StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

We are running a small Windows server farm with VMware, and we have chosen StarWind as our solution. It is a hyper-converged cluster connected with 25 GB. The servers themselves are located in different locations to increase security in case of failure. Also, the servers are connected to a server switch cluster to create additional protection. Only the standard servers were set up, such as the domain controller, file server, and app server. The backup strategy was implemented with Veeam and amounts to a synthetic full backup procedure located locally and performed on tape drives.

We had an old server infrastructure from two major vendors that ran without flaws yet were no longer state of the art and thus reached its limits in terms of memory and processor for large projects. 

In addition, the support for the servers was expiring, and we wanted a solution that would allow a live migration in real-time. After extensive research, we decided on StarWind. It has the advantages of a storage solution yet is priced much more attractively than the competition (when considering hardware in the premium range). 

We were looking for a solution that would allow live migration, however, we didn't want to spend a lot of money. We wanted an attractively priced system that offered all the advantages of a storage solution and not the disadvantages of having a highly available environment 365 days a year that would not allow any downtime. That's why we chose StarWind. It offered us a hyper-converged independent cluster with a complete package. A VM can be migrated directly in real-time in the event of a failure, and if a complete failure is imminent, a switch is made to the backup with 25 GB. 

There is not much that could be improved. StarWind was affected by the delivery problems typical for the market and could not be improved by different partners. 

What would have to be done urgently, however, is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration. We could only decide on a model that was in the upper premium segment, although we only needed standard specifications. Therefore, we have a solution that is a bit too performant concerning our requirements. That said, this also allows us to try something out. The price was excellent, so we accepted it. 

We've used the solution since April 2022 as part of a project. 

The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests.

Regarding the hardware, there are still delivery problems, however, the software can be attached to any backup or cloud solution.

I haven't had a chance to contact support yet; the consultation process through to implementation is great.

Positive

We switched due to the fact that our old infrastructure was in dire need of improvement and it was old.

The setup was done with the help of StarWind. There were a few things that needed to be considered and unfortunately were not communicated by StarWind.

The connection was made by StarWind and a partner of StarWind integrated the solution very well and very quickly.

StarWind is a good and cheap provider that sells high-quality products. That said,  you shouldn't always look for the cheapest price or the cheapest hardware. Sometimes you get a bargain in the higher segment.

We looked at other providers of a pure storage solution and purchased them with StarWind. We couldn't get anywhere close to StarWind in terms of price.

Absolutely compare the infrastructure. It should be modernized.

We were running a Hyper-v failover cluster across five servers and six SAN nodes, however, this was becoming dated and we were looking for new hardware to replace this. 

We looked into a few hyper-converged solutions and Starwind ticked all the boxes and seemed excellent value for money. 

We are a retail company and were running various workloads including domain controllers, file servers, SQL Server, and app servers.

The main workload was MS Dynamics AX 2012 which ran across 13 VMs running various different components. This drastically improved performance.

We condensed an entire rack of servers/switches and SAN storage nodes down to 4U for two Dell R730xd's, we had more storage, and it was much faster all around. It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy.

Our ERP system performance improved for all users. Lengthy overnight batch jobs were suddenly completed much earlier and enabled us to re-shuffle a lot of tasks into a smaller time window.

We are also finding it easier to maintain two host servers rather than the previous five.

The stability of the system has been the most valuable part. I never have to do anything, it just runs and runs and runs.

We haven't had any problems with Starwind, but some of our VMs have had issues and the proactive support from Starwind meant they knew about the issues before I knew and they were on it straight away. 

When we needed to make some upgrades to the server I contacted Starwind to discuss the changes and they were very helpful and easy to contact. The support is probably better than I have used compared to any supplier.

I cannot think of any way to improve it. They recently added a web-based interface that runs on a small footprint VM. This has massively improved the visibility of system metrics and made interacting with the product much easier.

I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product. My main interaction is with the Microsoft Hyper-V failover cluster running on the Starwind kit and the VMs themselves, which never need any attention from me.

I've used the solution for four and a half years.

The solution is very stable and never has any issues.

The solution is easily scalable. We purchase new nodes or expand the existing nodes if you can, which we have done.

Customer service and support is the best I have experienced with any supplier.

Positive

We use HP servers and an HP Lefthand SAN, however, this was too slow to run our SQL workloads.

The solution was very straightforward and we felt fully supported by the Starwind team.

