WSS 2008 iSCSI targets for vSphere, performance question

T

Thuleman

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
5,833
So I pulled out Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 to test some things out. The first thing I noticed is that it is no longer a bootable installer. Now you have to install Windows Server 2008 R2 64 first and then you install "Windows Storage Server 2008 R2".

The process is somewhat irritating as the WSS download you burn to CD isn't actually anything but an installer that extracts two ISOs, one with the iSCSI Target Initiator and the other with some WSS features (such as OOBE, SIS, etc.). Now you have two ISO files on your Windows 2008 box and no way to naively mount them. WTF Microsoft!?

Moving on, I installed the iSCSI Target Initiator and SIS. Next up I need to create LUNs, which are virtual disks, VHD files. That's where my question comes in, the WSS iSCSI targets will be VHD files into which VMware will place VMFS, which will essentially twice remove any data stored from the physical hardware. Will that just completely hose performance?
 
there is a cheater way of installing iSCSI Target on Server 2008 without installing WSS.. all you need is a MSI Editor and remove the version restriction and it allows the install ;)

mmm on your perfromance question it kinda depends on how the hardware is setup, but you are doing a layer of encapsulation (NTFS) with another (VHD) then using a 3rd with (VMFS)

u using software or hardware raid? Controller model? CPU/Memory?
 
dasaint said:
mmm on your perfromance question it kinda depends on how the hardware is setup, but you are doing a layer of encapsulation (NTFS) with another (VHD) then using a 3rd with (VMFS)

u using software or hardware raid? Controller model? CPU/Memory?
Click to expand...
Well there's no other way to do it afaik. You can't create a VHD unless you format the drive with NTFS, you need to VHD to do the iSCSI target, and VMware will put VMFS on it. That just seems like a lot of overhead.

It's a dual Xeon 5130, 8 GB of RAM with a 3ware 9650SE 16ML. Would be good to put this box to use since it's not totally outdated. I think I will just go ahead and set it up, try it out for a bit and see what the access speeds actually are.
 
Well im not sure their is going to be that big of a performance hit if any, but clearly you are having issues with your setup and iSCSI. Why not just run NFS from Server 2008 instead of iSCSI?

Then you dont have to deal with VHDs, VMFS, and its going to provide you more flexibility in the long run.

EDIT: Heres a guide to implementing NFS Shares on Server 08 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753302(WS.10).aspx
 
NFS would be a good way to go as long as you can handle the overhead which based upon what you got, sounds like it u going to be running hardware raid im assuming not soft.
 
That's a good point about me having issues with iSCSI. I'll be updating the FW on the EQL on Friday night and then just call VMware on Saturday morning if the problem persists. Though in the case of Windows Server 2008 the ESXi iSCSI problem wouldn't play into it since the Windows Server isn't virtualized, it's the OS running on a whitebox physical server and yes, it's hardware raid.

Thanks for the NFS share link, there's actually a write-up about it specific to VMware as well NFS Storage Configuration for vSphere using Windows 2008 at xtravirt.
 
O i didnt know you had an EQL box, that may change things. Its been so long since i looked at an EQL box, but can you even run NFS on that? I guess you could if you used it with a Server 08 front end.

EQL---iSCSI-->Server08--NFS-->ESX Farm

That also brings in some overhead and doesnt really eliminate the iSCSI either....hmm

BTW thanks for the link. I havent seen that article. I wasnt suggesting you didnt know how to do it; quite the contrary, just offering up a different view. :)

BTW which models are running? Do you have the latest software stack with Tiered Storage? Not that it matters just curious is all :)
 
Wait wait wait ... ;)

One of my local setups has 4x ESXi hosts (Dell 2950 III) hooked into an EQL PS5000E, this is the setup that is giving me iSCSI troubles.

This thread is basically unrelated to that hardware. I came across an older whitebox that has 16 drives and figured that I may want to put it to use for some Tier 3 or 4 or whatever you want to call it storage. So I installed Win2008 on it and am now pondering whether I should go iSCSI or NFS to share its roughly 8 TB usable storage out to my ESXi hosts.
 
There shouldn't be any noticeable performance penalty.

Actually in my personal tests, Microsoft iSCSI Target(WSS 2008 R2)) gave the best performance of all the solutions I tried(FreeNAS, openfiler, NexentaStor, etc), it just didn't have all the features I wanted for my home lab.
 
Chilly said:
Actually in my personal tests, Microsoft iSCSI Target(WSS 2008 R2)) gave the best performance of all the solutions I tried(FreeNAS, openfiler, NexentaStor, etc), it just didn't have all the features I wanted for my home lab.
Click to expand...
What features where those if you don't mind sharing.
 
Thuleman said:
What features where those if you don't mind sharing.
Click to expand...

It can't do HA(failover). Not easily anyways, technically its possible with Windows Clustering and whatnot, but its a pain in the ass to set up, and has some retarded limitations when trying to cluster the iSCSI target software.

Currently I am using Starwind(http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) which is dead simple to use, provides good performance and supports HA. Only complaint I have with the starwind solution is that the management console is buggy(the actual target software is rock solid). However, if I didn't care about having HA, Microsoft iSCSI Target 3.3 gives good performance.

