StarWind 5.8 Release Notes
Core: Multi-LUN support has been added for non-HA targets.
Deduplication:
- Plug-in has been reworked to support data journaling.
- Snapshots support has been added.
- Replication has been added as an experimental feature.
High availability:
The new plug-in version has been developed. The plug-in ensures:
- Standard raw image files can be used for creating HA devices.
- MS iSCSI transport for sync channel has been substituted by StarWind’s own transport.
- Several network interfaces can be used for synchronization and heartbeat channel.
- Heartbeat channel setting is required. It’s recommended to use a client network as the heartbeat channel. This channel is used for transfer of service messages only, so it doesn’t produce any substantial network traffic.
- Switch partner feature. A new partner node can be assigned to the existing HA device node. The old partner should not be used after switching HA device to the new partner node. Client MPIO connections should be reconfigured to use the path to the new partner instead of the old one.
- Automatic HA device synchronization after the both nodes were down. If the HA device can identify the node that has the most recent and correct data, it brings this node online automatically and synchronizes the other node. If the device cache mode is write-back and at least one node has not been turned off normally (for example, both nodes were down at the same time after power loss), the HA device cannot run the synchronization procedure automatically.
- The new option has been added that allows marking an unsynchronized HA device as synchronized without actual data synchronization. This command can be used in a disaster situation when the both HA nodes failed. Example: When the both nodes are turned on after the failure and you found out that some hardware was damaged on the second node and you are unable to replace/fix the hardware immediately. In this case, you can mark the undamaged node as "synchronized" and continue the working process. As soon as the other node is fixed and returns online, it starts copying (synchronizing) the data.
- The new option has been added for extending the size of an HA device on fly.
Hardware VSS provider for Deduplication and CDP devices: This is now available as a separate download.
StarWindX: COM-object and set of PowerShell commandlets that allow management of the StarWind virtual devices by the third-party scripts and software. This is now available as a separate download.
RAM disk: Serial ID generation algorithm has been changed. Now, serial ID is unique across different machines on the network. You can still add predefined IDs to a configuration file for RAM devices.
SPTI: Buffer alignment parameter is used when checking the device properties during the service initialization.
Backup Plug-in for Hyper-V virtual machines
- Agentless architecture
- VHD archives’ format
- Network Centralized Management
- Single-click backup
- Global Deduplication
- Restore for the entire virtual machine
- Sandbox mode for VM test
- VM cloning
The latest builds are:
StarWind iSCSI SAN - 5.8.2059
StarWind Native SAN - 5.8.2060