This product is well priced with very good value for money and the support team is great so the setup is no problem.

We looked at Dell EMC, Nutanix, Scale, and Nimble.

I'm the sole IT guy at a construction company of about 50 employees. StarWind HCA hosts all of our IT infrastructure other than the building's security and the phones. 

In total, we are running six Windows Server VMs (one DC directly on each of the nodes and four in the HA cluster). 

We have one of their hybrid systems (mix of SSD and HDDs) and I have all of the Windows server OS installs and databases on the SSDs with simple file storage on the HDDs. Since we self-host most things this is the backbone of our IT infrastructure.

When I joined the company, they were running everything off a single bare-metal server. The downtime was common, there were rampant issues, and backups were simple file copies on a schedule (no configuration backups).

As a jack-of-all-trades IT guy I knew that virtualization would be a massive boon in many aspects, but was intimidated at the prospect of building out a whole system from scratch myself.

StarWind's HCA proved to be an ideal solution. Support held my hand through the setup and configuration of the hypervisors and allowed me to easily migrate the company's ancient bare-metal server to a proper virtualized HA setup.

Downtime is almost non-existent now. Services are compartmentalized to different VMs and backups are full of images that could be spun up on the cloud in a pinch. 

The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me. From the initial purchasing process to the initial setup and configuration to installing routine firmware updates years later. I've been consistently impressed with the quality of the support. It's easy to get a live person on short notice, and the reps always seem to know what they're doing.

Their software is also pretty user-friendly. After having support hold my hand a few times, I feel like I can almost completely manage everything myself. Still nice to know they're there to help, though.

So far, I haven't had any major complaints. If I had to think of some minor nitpicks, they would be:

1) Scalability. I'm not sure what I will do if we start running out of space. Presumably, we'll just have to buy a whole new HCA with more storage and move everything over. I'd recommend buying way more storage than you need to future-proof.

2) The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work. It looks nice, however, I find it slow and clunky compared to just remoting onto the nodes and working in the OS. 

I've used the solution for three years.

The stability is rock solid. We haven't had any downtime due to hardware/software issues.

The scalability is not ideal. That said, what physical on-prem solution is? No matter what product you choose you're going to have estimate your storage in advance and hope it lasts a good long while. If scalability is king, then a cloud solution is probably best.

Support has been top-notch. Responses have always been same-day and they always seem to know what they're doing. 

Positive

The initial setup was complex. That said, support walks you through every step. I could never have set it up right on my own. 

I did the setup in-house.

I couldn't give an exact number, however, considering how much downtime we used to have with our old system, I'm sure it has already paid for itself over the past three years.

The StarWind HCA solution provided our company with a turnkey hyper-converged platform that strengthened our processing and storage capabilities by greatly expanding our RAM, processors, and flash-based storage.

It also enabled us to take advantage of VMware vMotion technology. This allows us to transfer a virtual machine from one host to the other without interrupting production, which is critical in our manufacturing plant.

I haven't had to make any software related changes since the solution was implemented.

By having multiple servers, we are able to perform maintenance on one server while the other is still operating. The speed of the flash drives helped with performance, and the support that StarWind offers is very professional and accommodating.

We had to engage with support several times during the migration as we made licensing changes, and moved virtual servers from the old host to the new ones. The response time was quick and although there was a bit of an accent, I had no trouble understanding as the work was being completed.

The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment. When we looked at the costs for a storage array, they were somewhat higher than the solution from StarWind.

Knowing that the virtual machines will continue running in the event of one of the servers failing provides peace of mind. Also, having support readily available in the event of a problem helps as well.

We were impressed by all of the redundancy built into the solution to protect it from failures.

My only concern was with the terms and conditions of the proactive support. Our legal department didn't accept them, so we weren't able to take advantage of it. Having the heartbeat monitor working would save some time, by getting issues resolved by support as soon as, or possibly even prior to them happening.

I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement.

We have been using the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for six months.

There have been no issues with stability since the solution was implemented.

It seemed that we would be able to increase the scale as needed.

The support at StarWind was very knowledgeable and was able to resolve any issues on the current call.

Our previous solution was a single server and it was out of support.

Its initial setup was complex, but that is why we had support from StarWind look after it.

It was implemented mostly by StarWind in coordination with our in house team.

The setup cost was included in the support.

We considered solutions from Dell and Nutanix.

