During its lifetime, any system reaches a point when it needs to be upgraded, either in terms of hardware or software. So, if you want to take your Windows Failover Cluster functionality to a next level, Cluster Rolling Upgrade will come in handy. The procedure allows upgrading Windows Failover Cluster nodes from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 with no production interruption.

Read the full article by Boris Yurchenko, a Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to upgrade your Windows Failover Cluster with no downtime.

StarWind Hybrid Cloud provides true hybrid cloud functionality for your existing Hyper-V infrastructure by extending it to the Azure public cloud. StarWind replicates the data between the locations, allowing to migrate workloads and create a Highly Available cluster on-premises and Azure. Furthermore, the solution is exceptionally simple to manage thanks to 5nine Manager.

Watch this video to learn more about all the benefits of StarWind Hybrid Cloud: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/manage-your-azure-hybrid-cloud-workloads-with-5nine-and-starwind

BitLocker it is the encryption technology from Microsoft, allowing to encrypt the host’s underlying storage logical volumes and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). By utilizing this technology, your data gets reliable protection from unauthorized access to physical and clustered logical volumes.

Read the full article by Ivan Ischenko, a Technical Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to improve your data security with Microsoft BitLocker.

Split brain is a state when active cluster nodes lose all synchronization and heartbeat connections between them, which may lead to some serious errors. It can be a real nightmare for a system administrator to deal with the split brain consequences. To solve the problem once and for all, StarWind offers several reliable strategies allowing to prevent a split brain syndrome, and one of them is Node Majority Strategy.

Read the full article by Sergey Sanduliak, a Technical Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to avoid a split brain.

The previous article has described the overall goal of the project and all the details behind 3 scenarios for tuning and testing NVMe over Fabrics performance. Now, it’s the prime time to gear up and shift from theory to practice and prepare all the components of our testing environment.

Read the full article by Taras Shved, a Director of Sales Engineering at StarWind, to learn how to properly configure NVMe over Fabrics for its further testing.

There’s a common opinion that the performance in general and IOPS-intensive performance like NVMf [NVMe over Fabrics] is usually lower in virtualized environments due to the hypervisor overhead.

Check out this article to prove or knock down this belief!

The previous post has covered the Microsoft Storage Spaces configuration process. Now, it’s time to see how you can accelerate your virtualization infrastructure performance and increase its resiliency by combining Virtual SAN (vSAN) with different types of Microsoft Storage Spaces: Simple and Mirror.

[Read the full article](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/starwind-ha-device-on-storage-spaces-performance-testing) by Vitalii Feshchenko, a Post-Sales Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn more.

StarWind Virtual SAN provides VMs with virtual shared storage by mirroring the internal resources between the configured cluster nodes. In this way, the mirrored storage is treated just as local by both hypervisors and clustered applications, eliminating any need for physical shared storage. When you consider upgrading StarWind Virtual SAN to a newer version, you should follow a specific upgrade sequence and procedure to ensure that everything goes smoothly and without any service downtime.

Read the full article by Paolo Valsecchi, a System Engineer, VCP-DCV, vExpert, VMCE, Veeam Vanguard, and PernixPro, to learn how to properly upgrade StarWind Virtual SAN.

There’s, probably, no such IT administrator who doesn’t care about the performance of his environment. That’s why StarWind HyperConverged and Enterprise Storage Appliances utilize RDMA-enabled networking from Mellanox, maximizing your IT infrastructure performance.

Join this webinar to learn how to increase the performance and efficiency of your virtualization environment.

Register now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/maximize-the-performance-and-minimize-the-overhead-of-your-it-infrastructure

SMB3 is the latest version of a Server Message Block protocol that was introduced back in Windows Server 2012. Each release included some new features and improvements, so now SMB3 comes with a set of such useful capabilities like SMB Transparent Failover, SMB Encryption, VSS for SMB file shares, SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA), and SMB Multichannel. All of this makes SMB3 a perfect option when creating a Highly Available Network Share within the Windows Server Failover Cluster.

Read the full article by Ivan Talaichuk, a Solutions Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to create a high-performing and highly available Scale-Out File Server using SMB3.

