Control your vBlade’s Sessions with nice Interface

You can control your vblade sessions with a simple and nice interface to manage:

You can run the vblade session without a console with free “System Scheduler“

Oficial website: http://www.splinterware.com/products/wincron.htm

Alternative Download Link: Ssfree.exe

and kill the process with “Process Explorer” from SysInternals Microsoft

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Cache Write-Back

For cache write back feature you can use:

FancyCache is a supplementary software caching scheme that cooperates with system memory to provide data caching for volumes/disks. It improves system performance by transparently storing data into memory such that future requests for that data can be served faster. FancyCache caches data on a logical block basis (offsets within a volume/disk) while windows cache manager caches on a virtual block basis (offsets within a file).

FancyCache can also utilize the OS Invisible Memory which is wasted on 32-bit Windows when 4GB memory or more is installed.

Main Features

• Supports LRU (Least Recently Used) and LFU (Least Frequently Used) cache algorithms
• Supports caching strategies: Read/Write Caching, Read-Only Caching and Write-Only Caching
• Supports Write-Through and Write-Deferred modes
• Supports OS Invisible Memory and SSD (Solid-state Drive) as Level-II cache
• Supports caching for volumes or entire disks
• Supports TRIM command for SSD
• Supports visual performance monitor
• Supports cache plug and play
• Supports basic and dynamic disks
• Supports NTFS junction point
• Supports volume/disk with proprietary file system

Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20131117170301/http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/index.html

Download:

FancyCache Volume Edition: Download Sites

FancyCache Disk Edition: Download Sites

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Coraid ZX NAS Combines ZFS and Scale-Out Ethernet SAN

Coraid Inc., developer of Ethernet SAN solutions with more than 1,500 customers, unveiled the ZX-Series family of NAS servers.

Designed for cloud, video and big data customers, this unified storage solution is powered by the Oracle Solaris ZFS file system combined with Coraid's EtherDrive technology to enable scalability, performance and operational simplicity.

"Organizations are increasingly challenged to provide predictable, cost-effective file performance in the face of uncontrolled data growth," said Carl Wright, EVP at Coraid. "By extending our product family to include a best-in-class NAS offering, Coraid can meet that challenge with a unified storage solution that takes full advantage of the scalability and performance of Ethernet SAN."

For Cloud, Video and Big Data Workloads

Capturing, storing and analyzing ever-larger sets of human- and machine-generated data stresses the scalability of legacy NAS systems. The ZX-Series is for processing large data sets such as consumer behavior analysis or HD and 3D video format editing because it provides the throughput and scale necessary to support accelerating data growth.

The ZX-Series delivers performance using read- and write-optimized flash caches and parallel 1Gb/10GbE connectivity.

By connecting to Coraid EtherDrive SRX arrays via ATA over Ethernet for a scale-out architecture, the ZX-Series scales performance to multi-petabyte capacity across a shared pool. The performance and scale is complemented by data protection and features including triple-parity RAID, redundant array of independent nodes (RAIN), active-active clustering, unlimited snapshots, deduplication and compression.

"Our research confirms that scale-out storage designs built on Ethernet align well with the evolving architecture of the virtualized data center," said Roger Cox, research VP at Gartner. "Functions such as hybrid storage pools, data deduplication and compression optimize storage utilization, thus reducing acquisition costs and improving TCO."

ZX-Series features include:

• EtherDrive integration for multi-petabyte scalability and simplicity
• Real-time analysis and diagnosis of performance to monitor and enforce service levels
• Active-active cluster option for high availability
• Data compression and in-line deduplication to improve storage efficiency
• File-based snapshots, clones and replication for data protection
• Automated storage hierarchy with hybrid storage pools (HSPs) containing DRAM, flash cache and HDDs to optimize performance
• Seamless multiprotocol integration and secure data sharing between Microsoft Windows, Linux and Unix environments

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Coraid

Coraid is High Performance and Low Cost Networked Storage

Coraid is redefining the fundamental economics of storage with Ethernet SAN solutions that provide enterprises of all sizes with flexible, high-performance, scale-out storage ideally suited to dynamic High Performance Computing, video, virtualization and cloud environments. The key is Coraid’s use of the advanced protocol ATA over Ethernet.