The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-v for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution. Its works with all hypervisors on the market today.

My use case saw it removing SAN architecture in favor of hyper-converged storage directly attached to my hosts, in testing the speed of which is comparable to any other storage solutions available.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization footprint whilst reducing my overall physical server footprint.

It has removed the need for large shared storage that is not directly attached to the virtual hosts make it a deal to deal with, it also self heals in the event of any major incident or down time, along with the 24/7 support and the most knowledgably staff when needed.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization foot print whilst reducing my overall physical server foot print.

This solution has allowed me to remove other storage solutions reduce physical footprint of equipment as well as power usage.

The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great. 

The support staff knows the product inside out and any issues that were thrown up they knew how to resolve immediately.

The ongoing maintenance and monitoring are key to the product catalog and allow for smooth and seamless ongoing use. 

It is helping reduce out-of-hours calls and it also helps with identifying predicted failure patterns, to assist in the very most uptime of production servers 365 days a year and 24/7.

Not much can be improved, to be honest. The solution is clean, quick to install, and has had no issues since the day we started using it. The features are improving every version level, however, I cannot think of anything I would really require to change at this moment in time.

It also offers an exclusive version of StarWind Virtual SAN which can be installed on just a few nodes in a much bigger cluster. There’s absolutely no need to enable it and pay license fees for all of the nodes. 

Some vendors will currently ask you to pay for all nodes in a cluster. StarWind Virtual SAN does best breed of scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

I've used the solution for six months.

I have done vigorous testing prior to live install and the stability of the system is excellent.

The scalability is amazing as it allows for a scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

Every time I have called, I have gotten the person I need along with an answer to my questions.

Positive

I just used a SAN Storage solution. I switched for reduced physical servers and power consumption.

The initial setup was a breeze. StarWind support did it all for me.

The StarWind in-house team did it all for me and I would rate them ten out of ten.

Currently I do not have any ROI figures.

StarWind can help identify exactly what you need and help identify the best hardware for the best price.

We looked at Dell Equal Logic SAN Storage solutions.

We use the solution as a virtual file server and Active Directory domain controller for the corporate office and virtual development and technical support environments for our developers and technical support staff for the timesheet software we develop in-house at our corporate office. 

We have an office space of about 30 employees, a mix of corporate and company employees. We currently have two HCAs in a rack cabinet in our server room, and, with the HCAs, there are no network switches required to support the SAN.

The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation. Previously, we had the traditional SAN environment of 2-3 virtual hosts, 2 SAN switches for iSCSI, and then one storage array/server (all Dell hardware). The problem was the single point of failure (SPoF) at the bottom, which was the one storage server. Due to the cost, we could only afford one storage server, however, this meant we had a completely fully redundant SAN solution at half the cost and rack space footprint.

The redundancy, lower rack space footprint (no switches are needed for the SAN), and ease of management are the most valuable aspects of the product. At the same time, the technical support staff has been one of the most knowledgeable that I have ever seen. I purchased the support package where StarWind Support will support every aspect of the HCA - the virtual hosts/hardware, StarWind Software, and VMware vSphere/ESXi server software. The ease of installation was a plus and it was very easy to understand the concepts of the HCAs and the StarWind software.

For our use case, I seriously can't think of anything missing. For us, it's a set it and forget it kind of use. For us it improves our redundancy issues and the maintenance of the HyperConverged Appliances is next to nothing. 

The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives. Next time around, we will purchase all SSD drives which will resolve the issue.

I've been using the solution for two and a half years.

In the 2.5 years we have had our HCAs, I have had not one issue with stability and it primarily just works right out of the box.

You can scale the HCAs by adding more CPUs, memory, network ports, and when needed, adding another node.

Customer service/support is outstanding. All the guys that I have spoken with were highly professional, friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. With the Support level I signed up for, I only have to contact StarWind support for any issues I have with the virtual host hardware, the StarWind software, or the VMware hypervisor.

Positive

We used the Dell Compellent and EqualLogics which are highly expensive, so much so that we could only afford just one storage server in each environment which made them single points of failure, with no redundancy of the storage systems.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward right out of the box with little help needed from StarWind Support. We were able to get it all up and running in two to five hours.

The implementation was handled in-house with just me, one person, with a little guidance from StarWind Support.

There is a cost-saving in regards to the hardware and implementation itself. The time saved in having to manage the software itself also provides an ROI.

