplication domain. Deduplication and compression work across pools and across vDisks. Individual pools can be selected to participate in capacity optimization. Either deduplication or compression or both can be selected per individual vDisk. Pools can host both capacity optimized and non-capacity optimized vDisks at the same time. The optional capacity optimization settings can be added/changed/removed during operation for each vDisk.
For post-processing the feature can be enabled per pool. All vDisks in that pool would be deduplicated and compressed. Each pool is an independent deduplication domain. This means only data in the pool is capacity optimized, but not across pools. Additionally, for post-processing capacity optimization can be scheduled so admins can decide when deduplication should run.
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
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Always-on
Cisco HyperFlex (HX) data deduplication and compression features are always on and cannot be disabled as it is an integral component of the platform architecture providing both performance and efficiency. It also provides end-user simplicity.
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Optional
vSphere: By default inline data deduplication is turned off and can be enabled.
Hyper-V: By default post-process deduplication and compression are turned off. Deduplication and compression can be enabled for selected volumes, either manually or scheduled.
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Dedup/Compr. Scope
Details
|
Persistent data layer
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Read and Write caches + Persistent data layers
Cisco HyperFlex provides finely detailed inline deduplication and variable block inline compression that is always on for objects in the cache (SSD and memory) and capacity (SSD or HDD) layers.
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Persistent data layer
StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere inline deduplication is performed on the persistant storage layer (XFS partition with inline deduplication enabled on which StarWind devices are located).
Microsoft Windows Server native deduplication and compression can be set for StarWind virtual devices formatted as NTFS.
Windows Server 2019 Deduplication only happens in the persistent data layer and not in the cache. The cache is not accessible from the file system and so deduplication cannot be applied to it.
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Dedup/Compr. Radius
Details
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Pool (post-processing deduplication domain)
Node (inline deduplication domain)
NEW
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
For inline deduplication and compression raw physical disks are added to a capacity optimization pool. The entire node represents a global deduplication domain. Deduplication and compression work across pools and across vDisks. Individual pools can be selected to participate in capacity optimization.
The post-processing capability provided through Windows Server 2016/2019 is highly scalable and can be used with volumes up to 64 TB and files up to 1 TB in size. Data deduplication identifies repeated patterns across files on that volume.
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Storage Cluster
Cisco HyperFlex inline deduplication works across all nodes in a cluster. Because currently a Cisco Hyperflex storage cluster matches a vSphere cluster 1:1, dedup is provided per vSphere cluster.
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Volume
StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere inline deduplication is scalable up to 256TB volume size.
Windows Server 2019 deduplication is highly scalable and can be used with volumes up to 64TB and files up to 4TB in size. Data deduplication identifies repeated patterns across files on that volume.
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Dedup/Compr. Granularity
Details
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4-128 KB variable block size (inline)
32-128 KB variable block size (post-processing)
NEW
With inline deduplication and compression, the data is organized in 128 KB segments. Depending on the optimization setting, a write into such a segment first gets compressed (when compression is selected) and then a hash is generated. If the hash is unique, the 128 KB segment is written back and the hash is added to the deduplication hash-table. If the hash is not unique, the segment is referenced in the deduplication hash table and discarded. The smallest chunk in the segment can be 4 KB.
For post-processing the system leverages deduplication in Windows Server 2016/2019, files within a deduplication-enabled volume are segmented into small variable-sized chunks (32–128 KB), duplicate chunks are identified, and only a single copy of each chunk is physically stored.
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4-64 KB fixed block size
The Cisco HyperFlex deduplication chunk size based on the underlying block size of a data object. This means the deduplication chunk size can be 4K, 8K... 64K, depending on whatever the block size is you chose when creating the data object (eg. VMDK).
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vSphere: 4KB fixed block size
Hyper-V: 32-128 KB variable block size
Inline deduplication present in StarWind VSAN for vSphere stored deduplicated and compressed block in the 4k block size.
By leveraging deduplication in Windows Server 2019, files within a deduplication-enabled volume are segmented into small variable-sized chunks (32–128 KB), duplicate chunks are identified, and only a single copy of each chunk is physically stored.
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Dedup/Compr. Guarantee
Details
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N/A
Microsoft provides the Deduplication Evaluation Tool (DDPEVAL) to assess the data in a particular volume and predict the dedup ratio.
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N/A
At this time Cisco does no guarantee a minimum savings. Cisco states that reduction rates will vary per workload and use case.
As a guideline, Cisco provides the following info:
- Inline deduplication on average provides 20-30% space savings.
- Inline compression on average provides 30-50% space savings.
- In non-persisent VDI use cases, total reduction rates can deliver up to 95% space savings.
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N/A
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Full (optional)
Data rebalancing needs to be initiated manually by the end-user. It depends on the specific use case and end-user environment if this makes sense. When end-users want to isolate new workloads and corresponding data on new nodes, data rebalancing is not used.
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Full
Cisco HyperFlex inline deduplication works globally, which means that deduplication happens across all nodes in a cluster.
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Full (optional)
Data rebalancing needs to be initiated manually. When a new StarWind Virtual SAN node is added, a StarWind Support Engineer assists with replicating data to the new partner.
