StarwindFor some time now StarWind software is working on a new release of their iSCSI SAN which will be version 6. Currently the software is in it’s beta phase, but StarWind released some release notes containing some new features and improvements.

First of is the change made to High Availability (HA) clusters. In the current release you can create a HA cluster containing two nodes. With the release of version 6 you will be able to create three node HA clusters.

On top of that you will be able to swap HA nodes in and out without interrupting the service. And a HA cluster doesn’t have to contain only the same type of Starwind devices ( deduplicated, Thin-provisioned, DiskBridge device).

Secondly there have been made some changes to deduplication:

  • Data deletion support. Unused data blocks will be overwritten by new data;
  • Memory usage lowered by 30% (2 MB’s per 1 GB of deduplicatied storage on 4kb deduplication block);
  • Asynchronous replication of deduplicated storage;
  • As an experimental feature you can nu replicate to remote iSCSI targets over a WAN connection.
 Furthermore they have expanded on the backup server functionalities.
  • Additional features are added for backup and management of Hyper-V virtual machines;
  • There is a new graphical interface for managing the backup process;
  • Simplified process of connection to ESX and Hyper-V servers;
  • Added backup and management for VMware ESX virtual machines.
 This new version looks to be offering some great improvements. For those that want to give the beta product a try, you can download it here.
 Just like last year Starwind will be present this year at VMworld in both San Francisco (booth 536) and Barcelona, so be sure to have a look at their booth.