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.
Creating a cost-efficient High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) solution for your mission-critical databases in Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition is no problem.
There are two options: Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) and Basic Availability Groups (BAGs). However, the real problem arises when customers start choosing between implementing FCI or BAGs. Understanding key differences between these two features is crucial for picking up the proper HA DR solution and avoiding unnecessary expenses.
Read the White Paper by Edwin M Sarmiento, a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Microsoft Certified Master, to learn about the differences between FCI and BAGs in Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition.
As you probably know, PowerShell is a powerful scripting language. Since some time, VMware has provided PowerCLI which is a set of modules for managing VMware vSphere including VMware NSX and vSAN. These modules allow you automating a lot of routine tasks such as VM creation, host deployment, and others.
Read the full article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant in Lyon, to learn more about the PowerCLI functionality.
There have been a lot of high profile security breaches this year, including those at Equifax, Deloitte, and Disqus. Sure, once it was made clear how the breach occurred, a lot was said about how bad it is that the breaches accorded and how they should have been avoided. This is quite valid from a technical standpoint but, the reasons that these security issues were allowed to exist also depend on human factors.
Read the full article by Gary Williams, a virtualization, storage and Windows systems administrator, to learn how human factors can cause security breaches.
First introduced in Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Availability Groups (AGs) were only available in Enterprise Edition, making it challenging to switch from Database Mirroring to AGs, especially in Standard Edition. Now, this problem is solved as SQL Server 2016 introduced Basic Availability Groups (BAGs) in Standard Edition, allowing customers to run some form of limited AGs. However, there is a small trick here. Unlike Database Mirroring, AGs require deploying a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) which in its turn requires setting up Active Directory (AD).
Sounds challenging? Don’t worry, in this post, we’ll show you how to deploy BAGs without implementing Active Directory.
Read the full article by Edwin M Sarmiento, a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Microsoft Certified Master to learn more.