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Yes
DataCore SANsymphonys Auto-Tiering is a real-time intelligent mechanism that continuously positions data on the appropriate class of storage based on how frequently the data is accessed. Auto-Tiering leverages any combination of Flash and traditional disk technologies, whether it is internal or array based, with up to 15 different storage tiers that can be defined.
As more advanced storage technologies become available, existing tiers can be modified as necessary and additional tiers can be added to further diversify the tiering architecture.
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N/A
The Cisco HyperFlex storage architecture does not include multiple persistent storage layers, but rather consists of a caching layer (fastest storage devices) and a persistent layer (slower/most cost-efficient storage devices).
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Partial (integration; optional)
StarWind Virtual SAN can leverage the data tiering capabilities available in the Windows Server 2016/2019 OS (Storage Spaces). This is the case for Hyper-V and VMware vSphere environments.
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Performance |
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vSphere: VMware VAAI-Block (full)
Hyper-V: Microsoft ODX; Space Reclamation (T10 SCSI UNMAP)
DataCore SANsymphony iSCSI and FC are fully qualified for all VMware vSphere VAAI-Block capabilities that include: Thin Provisioning, HW Assisted Locking, Full Copy, Block Zero
Note: DataCore SANsymphony does not support Thick LUNs.
DataCore SANsymphony is also fully qualified for Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 and 2016/2019 ODX and UNMAP/TRIM.
Note: ODX is not used for files smaller than 256KB.
VAAI = VMware vSphere APIs for Array Integration
ODX = Offloaded Data Transfers
UNMAP/TRIM support allows the Windows operating system to communicate the inactive block IDs to the storage system. The storage system can wipe these unused blocks internally.
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vSphere: VMware VAAI-NAS (full)
Hyper-V: SMB3 ODX; UNMAP/TRIM
The Cisco HX platform is fully qualified for all VMware vSphere VAAI-NAS capabilities that include: Native SS for LC, Space Reserve, File Cloning and Extended Stats.
The Cisco HX platform does not support cross volume/snapshot operations as it is a Software Defined NAS array.
VAAI = VMware APIs for Array Integration
ODX = Offloaded Data Transfers
UNMAP/TRIM support allows the Windows operating system to communicate the inactive block IDs to the storage system. The storage system can wipe these unused blocks internally.
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vSphere: VMware VAAI-Block (full)
Hyper-V: Microsoft ODX; UNMAP/TRIM
StarWind Virtual SAN iSCSI is fully qualified for all VMware vSphere VAAI-Block capabilities that include: Thin Provisioning, HW Assisted Locking, Full Copy, Block Zero.
StarWind Virtual SAN is also fully qualified for Microsoft Hyper-V 2016 and 2019 ODX, as well as TRIM (for SATA SSDs) and UNMAP (for SAS SSDs).
Note: ODX is not used for files smaller than 256KB.
VAAI = VMware vSphere APIs for Array Integration
ODX = Offloaded Data Transfers
UNMAP/TRIM support allows the Windows operating system to communicate the inactive block IDs to the storage system. The storage system can wipe these unused blocks internally.
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IOPs and/or MBps Limits
QoS is a means to ensure specific performance levels for applications and workloads. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Ability to set limitations to avoid unwanted behavior from non-critical clients/hosts.
2. Ability to set guarantees to ensure service levels for mission-critical clients/hosts.
SANsymphony currently supports only the first method. Although SANsymphony does not provide support for the second method, the platform does offer some options for optimizing performance for selected workloads.
For streaming applications which burst data, it’s best to regulate the data transfer rate (MBps) to minimize their impact. For transaction-oriented applications (OLTP), limiting the IOPs makes most sense. Both parameters may be used simultaneously.
DataCore SANsymphony ensures that high-priority workloads competing for access to storage can meet their service level agreements (SLAs) with predictable I/O performance. QoS Controls regulate the resources consumed by workloads of lower priority. Without QoS Controls, I/O traffic generated by less important applications could monopolize I/O ports and bandwidth, adversely affecting the response and throughput experienced by more critical applications. To minimize contention in multi-tenant environments, the data transfer rate (MBps) and IOPs for less important applications are capped to limits set by the system administrator. QoS Controls enable IT organizations to efficiently manage their shared storage infrastructure using a private cloud model.
More information can be found here: https://docs.datacore.com/SSV-WebHelp/quality_of_service.htm
In order to achieve consistent performance for a workload, a separate Pool can be created where selected vDisks are placed. Alternatively 'Performance Classes' can be assigned to differentiate between data placement of multiple workloads.
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N/A
Quality-of-Service (QoS) is a means to ensure specific performance levels for applications and workloads. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Ability to set limitations to avoid unwanted behavior from non-critical VMs.
2. Ability to set guarantees to ensure service levels for mission-critical VMs.
Cisco HyperFlex currently does not offer any QoS mechanisms.
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N/A
Quality-of-Service (QoS) is a means to ensure specific performance levels for applications and workloads. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Ability to set limitations to avoid unwanted behavior from non-critical VMs.
2. Ability to set guarantees to ensure service levels for mission-critical VMs.
StarWind Virtual SAN currently does not offer any QoS mechanisms.
