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Virtual SANs: Are They Really All Alike?

  • October 29, 2020
  • 16 min read
Cloud and Virtualization Architect. Kevin focuses on VMware technologies and has vast expertise in cloud solutions, virtualization, storage, networking, and IT infrastructure administration.
Cloud and Virtualization Architect. Kevin focuses on VMware technologies and has vast expertise in cloud solutions, virtualization, storage, networking, and IT infrastructure administration.

Introduction

As time goes on, fewer and fewer people tend to rely on cumbersome SANs. It doesn’t mean that they have become obsolete; it’s just that many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) simply don’t require all the broad specter of services and resources that a storage area network system can offer. That makes perfect sense: if you can farewell with a less complicated and resource-hungry configuration – why pay more?

Virtual SANs have become the newfound Holy Grail of small infrastructures. And why not? They offer software-defined storage solutions that support HCI systems and leave external shared storage out of the picture. An introduction of virtual SAN solutions to the market has changed a lot, opening the way for simple storage configurations that can provide maximum possible performance with minimum possible resources required, respectively.

Since the market has emerged, it didn’t take long to recognize the leaders, which are StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) and VMware virtual SAN (vSAN). All else being equal, neither is considered better or worse. However, each IT environment is, in a way, unique. I don’t need to tell you about the multitude of configurations out there. So, with the diversity of HCI systems and hardware requirements in mind, this begets a question: are these solutions really giving away an equal performance, all things considered?

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Time to Talk Business

Naturally, whenever such a question arises, talking won’t do much: the only way to come up with an answer is by testing, through and through. So, today’s goal is to compare StarWind VSAN and VMware vSAN performance with the same 2-node configuration.

First things first, let’s build a test environment (performing testing procedures in your work infrastructure is never a good idea) and check requirements:

node-{01..02} Supermicro
X10DRH

CPU
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v4 @ 2.20GHz

Sockets
2

Cores/Threads
20/40

RAM
64Gb

NIC
Mellanox ConnectX-5 MCX456A-ECAT (100 GbE\s)

Storage
5 (SSD) – Intel® SSD DC S4600 Series 480GB
1 (NVMe) – Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series 375GB

 

node-witness Supermicro
X10DRH

CPU
2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 v4 @ 2.20GHz

Sockets
2

Cores/Threads
20/40

RAM
64Gb

NIC
Mellanox ConnectX-5 MCX456A-ECAT (100 GbE\s)

Storage
1 (SSD) – Intel® SSD DC S4600 Series 480GB
1 (NVMe) – Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series 375GB

Software:

VMware ESXi 7.0.0, 16324942
HCIBench 2.4.0
StarWind VSA 13792

VMware vSAN:

VMware vSAN

Well, as you know, VMWare vSAN supports a configuration “2 nodes + witness node + 2 caching disks + capacity witness”.

In order to create a vSAN datastore on each node, you’ll need a caching disk on each node, respectively.

With vSAN Storage Policy, this isn’t hard; you can even set a number of disk stripes per object. VMWare vSAN supports the optimization of the data distribution to the disks as well.

That’s why we’ll also need to test configurations with the following parameters: “Number of disk stripes per object = 1/=5” and “Number of disk stripes per object = 1 + rebalance.” Otherwise, there’s no telling what an optimal configuration is.

StarWind VSAN:

StarWind VSAN

 

Testing methods:

I plan on performing testing with the following configuration: “HCIBench + fio”.

HCIBench will create test VMs with zeroed 100GB disk and launch fio with the following parameters:

Random Read 4k:

Random Write 4k:

Random Read/Write (70%/30%) 4k:

Random Read 64k:

Random Write 64k:

The amount of VMs will be increased by 2 each time to establish the highest performance possible.

In the case with VMware vSAN, HCIBench will keep on clearing the cache after each testing (Clear Read/Write Cache Before Each Testing is the option designed for vSAN users to flush the cache tier before each test case).

By the way, testing time will differ because VMware vSAN actually uses caching; so, it’ll take some time until it’s clean and ready to go.

Results were as follows:

Test time:

VMware vSAN – 3600 seconds;

StarWind VSAN – 300 seconds.

NVMe, SSD, and RAID performance testing for StarWind VSAN;

As declared by the manufacturer:

NVMe, SSD, and RAID performance testing

NVMe, SSD, and RAID performance testing for StarWind VSAN

As received by fio testing:


Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series 375GB

pattern

jobs

iodepth

IOPS

MB/s

latency (ms)
4k random read 6 4 583000 2276 0,04
4k random write 6 4 560000 2189 0,04
64k random read 2 2 40400 2522 0,10
64k random write 2 2 35100 2194 0,10

 

Intel® SSD DC S4600 Series 480GB

pattern

jobs

iodepth

IOPS

MB/s

latency (ms)
4k random read 4 8 73200 286 0,33
4k random write 4 4 64700 253 0,25
64k random read 4 2 4031 252 1,90
64k random write 2 2 6858 429 0,59


pattern

jobs

iodepth

IOPS

MB/s

latency (ms)
4k random read 8 16 346000 1353 0,35
4k random write 8 8 57800 226 1,10
64k random read 4 8 27700 1727 1,15
64k random write 4 4 22400 1400 0,70


VMware vSAN 8VM with “Number of disk stripes per object = 1, 1 + rebalance, and 5” (the amount of disks in each node) parameters performance testing results:

4k random write IOPS 4k random read IOPS

4k random read/write IOPS 64k random read throughput (MB)

64k random write throughput (MB)

Well, as you can see for yourself, our test results imply that “Number of disk stripes per object = 5” is the optimal parameter for this configuration, performance-wise.