I'm still doing testing, but in about a months time(waiting for Sandy Bridge Xeons) I'm going to be redoing my whole home lab and be testing all the previous mentioned solutions once again.
 
Last edited:
I decided to go ahead with iSCSI on WSS 2008 R2 primarily because NFS requires AD and DNS which I would have to specifically install and run just to make NFS work. Will report back should I have issues with iSCSI performance.
 
Microsoft Vs. StarWind Vs. Openfiler chart wanted :)

Olga

P.S. MS was on the cheap side (if you're TechNet subscriber and don't have plans to go production). But it's creating single point of failure for your cluster. Openfiler at least has shared IP cluster with DRBD-based sync replication. MS has none...
 
Olga-SAN said:
Microsoft Vs. StarWind Vs. Openfiler chart wanted :)

Olga

P.S. MS was on the cheap side (if you're TechNet subscriber and don't have plans to go production). But it's creating single point of failure for your cluster. Openfiler at least has shared IP cluster with DRBD-based sync replication. MS has none...
Click to expand...
As does Starwind. The performance hit(if any{logically, I suspect there is, question is how large}) of enabling HA and other things shall be benched as well.

As I said, it's something I will be doing. That is benchmarking various solutions, sequential speeds, IOPS, random, and etc properly when I am able to re-build my lab with SandyBridge Xeon's.

My "software" SAN is going to be built/based off SSD's, so it should be a good test of the various solutions implementations. ;)
 
Privet Thuleman :)

We have a couple of their NFRs as we're gov't educational mission but there's a stopper for us preventing us from using StarWind widely. Stopper's name is Windows :) There are not so many brand name servers we own with OEM Windows. We have so going for free software does not make sense if we still need to pay for OS. So we're looking for Linux or *nix iSCSI software with comparable features and performance. Free of charge or commercial with reasonable pricing. Nexenta is preferred for now :) Performance is adequate, they have virtial appliance and ZFS works really well and good tested since 2006 maybe. OpenSolaris is not a problem as UNIX. Only problem so far with HA :( StarWind is faster, has good HA but de-duplication is very early, no virtual appliance and needs Windows :)

Olga-SAN

Thuleman said:
Privet Olga, it does make me wonder whether you are with StarWind?
Click to expand...
 
Niet! DataCore, StarWind and Left Hand & EQL all have MPIO working HA. Approach is very different to virtual IP openfiler and say open-E do. With virtual IP cluster you only one node working other node standby. So 1/2 of hardware actually works. And when primary node dead you have timeout before other node take IP and continue. It can deadly your task. Approach works not well with SAN so say open-E add third node to only ping primary and secondary node and switch. With MPIO you can configure active-standby like virtual IP but switch node is faster so no problem. And you can configure scheme full symmetric make all nodes work at the same time. Sense for 2 nodes already. 3 and more node virtual IP approch cannot even imagine.

SSDs are very good! You can BTW use ordinary HDD and configure SSD as L2ARC for ZFS. Maybe get SSD like result for HDD built system :)

olga

Chilly said:
As does Starwind. The performance hit(if any{logically, I suspect there is, question is how large}) of enabling HA and other things shall be benched as well.

As I said, it's something I will be doing. That is benchmarking various solutions, sequential speeds, IOPS, random, and etc properly when I am able to re-build my lab with SandyBridge Xeon's.

My "software" SAN is going to be built/based off SSD's, so it should be a good test of the various solutions implementations. ;)
Click to expand...
 
Olga-SAN said:
Privet Thuleman :)

We have a couple of their NFRs as we're gov't educational mission but there's a stopper for us preventing us from using StarWind widely. Stopper's name is Windows :) There are not so many brand name servers we own with OEM Windows. We have so going for free software does not make sense if we still need to pay for OS. So we're looking for Linux or *nix iSCSI software with comparable features and performance. Free of charge or commercial with reasonable pricing. Nexenta is preferred for now :) Performance is adequate, they have virtial appliance and ZFS works really well and good tested since 2006 maybe. OpenSolaris is not a problem as UNIX. Only problem so far with HA :( StarWind is faster, has good HA but de-duplication is very early, no virtual appliance and needs Windows :)

Olga-SAN
Click to expand...

Easy solution, IF this is the way you wanted to go: Windows 2008 R2 Foundation, a cheap cut down version of Server 2008. Also, if your anything to do with education, Microsoft has CRAZY licensing deals, cheap as dirt, look into it.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/license/howtobuy/
http://www.microsoft.com/education/license/howtobuy/eligible.aspx
 
Thanks a lot for pointing but these are old news actually :)

1) It's limited U.S. and Canada offer. We're neither. Local distribs are not so open minded.

2) It's very difficult to tell why you need to pay $50-$70 per host if going Linux or OpenSolaris is free of charge. And we don't have one or two hosts just a little bit more doing VDI job mostly and also doing some IP surveillance and used for non-linear edit storage.

Olga-SAN
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top