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Virtual Disk Groups and/or Host Groups
SANsymphony QoS parameters can be set for individual hosts or groups of hosts as well as for groups of Virtual Disks for fine grained control.
In a VMware VVols (=Virtual Volumes) environment a vDisk corresponds 1-to-1 to a virtual disk (.vmdk). Thus virtual disks can be placed in a Disk Group and a QoS Limit can then be assigned it. DataCore SANsymphony Provider v2.01 has VVols certification for VMware ESXi 6.5 U2/U3, ESXi 6.7 GA/U1/U2/U3 and ESXi 7.0 GA/U1.
In Microsoft Hyper-V environments, when a VM with vdisks is created through SCVMM, DataCore can be instructed to automatically carve out a Virtual Disk (=storage volume) for every individual vdisk. This way there is a 1-to-1 alignment from end-to-end and QoS Limits can be applied on the virtual disk level. The 1-to-1 allignment is realized by installing the DataCore Storage Management Provider in SCVMM.
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N/A
Quality-of-Service (QoS) is a means to ensure specific performance levels for applications and workloads. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Ability to set limitations to avoid unwanted behavior from non-critical VMs.
2. Ability to set guarantees to ensure service levels for mission-critical VMs.
Cisco HyperFlex currently does not offer any QoS mechanisms.
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N/A
Quality-of-Service (QoS) is a means to ensure specific performance levels for applications and workloads. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Ability to set limitations to avoid unwanted behavior from non-critical VMs.
2. Ability to set guarantees to ensure service levels for mission-critical VMs.
StarWind Virtual SAN currently does not offer any QoS mechanisms.
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Per VM/Virtual Disk/Volume
With SANsymphony the rough hierarchy is: physical disk(s) or LUNs -> Disk Pool -> Virtual Disk (=logical volume).
In SANsymphony 'Flash Pinning' can be achieved using one of the following methods:
Method #1: Create a flash-only pool and migrate the individual vDisks that require flash pinning to the flash-only pool. When using a VVOL configuration in a VMware environment, each vDisk represents a virtual disk (.vmdk). This method guarantees all application data will be stored in flash.
Method #2: Create auto-tiering pools with at least 1 flash tier. Assign the Performance Class “Critical” to the vDisks that require flash pinning and place them in the auto-tiering pool. This will effectively and intelligently put as much of the data that resides in the vDisk in the flash tier as long that the flash tier has enough space available. Therefore this method is on a best-effort basis and dependent on correct sizing of the flash tier(s).
Methods #1 and #2 can be uses side-by-side in the same DataCore environment.
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Not relevant (global cache architecture)
Cisco HyperFlex distributed platform architecture includes a global caching structure. This effectively provides guest VMs access to every cache drive in the entire cluster at all times. The HyperFlex core architecture design prevents performance hotspots from occuring in hybrid configurations and is able to deliver additional performance in all-flash configurations.
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N/A
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Security |
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Data Encryption Type
Details
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Built-in (native)
SANsymphony 10.0 PSP9 introduced native encryption when running on Windows Server 2016/2019.
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Built-in (native)
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N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not have native data encryption capabilities. Adding data encryption capabilities requires encryption storage hardware. Alternatively, software options such as Microsoft Bitlocker or vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption can be leveraged.
VMware Virtual Machine Encryption requires VMware vSphere
Enterprise Plus or VMware vSphere Platinum licences.
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Data Encryption Options
Details
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Hardware: Self-encrypting drives (SEDs)
Software: SANsymphony Encryption
Hardware: In SANsymphony deployments the encryption data service capabilities can be offloaded to hardware-based SED offerings available in server- and storage solutions.
Software: SANsymphony provides software-based data-at-rest encryption that is XTS-AES 256bit compliant.
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Hardware: Self-encrypting drives (SEDs)
Software: N/A
Hardware: Cisco optionally provides self-encrypting harddisks (SEDs) for HX configurations.
Currently Cisco HyperFlex does not provide native software-based data-at-rest encryption.
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Hardware: Self-encrypting drives (SEDs)
Software: Microsoft BitLocker Drive Encryption; VMware Virtual machine Encryption
Hardware: In StarWind Virtual SAN deployments the encryption data service capabilities can be offloaded to hardware-based SED offerings available in server- and storage solutions.
Software: Microsoft Bitlocker provides software encryption on standalone and cluster based NTFS or ReFS(v2) volumes. Cluster volumes (CSV) encryption support was added in Windows 2012 Server.
Microsoft BitLocker uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm with either 128-bit or 256-bit keys. It is generally recommended to use 256-bit keys because of their superior strength.
Bitlocker can be used to encrypt the local storage, encrypt Cluster Shared Volumes created on StarWind HA devices where VMs are located or encrypt VMs with Trusted Platform Module.
As for ESXi hosts, Bitlocker can be used to encrypt the Windows Server VMs storage (only non-bootable partitions). However, this does not provide full security. Alternatively, vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption can be used.
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Data Encryption Scope
Details
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Hardware: Data-at-rest
Software: Data-at-rest
Hardware: SEDs provide encryption for data-at-rest; SEDs do not provide encryption for data-in-transit.