VSAN Availability VSAN Advanced Policy Rules

Who Is Leading the Race?

All the preparations and tests are done, for now, so it’s time to see the results in our comparison VMware vSAN vs. StarWind VSAN.

Just keep in mind that VMware vSAN uses caching, meaning we need to look at the last results, not the middle ones:

4k random read IOPS 4k random read latency (ms)

4k random write IOPS 4k random write latency (ms)

4k random read/write IOPS 4k random read/write latency (ms)

64k random read throughput (MB/s) 64k random read latency (ms)

64k random write throuhput (MB/s) 64k random write latency (ms)

 

    VMware vSAN StarWind VSAN Comparison
VMs count pattern jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) IOPS MB/s latency (ms)
4 4k random read 4 4 198697 776 0,32 4 8 180872 706 0,70 91,03% 90,98% 218,75%
4k random write 4 4 34092 133 1,87 4 4 33007 128 1,93 96,82% 96,24% 103,21%
4k random read/write (70%/30%) 4 4 83632 326 0,80 4 4 65218 254 1,21 77,98% 77,91% 152,20%
64k random read 4 2 17192 1074 1,85 4 2 35142 2196 0,91 204,41% 204,47% 49,19%
64k random write 4 2 17273 1079 1,86 4 2 11814 738 2,83 68,40% 68,40% 152,15%

 

    VMware vSAN StarWind VSAN Comparison
VMs count pattern jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) IOPS MB/s latency (ms)
6 4k random read 4 4 187146 731 0,52 4 8 190558 744 1,10 101,82% 101,78% 211,54%
4k random write 4 4 44571 174 2,15 4 4 40688 158 2,35 91,29% 90,80% 109,30%
4k random read/write (70%/30%) 4 4 89561 349 1,04 4 4 80505 314 1,47 89,89% 89,97% 141,55%
64k random read 4 2 22143 1383 2,16 4 2 43438 2714 1,11 196,17% 196,24% 51,39%
64k random write 4 2 16678 1042 2,88 4 2 12862 803 3,79 77,12% 77,06% 131,60%

 

<thIOPS<thMB/slatency (ms)

    VMware vSAN StarWind VSAN Comparison
VMs count pattern jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms)
8 4k random read 4 4 171080 668 0,75 4 8 184999 722 1,38 108,14% 108,08% 184,00%
4k random write 4 4 44381 173 2,88 4 4 46817 182 3,49 105,49% 105,20% 121,18%
4k random read/write (70%/30%) 4 4 84353 329 1,44 4 4 91987 359 1,68 109,05% 109,12% 117,07%
64k random read 4 2 24992 1561 2,56 4 2 50569 3160 1,26 202,34% 202,43% 49,22%
64k random write 4 2 16074 1004 3,98 4 2 13233 827 4,86 82,32% 82,37% 122,11%

 

    VMware vSAN StarWind VSAN Comparison
VMs count pattern jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) jobs iodepth IOPS MB/s latency (ms) IOPS MB/s latency (ms)
10 4k random read 4 4 143254 559 1,11 4 8 193502 755 1,72 135,08% 135,06% 154,95%
4k random write 4 4 42934 167 3,72 4 4 47098 183 3,49 109,70% 109,58% 93,82%
4k random read/write (70%/30%) 4 4 86359 337 1,69 4 4 95791 374 2,00 110,92% 110,98% 118,34%
64k random read 4 2 25621 1601 3,12 4 2 52729 3295 1,52 205,80% 205,81% 48,72%
64k random write 4 2 15637 977 5,11 4 2 11536 720 6,98 73,78% 73,69% 136,59%

To Sum Up

You have seen that even without caching, StarWind VSAN performance can match or even surpass the performance of VMware vSAN. Does it mean that VMware vSAN is worse? Or that StarWind VSAN is better? Not really, but it does give some food for thought.

VMware vSAN is an undisputable champion when it comes to native hardware: you can manage and configure it any way you want with only a few clicks in VMware vCenter. Then again, if you’re a little tight on money and even such detail as a spare node slowly starts to look a little bit too luxurious … Well, StarWind VSAN, as a solution fully compatible with any hypervisor, can help you actually have your cake and eat it too.

Hey! Found Kevin’s article helpful? Looking to deploy a new, easy-to-manage, and cost-effective hyperconverged infrastructure?
Alex Bykovskyi
Alex Bykovskyi StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance Product Manager
Well, we can help you with this one! Building a new hyperconverged environment is a breeze with StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance (VHCA). It’s a complete hyperconverged infrastructure solution that combines hypervisor (vSphere, Hyper-V, Proxmox, or our custom version of KVM), software-defined storage (StarWind VSAN), and streamlined management tools. Interested in diving deeper into VHCA’s capabilities and features? Book your StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance demo today!