It’s literally impossible to make a proper decision when choosing between private and public cloud. So, instead of endless comparison, go for StarWind Hybrid Cloud and get the best of both clouds in a single solution. StarWind Hybrid Cloud seamlessly integrates into any environment and fits any company, be it an SMB or Enterprise.

Join our webinar to learn more about the benefits of StarWind Hybrid Cloud and why it’s better than other solutions present on the market.

Register now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/hybrid-cloud-combining-the-best-of-private-and-public-clouds

Network File System (NFS) is a handy solution when you need to give the transparent remote access to the files over the network. What is more, the functionality of the NFS file server allows creating access lists for users and manage the permissions to the files. On top of that, you can access files in the NFS share as fast as if they were stored locally.

Read the full article by Alex Khorolets, a technical support engineer at StarWind, to learn how to access your files remotely using NFS.

During the webinar, you will find out how to easily manage Azure VMs, schedule and restore their backups, and centrally monitor Azure and Hyper-V VMs in the same location.

Register now: http://info.5nine.com/webinar-simplify-azure-management-with-5nine-and-starwind

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Basic Availability Groups (BAGs) replace the deprecated Database Mirroring feature and deliver a high availability solution for mission-critical databases in Standard Edition.
Sure, the process of implementing BAGs without Active Directory is not an easy task. But, it does give you a very deep understanding of what makes it work – from the external dependencies like networking and DNS to the different processes that make up SQL Server Always On Availability Groups.

Read the full article by Edwin M Sarmiento, a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Microsoft Certified Master to learn how to deploy Basic Availability Groups without Active Directory.

With StarWind ProActive Support, there is no more need to constantly monitor your environment and submit support tickets to multiple vendors.
StarWind ProActive Support AI, failure pattern detection, predictions, and BigData analysis will do all the job for you and inform our support team about potential issues, allowing to resolve them before they even appear. So, what you ultimately get is a solution, not a problem.

Learn how StarWind ProActive Support will resolve your IT infrastructure support pain: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-proactive-support-is-a-remedy-to-it-infrastructure-support-pain

First SMB-friendly HyperConverged vendor StarWind runs free webinar, partnered with its exclusive Europe distributor Hammer.

At this webinar, you’ll learn about the features and functionality of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance – a turnkey virtualization infrastructure building block delivering ultimate performance and operational simplicity.

Join us on December 14 and win Apple Watch Series 3!

Register now: http://www.hammer-europe.com/en/everything-else/events/starwind-hca-and-roadmap-update

@travisdh1 Yes, PFC for switch and RDMA support for Ethernet

There are many various solutions you can use to get a decent monitoring functionality. The problem is that you still have to constantly sit in front of your screen and check the environment health to make sure that everything runs smoothly. That is where StarWind ProActive Support kicks in.

The service delivers a true peace of mind by completely eliminating customer’s effort involved in troubleshooting issues. With StarWind ProActive Support, administrators can leave the time- and effort-demanding part of their work for AI and focus on other tasks.

Learn how to escape the constant IT-environment monitoring with StarWind ProActive Support!
Watch now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-proactive-support-is-a-remedy-to-it-infrastructure-support-pain

iSER (the iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) delivers a number of benefits that are extremely useful for building a high-performing virtualized environment. Being supported in StarWind Virtual SAN, iSER technology makes the system faster in terms of IOPS, unloads the system’s CPU utilization, and decreases the latency between the servers.

Read the full article by Alex Khorolets, a technical support engineer at StarWind, to learn more about StarWind iSER advantages.

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition offers two features allowing to ensure High Availability for your environment and build a reliable Disaster Recovery solution. Those are Basic Availability Groups (BAGs) and Failover Cluster Instances (FCI). Although both features have their benefits, FCI also poses significant limitations. However, they can be easily removed by bringing in such Software-Defined Storage solutions as Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and StarWind Virtual SAN.

Read the full article by Dima Yaprincev, a Solutions Architect at StarWind, to learn about all the pros and cons of BAGs and FCI.