Software: SANsymphony provides encryption for data-at-rest; it does not provide encryption for data-in-transit. Encryption can be enabled per individual virtual disk.
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Hardware: Data-at-rest
Software: N/A
Hardware: Cisco HyperFlex SEDs provide encryption for data-at-rest; Cisco HyperFlex SEDs do not provide encryption for data-in-transit.
Software: N/A
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Hardware: Data-at-rest
Software: Data-at-rest
Hardware: SEDs provide encryption for data-at-rest; SEDs do not provide encryption for data-in-transit.
Software: Microsoft BitLocker provides encryption for data-at-rest as well as data-in-transit during live migration of a VM; VMware Virtual Machine Encryption provides encryption for data-at-rest.
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Data Encryption Compliance
Details
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Hardware: FIPS 140-2 Level 2 (SEDs)
Software: FIPS 140-2 Level 1 (SANsymphony)
FIPS = Federal Information Processing Standard
FIPS 140-2 defines four levels of security:
Level 1 > Basic security requirements are specified for a cryptographic module (eg. at least one Approved algorithm or Approved security function shall be used).
Level 2 > Also has features that show evidence of tampering.
Level 3 > Also prevents the intruder from gaining access to critical security parameters (CSPs) held within the cryptographic module.
Level 4 > Provides a complete envelope of protection around the cryptographic module with the intent of detecting and responding to all unauthorized attempts at physical access.
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Hardware: FIPS 140-2 Level 2 (SEDs)
Software: N/A
The Cisco HyperFlex platform itself is hardened to FIPS 140-1, and the encrypted drives with key management comply with the FIPS 140-2 standard.
FIPS = Federal Information Processing Standard
FIPS 140-2 defines four levels of security:
Level 1 > Basic security requirements are specified for a cryptographic module (eg. at least one Approved algorithm or Approved security function shall be used).
Level 2 > Also has features that show evidence of tampering.
Level 3 > Also prevents the intruder from gaining access to critical security parameters (CSPs) held within the cryptographic module.
Level 4 > Provides a complete envelope of protection around the cryptographic module with the intent of detecting and responding to all unauthorized attempts at physical access.
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Hardware: FIPS 140-2 Level 2 (SEDs)
Software: FIPS 140-2 Level 1 (BitLocker; VMware Virtual Machine Encryption)
Microsoft BitLocker has been validated for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 in March 2018.
FIPS = Federal Information Processing Standard
FIPS 140-2 defines four levels of security:
Level 1 > Basic security requirements are specified for a cryptographic module (eg. at least one Approved algorithm or Approved security function shall be used).
Level 2 > Also has features that show evidence of tampering.
Level 3 > Also prevents the intruder from gaining access to critical security parameters (CSPs) held within the cryptographic module.
Level 4 > Provides a complete envelope of protection around the cryptographic module with the intent of detecting and responding to all unauthorized attempts at physical access.
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Data Encryption Efficiency Impact
Details
|
Hardware: No
Software: No
Hardware: Because data encryption is performed at the end of the write path, storage efficiency mechanisms are not impaired.
Software: Because data encryption is performed at the end of the write path, storage efficiency mechanisms are not impaired.
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Hardware: No
Software: N/A
Hardware: Because data encryption is performed at the end of the write path, storage efficiency mechanisms are not impaired.
Software: N/A
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Hardware: No
Software: No (Bitlocker); No (VMware Virtual Machine Encryption)
Hardware: Because data encryption is performed at the end of the write path, storage efficiency mechanisms are not impaired.
Software: Microsoft BitLocker can be used to provide whole-disk encryption on a deduplicated disk since BitLocker sits at the end of the write path. VMware Virtual Machine Encryption encrypts tge data on the host before it is written to storage, thus negatively impacting backend storage features such as deduplication and compression. However, Microsoft post-process deduplication is executed at the filesystem layer.
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Test/Dev |
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Yes
Support for fast VM cloning via VMware VAAI and Microsoft ODX.
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Yes
Native clone creation is VMware VAAI and Hyper-V integrated.
Cisco HyperFlex ReadyClones is a storage technology that enables the rapid creation and customization of multiple cloned VMs from a host VM. The clones can then be used as standalone VMs. A ReadyClones MAC address and UUID are different from those of the original VM.
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No
StarWind VSAN is an SDS solution. The cloning functionality is not related to storage capabilities and is performed on the hypervisor level.
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Portability |
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Hypervisor Migration
Details
|
Hyper-V to ESXi (external)
ESXi to Hyper-V (external)
VMware Converter 6.2 supports the following Guest Operating Systems for VM conversion from Hyper-V to vSphere:
- Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10
- Windows 2008/R2, 2012/R2 and 2016
- RHEL 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x
- SUSE 10.x, 11.x
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS
- CentOS 6.x, 7.0
The VMs have to be in a powered-off state in order to be migrated across hypervisor platforms.
Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) supports conversion of VMware VMs and vdisks to Hyper-V VMs and vdisks. It is also possible to convert physical machines and disks to Hyper-V VMs and vdisks.
