@dafyre said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

Are there plans to continue building the Powershell library, or will you be moving towards a cross-platform API?

We expect to release regular updates of Poweshell library.

@dafyre said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

For the StarWind Appliances, how will those work for scaling out / adding more storage ?

Will we just be able to add another appliance or will it be more involved than that?

StarWind does support Scale-Out and this procedure is quite straightforward. You simply add additional node thus increasing your storage capacity. However, you could take another route: just add individual disks to each of the nodes expanding a storage.

@StrongBad said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

What about Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)? Can you talk about how Starwind is competing with that and what the differentiating factors are? Maybe when we would choose one or the other if we are on Hyper-V?

S2D is designed for large scale environments that are more focused on storage efficiency and less focused on performance. 4-nodes is the minimum recommended production scenario. 67%+ storage efficiency is achieved only on more than 6-nodes AFAIR. If your primary goal is scale - choose S2D. If your primary goal is resiliency and performance - StarWind.

@scottalanmiller said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@Reid-Cooper said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@ABykovskyi said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@Reid-Cooper said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

I guess I'm early and get to kick things off. The Linux VSA on KVM, is there some recommendations around underlying filesystems, tuning guides, performance info? Anything like that yet?

Hello @Reid-Cooper! Thank you for attending! There are no specific recommendations on filesystems. You can put StarWind VSA VM on EXT4 volume and get the work started.

As for the tuning guides and performance info, they would be available as soon it will leave pre-release state. With current version of the VSA we show that we are working in the Linux direction.

Thanks. Seems like XFS would be the more obvious choice?

I would assume so, especially with the recent Phoronix benchmarks in the 4.11 kernel series.

Scott is on point, XFS would be the best option.

@LaMerk said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@jt1001001 said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

I have 2 identical physical hosts that my company is allowing me to set up as a proof of concept for Starwind. As we are a Hyper-V shop, I am looking for a good startup guide for this; it appears this is where I would begin: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-hyper-converged-2-nodes-scenario-2-nodes-with-hyper-v-cluster ??

Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is exactly the one to start with.

You can PM me, and we will help you building POC for your company.

@jt1001001 said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

So what would be the use case, on Hyper-V, of the appliance vs native on the Hypervisor?

Virtual Storage Appliance would be a good choice to test StarWind capabilities. Native one would be preferable to build PoC on Hyper-V.

Thank you guys for attending!

@jt1001001 said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

So what would be the use case, on Hyper-V, of the appliance vs native on the Hypervisor?

Virtual Storage Appliance would be a good choice to test StarWind capabilities. Native one would be preferable to build PoC on Hyper-V.

@LaMerk said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@jt1001001 said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

I have 2 identical physical hosts that my company is allowing me to set up as a proof of concept for Starwind. As we are a Hyper-V shop, I am looking for a good startup guide for this; it appears this is where I would begin: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-hyper-converged-2-nodes-scenario-2-nodes-with-hyper-v-cluster ??

Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is exactly the one to start with.

You can PM me, and we will help you building POC for your company.

@StrongBad said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

What about Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)? Can you talk about how Starwind is competing with that and what the differentiating factors are? Maybe when we would choose one or the other if we are on Hyper-V?

S2D is designed for large scale environments that are more focused on storage efficiency and less focused on performance. 4-nodes is the minimum recommended production scenario. 67%+ storage efficiency is achieved only on more than 6-nodes AFAIR. If your primary goal is scale - choose S2D. If your primary goal is resiliency and performance - StarWind.

@dafyre said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

For the StarWind Appliances, how will those work for scaling out / adding more storage ?

Will we just be able to add another appliance or will it be more involved than that?

StarWind does support Scale-Out and this procedure is quite straightforward. You simply add additional node thus increasing your storage capacity. However, you could take another route: just add individual disks to each of the nodes expanding a storage.

@dafyre said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

Are there plans to continue building the Powershell library, or will you be moving towards a cross-platform API?

We expect to release regular updates of Poweshell library.

@travisdh1 said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

Apparently I'm going to be starting with the unusual questions. In your V2V Converter, you have the option to convert to Microsoft VHD, why the Microsoft VHD and not just VHD?

Thaks for great question. It should actually work with XEN as well.

@scottalanmiller said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@Reid-Cooper said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@ABykovskyi said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

@Reid-Cooper said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

I guess I'm early and get to kick things off. The Linux VSA on KVM, is there some recommendations around underlying filesystems, tuning guides, performance info? Anything like that yet?

Hello @Reid-Cooper! Thank you for attending! There are no specific recommendations on filesystems. You can put StarWind VSA VM on EXT4 volume and get the work started.

As for the tuning guides and performance info, they would be available as soon it will leave pre-release state. With current version of the VSA we show that we are working in the Linux direction.

Thanks. Seems like XFS would be the more obvious choice?

I would assume so, especially with the recent Phoronix benchmarks in the 4.11 kernel series.

Scott is on point, XFS would be the best option.

@Reid-Cooper said in Starwind AMA Ask Me Anything April 26 10am - 12pm EST:

I guess I'm early and get to kick things off. The Linux VSA on KVM, is there some recommendations around underlying filesystems, tuning guides, performance info? Anything like that yet?

Hello @Reid-Cooper! Thank you for attending! There are no specific recommendations on filesystems. You can put StarWind VSA VM on EXT4 volume and get the work started.

As for the tuning guides and performance info, they would be available as soon it will leave pre-release state. With current version of the VSA we show that we are working in the Linux direction.