The setup cost is minimum (and very easy) and the price is usually half the cost of traditional SAN implementations. Licensing only pertains to the hypervisor and server OS that the StarWind SAN software will reside on.

We looked at Nutanix, Dell Compellent, EqualLogic, VMware ReadyNodes, and Scale Computing.

For us, the StarWind HCAs almost works right out of the box and help me sleep at night knowing that we have a fully redundant SAN implementation.

We have two Supermicro servers in a failover cluster, connected via a 25GB card for faster replication and virtual nic runs through 10GB interface. The disks are hybrid standard HDD and SSD for better performance. The Starwind solution auto replicated the servers and monitors if there are any issues. 

Both are running Hyper-V on Windows Server Datacentre 2019. Each server runs about 13 virtual servers and can run all virtual servers with room to spare. 

We also have an older Dell Starwind setup running Windows Server 2016. These just run standard HDD so are much slower than the Supermicro servers. 

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has made the servers redundant, reducing downtime from just having a single standalone server with a much lower hardware cost than having an extra storage device which then reduces the redundancy unless purchasing much more hardware that increases the cost significantly. 

The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers. 

Also, the servers' support reduces downtime when things go wrong. The support team has always ensured we are back up and running in a short amount of time.

It offers a simple setup. The servers come pre-configured and only require a small amount of setup. The support team is on hand to complete your installation and ensure everything is running smoothly.  

Remote support ensures someone is watching the servers, letting you know if a VM has lost connection or either host has had any issues so you can check the servers and work with StarWind to get the servers back up and running again smoothly. 

Easily expandable CSVs take only a few minutes to get increased.

The control center needs email notifications so any self-monitoring is easier. The control center looks really good and looks like it could be very valuable. However, at the moment, not having email notifications makes it less worth it.

Easier CSV creation would be ideal so there are fewer steps and a check so that if you have created one, it can check all settings within the StarWind software and the ISCSI are set up. 

We'd like an easier setup for Windows updates on the Hyper-V servers so you don't have to use a script to ensure auto-updating is done. 

I've used the solution for three years.

So far, we have had no problems with stability.

The scalability is good.

Support is always very helpful and willing to help.

Positive

The setup is fairly straightforward and issues were sorted quickly.

We implemented the solution in-house.

If you have a preferred hardware vendor, then wait for it to become available if out of stock. 

We did not evaluate other solutions.

We currently have it set up with VMware. We use StarWind as a two-node cluster and VMware to host all the servers. All the servers are Windows-based.  

We use two Lenovo servers with SSDs. We were able to move from three physical servers down to two with the StarWind setup. Also, we wanted a new setup with an easy way to expand.  

StarWind will allow us to expand with very little setup after our initial configuration. We also set up our servers with multiple 10GB NICs bonded together and were able to separate our traffic easily with the software.

Before StarWind, we used HP Lefthand.  

While HP lefthand did work, the price difference was a major. Once we started to use StarWind, we found it to be very reliable and fast.  

We are very happy with moving from HP Lefthand to StarWind. During the conversion of Lefthand to StarWind, we used the support and found it very helpful. They were very knowledgeable and easy to work with.  

We needed three servers for our setup when we were using HP lefthand.  With StarWind, we were able to downsize to only two.

One of the best features is how it just works. We had issues with our hardware on our servers; however, once we have the hardware issue fixed, the StarWind services would sync right up.

The documentation is also a plus. We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times.  When we needed help, support responded and followed up, verifying our setup was working correctly. We also used their knowledge base and found it very helpful also.

Not having to purchase specific hardware is a plus!

The user interface needs an update for the Windows client. I would prefer it if it was all web-based. This way, you do not have to manage an installation program on a server. If it was web-based, it would work on any platform.

With the new interface, maybe some more reporting features would be nice.  Also, some notifications would be helpful for issues coming about with the system.

We would like to be able to shrink volumes. We know we can increase volumes when we need it, however, shrinking would be helpful.

I've used the solution for five years.

Support is amazing. They are very friendly and helpful.

Positive

We used HP Lefthand. We moved to StarWind due to the price and found it had excellent support.

The solution is mostly straightforward, however, we had to have help a few times.  

We received assistance with the setup from the vendor team. They were very knowledgeable and took care of all issues.

Be ready to use support to get through a few steps; however, after the initial configuration, it should work great!

We did not evaluate any other solutions.

It's an amazing product.