MVMC has been offcially retired and can only be used for converting VMs up to version 6.0.
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2016 also supports conversion of VMs up to version 6.0 only.
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Hyper-V to ESXi (external)
ESXi to Hyper-V (external)
VMware Converter 6.2 supports the following Guest Operating Systems for VM conversion from Hyper-V to vSphere:
- Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10
- Windows 2008/R2, 2012/R2 and 2016
- RHEL 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x
- SUSE 10.x, 11.x
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS
- CentOS 6.x, 7.0
The VMs have to be in a powered-off state in order to be migrated across hypervisor platforms.
Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) supports conversion of VMware VMs and vdisks to Hyper-V VMs and vdisks. It is also possible to convert physical machines and disks to Hyper-V VMs and vdisks.
MVMC has been offcially retired and can only be used for converting VMs up to version 6.0.
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2016 also supports conversion of VMs up to version 6.0 only.
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Hyper-V to ESXi (external)
ESXi to Hyper-V (external)
StarWind V2V Converter is a StarWind proprietary tool that can be leveraged for virtual-to-virtual (V2V) use cases as well as physical-to-virtual (P2V) use cases. The tool supports all major VM formats: VHD/VHDX, VMDK, QCOW2, and StarWind native IMG. Both the source and target VM copies exist simultaneously because the conversion procedure is more like a cloning process than a replacement. As a convenient side effect, StarWind V2V Converter basically creates a backup copy of the VMs, making the process even safer.
When converting the VM to VHDX format, StarWind V2V Converter enables the activation of Windows Repair Mode. This way the virtual machine will automatically adapt to the given hardware environment and negate any compatibility problems.
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File Services |
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Built-in (native)
SANsymphony delivers out-of-box (OOB) file services by leveraging Windows native SMB/NFS and Scale-out File Services capabilities. SANsymphony is capable of simultaneously handling highly-available block and file level services.
Raw storage is provisioned from within the SANsymphony GUI to the Microsoft file services layer, similar to provisioning Storage Spaces Volumes to the file services layer. This means any file services configuration is performed from within the respective Windows service consoles e.g. quotas.
More information can be found under: https://www.datacore.com/products/features/high-availability-nas-cluster-file-sharing.aspx
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N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any file serving capabilities of its own.
Inside a Guest VM all native file service features of the Microsoft Windows and/or Linux operating system can be leveraged to host network shares.
Linux requires Samba Server components to provide SMB file shares.
Depending on the OS of the Guest VM providing file services, quotas can been set on the share or the filesystem level.
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vSphere: N/A
Hyper-V: Built-in (native)
StarWind Virtual SAN for Hyper-V delivers out-of-box (OOB) file services by leveraging Windows native SMB/NFS and Scale-out File Services capabilities. StarWind Virtual SAN is capable of simultaneously handling highly-available block and file level services.
StarWind virtual devices formatted as NTFS volumes are provisioned to the Microsoft file services layer. This means any file services configuration is performed from within the respective Windows service consoles e.g. quotas.
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Fileserver Compatibility
Details
|
Windows clients
Linux clients
Because SANsymphony leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, most Windows and Linux clients are able to connect.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any file serving capabilities of its own.
Inside a Guest VM all native file service features of the Microsoft Windows and/or Linux operating system can be leveraged to host network shares.
Linux requires Samba Server components to provide SMB file shares.
Depending on the OS of the Guest VM providing file services, quotas can been set on the share or the filesystem level.
|
Windows clients
Linux clients
Because StarWind Virtual SAN leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, most Windows and Linux clients are able to connect.
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|
|
Fileserver Interconnect
Details
|
SMB
NFS
Because SANsymphony leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, Windows Server platform compatibility applies:
SMB versions1,2 and 3 are supported, as are NFS versions 2, 3 and 4.1.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any file serving capabilities of its own.
Inside a Guest VM all native file service features of the Microsoft Windows and/or Linux operating system can be leveraged to host network shares.
Linux requires Samba Server components to provide SMB file shares.
Depending on the OS of the Guest VM providing file services, quotas can been set on the share or the filesystem level.
|
SMB
NFS
Because StarWind Virtual SAN leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, Windows Server platform compatibility applies:
SMB versions1,2 and 3 are supported, as are NFS versions 2, 3 and 4.1.
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|
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Fileserver Quotas
Details
|
Share Quotas, User Quotas
Because SANsymphony leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, all Quota features available in Windows Server can be used.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any file serving capabilities of its own.
Inside a Guest VM all native file service features of the Microsoft Windows and/or Linux operating system can be leveraged to host network shares.
Linux requires Samba Server components to provide SMB file shares.
Depending on the OS of the Guest VM providing file services, quotas can been set on the share or the filesystem level.
|
Share Quotas, User Quotas
Because StarWind Virtual SAN leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS and Scale-out File services, all Quota features available in Windows Server can be used.
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|
|
Fileserver Analytics
Details
|
Partial
Because SANsymphony leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS, Windows Server built-in auditing capabilities can be used.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any file serving capabilities of its own.
Inside a Guest VM all native file service features of the Microsoft Windows and/or Linux operating system can be leveraged to host network shares.