Business Benefits

• Large amounts of shared storage at low prices.
• Better performance than traditional storage technology.
• Especially good for storing video and deploying Virtual Desktop Environments.
• Over 1300 Satisfied Customers of Coraid including Ford and Disney.
• New storage access technology means lower price and higher performance with better reliability.

Technical Features and Benefits

• 5-8x Price/Performance advantage over Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage arrays.
• CorOS™ parallel processing scale-out SAN operating system.
• Distributed, modular architecture scales from a few Terabytes to Petabytes.
• Automatic Load Balancing reduces bottlenecks; ideal for VMware environments.
• Continuous RAIDShield™ testing fixes disk bad blocks; reduces drive failures.

New Technology Designed for Rapid Access at Low Cost (see above)

• Layer-2 Ethernet
• Less than $1,000/TB
• Incredibly fast (>1,800 MB/s)
• Plug-and-play configuration
• Scale-out architecture

Better Than Traditional Fibre Channel or iSCSI Networked Storage (see above)

• Expensive
• Controller hurts performance
• Complex to set-up and maintain
• Difficult to scale

Simplified SAN Management

Coraid’s CorOS™ software provides the intelligence that enables rapid installation (minutes not hours), simple management, and RAID redundancy. The simplicity of EtherDrive Storage makes it easy to manage, because it’s easy to understand.

EtherDrive is a disk connected to your server via Ethernet. That disk may actually be a RAID volume, but it just looks like a local disk to the server. No need to learn complicated technology like Fibre Channel. Just add SAS, SSD or SATA disks to the EtherDrive Storage Appliance and you have all the space you want available for any server attached to the Ethernet SAN. It’s that simple.

Disruptive Price/Performance

Coraid’s EtherDrive® Ethernet SAN storage solutions deliver flexible, high-performance, scale-out storage designed from the ground up for simplicity and virtualization. EtherDrive® storage enables lower OPEX and 5-8x price performance advantage over legacy Fibre Channel systems.

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How-To Diskless AoE – 09 Preparing a Real PC Lan Booting

To boot a real PC you should need to Convert a Windows installation to a .vhd, .vmdk or .img file, but in some cases you can use the VirtualBox Windows installtion to boot real machines ! So maybe you dont need to Convert.

The cases are if the NIC Card is recognized by operating system Windows XP/7/8 by default. Verify your onboard NIC and mark if that exists on default Windows drivers list. The CCBoot(r) Client have a PNP tool that list and collect the NIC Drivers from Windows system and put this nic drivers available to diskless boot.

See the CCBootPnP:

Click in the 3 buttons to apply the Drivers…  Now procedd to try boot your .vhd or .vmdk file from Diskless Server.

If Windows loading freeze,

 you need to Convert a real Installation, try this procedure:

• Installing WinAoE Driver on Machine
• Installing CCBoot Client
• Converting the phisicall disk to a Virtual Disk (clone)

Converting the Real PC with Windows installed ( apply to xp, 7, 8, etc…)

On PC Windows Station:

Task 1 – Download HDClone http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html and install.

Task 2 – Download AoE Initiator http://www.starwindsoftware.com/aoe-ataoverethernet-initiator and install.
 
On Diskless Server:

Task 3 – Create a virtual disk with a required Windows size (that can support the actual partition size of your current Windows Station). You can use the graphical VirtualBox Manage to create .VHD 

Files, or use the ‘VBoxManage.exe’ tool.

If you running in a Windows Server with VirtualBox installed, you will have the VBoxManage.exe command:

example creating 25 Gb of disk:

On Windows:

On Linux Distro (version 0.0.15+):

Task 4 – on server export as a AoE target with vblade (Windows Server or Linux Distro method).

On PC Windows Station:

Task 5 - Use AoE Initiator from StartWind to connect to the exported aoe disk by Diskless Server, with  ”Automount the device” option unmarked.

Vblade tool from Windows Diskless Server exporting a disk:

The disk wil be connected:

Task 6 - Use HDClone — Clone hdd physical to virtual attached disk by AoE Initiator.

Task 7 – Validate the Conversion ( cloned ), initialize/activate the disk on ‘Disk Managment’ on ‘Computer Manager’, after Windows recognize the disk, view the disk by Windows Explorer.

Task 8 - Remove the physical HDD from PC Station and try to Boot From Diskless Server;

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