An updated version of the mature software-defined storage: scale-out architecture with synchronous mirroring, asynchronous replication and flash caching is available now. 

StarWind Software Inc., a provider of dominant software-defined storage solutions for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2, today announced the Beta 2 release of its flagship product – StarWind SAN.

The up-coming StarWind SAN V8 is a mature, simple and affordable shared storage solution that has significant advantages over major solutions, such as VMware VSA. Unlimited scalability, triple synchronous replication, flash caching, using flash devices as the primary storage, asynchronous WAN-replication and VSA functionality – are all new StarWind V8 features that exceed current storage limits in terms of capacity, performance, hardware and business continuity.

The second StarWind Beta version provides most salable and essential storage features:

• Scale-out architecture creates fault-tolerant clusters with an unlimited number of hosts. StarWind also enables double or triple synchronous mirroring in a cluster, which guarantees 99.99% or 99.9999% uptime respectively.
• Asynchronous WAN-replication copies data to the remote secure host and enables the primary storage to be restored from the replica when needed. The replication channel bandwidth does not affect the performance of the replicated storage.
• The VAAI support for single-node devices and devices with synchronous replication offloads some tasks to the storage array, thereby reducing the CPU load and memory usage.
• Flash caching is used as L2 cache to decrease random reads.
• SSD/flash cards can be leveraged as the primary storage with StarWind’s dedicated Log-Structured File System (LSFS).
• Fixed and upgraded LSFS replaces random writes with a big sequential write, which improves VM performance drastically.

The Beta 2 release also contains a large number of fixes for small bugs and updates. For more information about new features and enhancements, please view the StarWind SAN V8 Beta 2 release notes here.

“Today we are pleased to release StarWind SAN V8 Beta 2 – the scale-out software-defined storage with multiple distinctive capabilities for Windows-based environments,” said Anton Kolomyeytsev, CTO and Chief Architect of StarWind Software, Inc. “Beta 2 is ready for a test drive now. We invite everyone to try it and tell us what you think on our public forum.”

Sign up for our public beta now! Try new features of the true software-defined storage. Leave your feedback and help us improve the software!