Linux requires Samba Server components to provide SMB file shares.
Depending on the OS of the Guest VM providing file services, quotas can been set on the share or the filesystem level.
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Partial
Because StarWind Virtual SAN leverages Windows Server native CIFS/NFS, Windows Server built-in auditing capabilities can be used.
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Object Services |
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Object Storage Type
Details
|
N/A
DataCore SANsymphony does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
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Object Storage Protection
Details
|
N/A
DataCore SANsymphony does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
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Object Storage LT Retention
Details
|
N/A
DataCore SANsymphony does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
|
N/A
StarWind Virtual SAN does not provide any object storage serving capabilities of its own.
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Management
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Interfaces |
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GUI Functionality
Details
|
Centralized
SANsymphonys graphical user interface (GUI) is highly configurable to accommodate individual preferences and includes guided wizards and workflows to simplify administration. All actions available from the GUI may also be scripted with PowerShell Commandlets to orchestrate workflows with other tools and applications.
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Centralized
Cisco Intersight (SaaS), Cisco UCS Manager, Cisco HX Data Platform HTML Web Interface, Cisco HX Data Platform vCenter plugin.
Cisco Intersight (SaaS) uses a subscription-based license with multiple editions.
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Centralized
StarWind Web-based Management provides the ability to administrate the StarWind Virtual SAN infrastructure from any remote location using any HTML 5 web console.
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Single-site and Multi-site
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Single-site and Multi-site
Administration of one or multiple Cisco HyperFlex clusters can be performed by utilizing either the standalone HTML5 UI called HX Connect or the VMware vSphere Web Client plug-in.
HX Connect is a HTML5 UI for native management and monitoring with intuitive dashboard for cluster health, capacity and performance. HX Connect is localized for Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Centralized management of multicluster HX environments can be performed through Cisco Intersight (SaaS).
Alternatively centralized management can be performed through the vSphere Web Client by using Enhanced Linked Mode.
Enhanced Linked Mode links multiple vCenter Server systems by using one or more Platform Services Controllers. Enhanced Linked Mode enables you to log in to all linked vCenter Server systems simultaneously with a single user name and password. You can view and search across all linked vCenter Server systems. Enhanced Linked Mode replicates roles, permissions, licenses, and other key data across systems. Enhanced Linked Mode requires the vCenter Server Standard licensing level, and is not supported with vCenter Server Foundation or vCenter Server Essentials.
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Single-site and Multi-site
From within the StarWind Web Management Console servers from different clusters and sites can be added.
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GUI Perf. Monitoring
Details
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Advanced
SANsymphony has visibility into the performance of all connected devices including front-end channels, back-end channels, cache, physical disks, and virtual disks. Metrics include Read/write IOPs, Read/write MBps and Read/Write Latency at all levels. These metrics can be exported to the Windows Performance Monitoring (Perfmon) utility where other server parameters are being tracked.
The frequency at which performance metrics can be captured and reported on is configurable, real-time down to 1 second intervals and long term recording at 2 minutes granularity.
When a trend analysis is required, an end-user can simply enable a recording session to capture metrics over a longer period of time.
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Basic
IOPS, Throughput (MBps) and Latency (ms) for Reads and Writes can be viewed for the entire Storage Cluster, for individual Hosts and for individual Datastores.
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Basic
StarWind Management Console can be used to view basic storage performance characteristics.
StarWind Management Console provides:
- counters on a per-host level: CPU/RAM load, CPU load, RAM load, Total IOPS, Total Bandwidth
- counters on a per-device level: Read Bandwidth, Write Bandwidth, Total Bandwidth, Total IOPS
- selectable are Server with all targets (StarWind devices) or each separate StarWind device
- retention time of performance information is last 24 hours
- refresh rate of performance metrics is every 30 seconds
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VMware vSphere Web Client (plugin)
VMware vCenter plug-in for SANsymphony
SCVMM DataCore Storage Management Provider
Microsoft System Center Monitoring Pack
DataCore offers deep integration with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as their respective systems management tools, vCenter and System Center.
SCVMM = Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
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VMware vSphere Web Client (plugin)
Next to the vSphere Web Client plug-in, Cisco HyperFlex provides a standalone HTML5 Web GUI called HX Connect.
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vSphere: Web Client (plugin)
Hyper-V: SCVMM 2016 (add-in)
The StarWind vCenter plug-in provides a 1-to-1 representation of the StarWind Web Console inside the VMware vSphere Web Client. It does not add additional StarWind Virtual SAN-related actions to any Web Client menus.
StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere environments can be additionally managed from the VM web console providing storage and networking management capabilities as well as performance metrics.
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Programmability |
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Full
Using DataCores native management console, Virtual Disk Templates can be leveraged to populate storage policies. Available configuration items: Storage profile, Virtual disk size, Sector size, Reserved space, Write-trough enabled/disabled, Storage sources, Preferred snapshot pool, Accelerator enabled/disabled, CDP enabled/disabled.
Virtual Disk Templates integrate with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), VMware Virtual Volumes (VVol) and OpenStack. Virtual Disk Templates are also fully supported by the REST-API allowing any third-party integration.
