KVM | Resource Library

Technical Paper: StarWind Virtual SAN^® Getting Started

StarWind Virtual SAN can be used as fully software-based hypervisor-centric storage for virtual machines. The solution allows creating a high-performing and fault-tolerant storage pool purpose-built for virtualization workloads. It can be implemented in hyperconverged and compute and storage separated architectures. This technical paper provides guidance on StarWind Virtual SAN deployment in both environments considering their peculiarities.

White Paper: iSCSI Storage – White Paper

This document explains how StarWind software implements and handles the iSCSI protocol. The StarWind iSCSI target facilitates underlying-storage-level performance for any industry-standard hypervisors and applications. The way iSCSI is weaved into the StarWind-based environment allows for simple deployment, exceptional performance, hassle-free administration, and minimum implementation costs.

White Paper: StarWind VSAN supporting all industry-standard protocols

Different products like Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere use different, often mutually incompatible uplink protocols such as iSCSI, NFS or SMB3. This makes finding a storage for both environments simultaneously tricky. StarWind Virtual SAN exposes industry-standard uplink protocols allowing multiple virtualization environments interact with storage and form a working setup.

White Paper: Witness node in a StarWind-based environment

This document explains the benefits of the StarWind’s Witness feature. Clusters with an even amount of nodes are at high risk of experiencing total shutdown if half the nodes fail, so, usually, a physical Witness node is required to avoid downtime and split-brain. StarWind Node Majority Mechanism ensures constant uptime and high availability by setting up a minimum-requirements Witness node or a Witness instance in the cloud, so you don’t have to waste money on redundant hardware if you don’t want to.

White Paper: Server-Side Cache – White Paper

This document describes the ability of StarWind to combine NVMe storage with common SSDs into a unified storage pool without any bottlenecks or performance drops. StarWind utilizes NVMe for write-intensive applications or turns RAM into L1 cache while using regular SSD as the main storage. The feature enables your systems to perform as if powered by an all-NVMe array without having to buy one.

White Paper: Automated Storage Tiering – White Paper

Storage tiering allows boosting infrastructure performance. Yet, in such systems, data management becomes a critical issue for IT staff who is to decide on which tier data should go. Obviously, as management becomes more hectic, total cost ownership grows, and return on investment may decrease. Find out how StarWind Automated Storage Tiering resolves these issues.