HA SAN Win2k8/ESX4.1 runs very slow

[nycon1]

Hi, I had installed an HA SAN with 2 windows 2008 R2 Foundation servers and starwind 5.4, ESX 4.1 and VCenter 4.1. When I write anything in a virtual machine (windows 2008 R2 enterprise), the write operation runs very very slow, but if the virtual machine´s storage is local datastore, there´s no problem. I configured write-through cache when setup asks.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[anton (staff)]

1) Don't use Write-Thru with HA (upcoming version of StarWind 5.5 will have HA caching page DISABLED, so only Write-Back will be available, just like with DataCore, Lefft Hand and Equallogic). Write-Thru makes sense for single node configuration only.

2) Make sure you have proper network configuration. Broken switches w/o real Jumbo frame support installed between HA nodes will slow down everything. Replace them with cross-over cable (at least for experiments).

3) Install 10 GbE or trunked multiple 1 GbE connections for cross-switch between HA nodes.

4) Apply for Beta program to get hands over V5.5 as it's probably twice as fast for reads and writes compared to V5.4 (in HA configuration, single node is the same).

Let us know did it work or not.