Using Virtual Volumes (VVols) defined through DataCore’s VASA provider, VMware administrators can self-provision datastores for virtual machines (VMs) directly from their familiar hypervisor interface. This is possible even for devices in the DataCore pool that don’t natively support VVols and never will, as SANsymphony can be used as a storage-virtualization layer for these devices/solutions. DataCore SANsymphony Provider v2.01 has VVols certification for VMware ESXi 6.5 U2/U3, ESXi 6.7 GA/U1/U2/U3 and ESXi 7.0 GA/U1.
Using Classifications and StoragePools defined through DataCore’s Storage Management Provider, Hyper-V administrators can self-provision virtual disks and pass-through LUNS for virtual machines (VMs) directly from their familiar SCVMM interface.
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Partial (Protection)
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Partial (Protection)
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REST-APIs
PowerShell
The SANsymphony REST-APIs library includes more than 200 new representational state transfer (REST) operations, so automation can be leveraged more extensively. RESTful interfaces are used by products such as Lenovo XClarity, Cisco Embedded Resource Manager and Dell OpenManage to manage infrastructure in the enterprise.
SANsymphony provides its own Powershell cmdlets.
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REST-APIs
CLI
RESTful APIs are accessible through a REST API explorer to enable automation as well as integration with third party management and monitoring tools.
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REST-APIs (through Swordfish)
PowerShell
StarWind Virtual SAN does not offer native REST APIs (functionality still under development). Alternatively, StarWind over Swordfish API can be configured if programming is a requirement.
For more information, please view: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-swordfish-provider/
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OpenStack
OpenStack: The SANsymphony storage solution includes a Cinder driver, which interfaces between SANsymphony and OpenStack, and presents volumes to OpenStack as block devices which are available for block storage.
Datacore SANsymphony programmability in VMware vRealize Automation and Microsoft System Center can be achieved by leveraging PowerShell and the SANsymphony specific cmdlets.
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Cisco UCS Director
Cisco UCS Director can be used for the following managing parts of Cisco HyperFlex systems:
- Inventory collection
- Discovery of clusters, disks, datastores, and controller VMs
- Datastore provisioning and management
- Automation and orchestration of VM and application container provisioning
- Status reporting
Cisco UCS Director contains predefined HyperFlex workflows, including:
- create HyperFlex ReadyClones from template
- create HyperFlex Datastore (name and size)
- edit HyperFlex Datastore (size)
- delete HyperFlex Datastore
- (un)mount HyperFlex Datastore
Last year Cisco HyperFlex already demonstrated support for OpenStack. However, Cisco has not officially listed OpenStack support for Cisco HyperFlex at this time.
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N/A
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Full
The DataCore SANsymphony GUI offers delegated administration to secondary users through fine-grained Role-based Access Control (RBAC). The administrator is able to define Virtual Disk ownership as well as privileges associated with that particular ownership. Owners must have Virtual Disk privileges in an assigned role in order to perform operations on the virtual disk. Access can be very refined. For example, one owner may have the privilege to create a snapshot of a virtual disk, but not have the ability to serve or unserve the same virtual disk. Privilege sets define the operations that can be performed. For instance, in order for an owner to perform snapshot, rollback, or replication operations, they would require those privilege sets in an assigned role.
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N/A (not part of HX license)
Cisco HyperFlex does not provide any end-user self service capabilities of its own.
A self service portal enables end-users to access a portal where they can provision and manage VMs from templates, eliminating administrator requests or activity.
Self-Service functionality can be enabled by leveraging Cisco UCS Director. This requires a separate Cisco license.
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N/A
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Maintenance |
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Unified
All storage related features and functionality are built into the DataCore SANsymphony platform. The consolidation means, that only one product needs to be installed and upgraded and minimal dependencies exist with other software.
Integration with 3rd party systems (e.g. OpenStack, vSphere, System Center) are delivered seperately but are free-of-charge.
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Partially Distributed
Primarily with regard to backup/restore the HX Data Platform relies on other components that need to be installed and upgraded next to the core vSphere platform. As a result some dependencies exist with other software.
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Partially Distributed
For a number of features and functions StarWind Virtual SAN relies on other components that need to be installed and upgraded next to the core Windows platform. Examples are backup/restore and advanced management software. As a result some dependencies exist with other software.
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SW Upgrade Execution
Details
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Rolling Upgrade (1-by-1)
Each SANsymphony update is packaged in an installation Wizard which contains a fully guided upgrade process. The upgrade process checks all system requirements and performs a system health before starting the upgrade process and before moving from one node to the next.
The user can also decide to upgrade a SANsymphony cluster manually and follow all steps that are outlined in the Release Notes.
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Rolling Upgrade (1-by-1)
Cisco provides GUI-based non-disruptive rolling upgrades of the HX Data Platform as well as the UCS server firmware.
HX 3.5 adds a 1-click upgrade of ESXi along with HX Data Platform (HXDP) and server firmware. This is a true 'one button' workflow approach.
Whats especially noteworthy is the fact that no vMotions are required while executing the software upgrade, which differentiates Cisco HyperFlex from all other platforms.
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Manual Upgrade (1-by-1)
When updating StarWind VSAN, the latest build can be downloaded and executed. StarWind will automatically update all the components of the SDS stack on a single node. The update process has to be launched manually on every node in a VSAN cluster in sequentially.
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FW Upgrade Execution
Details
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Hardware dependent
Some server hardware vendors offer rolling upgrade options with their base software or with a premium software suite. With some other server vendors, BIOS and Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) updated have to be performed manually and 1-by-1.
DataCore provides integrated firmware-control for FC-cards. This means the driver automatically loads the required firmware on demand.
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1-Click
Cisco provides GUI-based non-disruptive rolling upgrades of the HX Data Platform as well as the UCS server firmware.
HX 3.5 adds a 1-click upgrade of ESXi along with HX Data Platform (HXDP) and server firmware. This is a true 'one button' workflow approach.
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Manual Upgrade (1-by-1 )
To perform drivers updates, a remote session with a StarWind Support engineer is scheduled who will perform all the updates. Firmware and driver updates are first verified for any possible issues.
To keep the VMs and applications running during maintenance, StarWind performs the following steps:
1. Check that StarWind devices are synchronized on both nodes and that all iSCSI connections are active.
2. Move VMs inside the cluster to the partner node.
3. In case the process presumes several restarts, put StarWind service into a disabled state or manual start on the required node.
4. Install the required updates/drivers.
5. Restart the node if required.
6. In case required, shut down the node and perform a firmware update.
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Support |
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Single HW/SW Support
Details
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No
With regard to DataCore SANsymphony as a software-only offering (SDS), DataCore does not offer unified support for the entire solution. This means storage software support (SANsymphony) and server hardware support are separate.
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Yes
The entire HW/SW solution is owned by Cisco, so support for all solution components can be provided by a single company.
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Yes (optional)
StarWind Virtual SAN can optionally be supplied with StarWind ProActive Support to preventively resolve issues on hardware, hypervisor, and the StarWind SDS stack. Additionally, StarWind offers Managed Services covering not only SDS stack but also applications and services running on top of it and near it.
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Call-Home Function
Details
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Partial (HW dependent)
With regard to DataCore SANsymphony as a software-only offering (SDS), DataCore does not offer call-home for the entire solution. This means storage software support (SANsymphony) and server hardware support are separate.
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Full
Both software and hardware failures are reported back to the Cisco Support Center. Enhanced auto-support with Smart Call Home integration further enables automated support service requests to be generated for important events. In addition Cisco HyperFlex provides the option to collect support logs through HTTPS.
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Yes
StarWind ProActive Support combines both the 'Call Home' functionality and Predictive Analytics.
StarWind ProActive Support service notifies the StarWind Support team about any issues occurring on the node where StarWind Virtual SAN is installed covering storage, networking, compute and software layers. This is achieved by StarWind Agents running on each StarWind node and collecting the metrics from the servers and StarWind software.
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Predictive Analytics
Details
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Partial
Capacity Management: DataCore SANsymphony Analysis and Reporting supports depletion monitoring of the capacity, complements pool space threshold warnings by regularly evaluating the rate of capacity consumption and estimating when space will be depleted. The regularly updated projections give you a chance to add more storage to the pool before you run out of storage. It also helps you do a better job of capacity planning with fewer surprises. To help allocate costs, especially in private cloud and hosted cloud services, SANsymphony generates reports quantifying the storage resources consumed by specific hosts or groups of hosts. The reports tally several parameters.
Health Monitoring: A combination of system health checks and access to device S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) alerts help to isolate performance and disk problems before they become serious.
DataCore Insight Services (DIS) offers additional capabilites including log-analytics for predictive failure analysis and actionable insights - including hardware.
DIS also provides predictive capacity trend analysis in order to pro-actively warn about licensing limitations being reached within x days and/or disk pools running out of capacity.
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Partial
The Cisco HX Data Platform does not natively have predictive analytics capabilities, however each Cisco HyperFlex system automatically includes a Cisco Intersight 'Base' edition at no additional cost.
Cisco Intersight contains a recommendation engine that uses the telemetry information (metadata) from Cisco HyperFlex nodes to proactively identify potential issues in customer environments in order to prevent future problems and improve system uptime.
Cisco Intersight 'Base' edition provides access to a portal that delivers centralized monitoring and basic inventory of managed systems, organizational capabilities including tagging and search, and the capability to launch native endpoint management interfaces including Cisco UCS Manager.
Cisco Intersight 'Essentials' edition enables end-users to centralize configuration management through a unified policy engine, determine compliance with the Cisco UCS Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), and initiate firmware updates. The Essentials edition provides a single interface for monitoring, management, and operations, with the capability to launch the virtual keyboard, video, and mouse (vKVM) console directly from Cisco Intersight.
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Partial
StarWind ProActive support is capable of Predictive Analytics by analyzing abnormal patterns on storage, networking, compute and software layers. This allows StarWinds Support team to automatically receive notifications as to possible issues that might occur on the servers.
Additionally, any other pattern that caused issues in one environment is analyzed and integrated into the ProActive Support database allowing the service to notify the StarWind Support team about the same patterns occurring in other clients environments.
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