StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

My primary use case was for a SOHO deployment.

We wanted the branch offices to have software-defined storage. For our needs, performance, and costs, StarWind vSAN met our requirements as it was incredibly cost-effective with the best features ever and we did not need a witness for small deploys so the money we spent was on licenses and deployment, with less spent on purchasing another host and licenses for it. 

StarWind Virtual San has improved our organization by giving us access to a product and technology that is very affordable, easy to use and understand, and is covering our backs by offering awesome premium support behind all our operations. You can easily learn the platform, however, you are always being watched by an expert, guiding you all time.

The hardware compatibility list is huge, so everything fits well into what we wanted, and it was just a matter of price and considering future expansions to choose the right product for us.

The most valuable feature, with no competitors, is the two nodes without an agent needed. It is a game changer, I can deploy anywhere with just two hosts (SOHO or small office) and no extra licenses, communication lines, third-party host, or anything else, it just works and does its job correctly.

It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly.

We are not locked to any vendor. We are free and work with whoever we normally work with, and deploy it on top.

A big improvement would be to make it compatible with NFS protocol, not only iSCSI (for internal communication).

Regarding the free community version, I would love to see a better console/web environment, like the production one, with, of course, limitations - like using it only for lab or internal purposes or limiting the size. Still, I'd like it to be more like the paid version.

They require more media visibility.

I've used the solution for more than two years.

We use the StarWind Virtual SAN software across two storage nodes to create redundancy for our cluster storage. 

Installed on two storage servers, StarWind's Virtual SAN handles the replication of our cluster storage between the two in separate server rooms across the site. 

We have five compute nodes connected to the storage nodes, which we run Hyper-V; the VMs are all located on the cluster storage nodes yet physically run on the compute nodes. 

The compute nodes are split in two, with two in one server room and three in another, with room to add more compute nodes if needed. 

Migration of VMs is seamless and improved from our previous solutions.

Our previous SAN solutions were outdated and had several issues due to age.

Looking for a change, we found that all the reviews and people we spoke to about StarWind said that the software just worked perfectly. All we really wanted was a system that once it was set up that just worked. And that's exactly what we have found to be the case in StarWind's Virtual SAN. It has been excellent; we monitor the replication health via the software and that's about it. There are no issues so far, and, like each review we've seen, we would highly recommend StarWind Virtual SAN.

StarWind's Virtual SAN handles the replication of our cluster storage
between the two storage nodes in separate server rooms across the site. 

We have five compute nodes connected to the storage nodes, which we run Hyper-V, and the VMs are all located on the cluster storage nodes. They, however, physically run on the compute nodes. The compute nodes are split into two with two in one server room and three in another. There is also room to add more compute nodes if needed.

Migration of VMs is seamless. It's improved from our previous solutions. The fact is that once it was set up, the replication works perfectly, and we haven't had any issues since installation.

The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase.

We don't really have any issues with this product. 

StarWind has a great technical support team that helps with the installation and has ironed out any issues we had early on. 

The price was perfect, as we didn't have to shell out for new SAN servers. We found that StarWind's Virtual SAN was a cheaper solution to install on two storage servers than buying a new dedicated SAN server.

Due to the fact our old SAN was no longer supported and out of warranty, finding that StarWind's technical support team is so incredibly helpful and knowledgeable has been amazing.

There are no negatives or improvements that we can think of at our current stage.

I've been using the solution for four months.

The software seems to be completely stable; we have had no issues with the software itself and if a compute or storage node has gone down, the redundancy has been great, we don't even know if there ever was an issue. 

With the way we are set up, we only need two storage nodes that we are licensed for, and we can expand the storage on those nodes and add it to our cluster storage with no additional cost. Compute nodes don't need to be licensed, so we can have as many as we'd like and attach them to our cluster storage.

Customer service and support were amazing. They offer quick responses and are  very helpful and knowledgeable. 

We had them look over our setup after the demo and got help with configuring the iSCSI connections to the storage nodes. We also had the same technician throughout, so he knew our system and setup.

Positive

We used NetApps SANtricity for the past 10+ years. The System was old, outdated, and out of warranty. Our support contract ended with them last year, so we needed a new solution with support and better software.

Most of the setup was easy for our environment; the only issue we had was with setting up iSCSI connections from the compute nodes to the storage nodes, however, the technical support team helped with this.

We went through a vendor and initially spoke directly with StarWind to do a demo and talk us through it.

The setup costs depend on how many nodes you need.

One of the main reasons we went with StarWind was the pricing. It was cheaper for us to use our existing servers and install the Virtual SAN software and upgrade to SSDs than buy a brand new SAN server from other providers. 

We trialed the StarWind Virtual SAN software for a few weeks and quickly decided on the product.

We looked at other solutions from HP, Barracuda, Netapp, and Azure HCI.

If you trial the software, you can upgrade from the trial to the full version without any disruption or reconfiguration. StarWind Technical support is outstanding. They were extremely helpful throughout the trial, setup, and during our transitioning period.

We have used vSAN as an SDS storage solution with fiber channel JBOD chassis as hardware and integrated the SAN with HyperV to supply storage to VMs. 

The setup was required to expand our storage capabilities, and when looking for solutions, we wanted an SDS system for easier management of new disks and disk failures. 

Our system, therefore, consists of many disks with varying quality, which for us is the true benefit of vSAN since we now can trust different levels of degraded disks and still stay certain that we will not lose data.

We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage.

The storage system has been a great expansion of our capabilities to store large amounts of data since we previously relied on cloud storage which became exponentially more expensive as we expanded our data collection and our pipelines which required more virtual machines and hence more storage. 

With the web GUI available, it also became easier to monitor disk health instead of always logging in to the respective storage servers and checking status, which sometimes only was available during boot in raid controllers.

For us, the SAN solution needed to integrate well with HyperV since that is what we currently use - although we are planning to add an ESXi hypervisor which made vSAN optimal (since it is hypervisor-agnostic and we can select whatever hypervisor we want in the future without the need to redo our storage system).

Furthermore, we have a lot of fiber channel disks lying around, which we had no good use of. Therefore vSAN was great since we could easily integrate these into our storage system and also distribute block storage via fiber channel to the hypervisors and other storage-requiring servers.

The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved. It took some time to get it up and running; however, when running, it worked well. 

The setup is done in PowerShell and requires quite some knowledge about how to navigate windows through Powershell. Fortunately, there were scripts available to help out. That said, the documentation was not that thorough in helping me understand the scripts. This is definitely room for improvement since it would be nice to quickly get up a demo of the SAN running to evaluate if it works as one expects, which it did in our case.

I've used the solution for two months.

The scalability is great. It integrates with all hypervisors, and disks can easily be added.

It was far from the easiest implementation; however, we got it working.

We implemented the solution in-house.

We looked into TrueNAS and Windows storage spaces.

Our company needed a Virtual SAN solution that would fit perfectly into our private cloud architecture based on Windows Server virtualization (Windows Server 2016/2019/2022) and Hyper-V without having to substantially modify its composition. In this case, it has allowed us to provide storage with geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources in the event of a disaster, allowing data to be migrated between the different delegations and guaranteeing that we comply with current regulations regarding data protection, as well as ISO 27001 and ISO 22301.

The StarWind Virtual SAN product has allowed us to improve the availability of our services, as well as their security. On the other hand, it has allowed us to make these improvements without having to make a large increase in investment, as could have happened with solutions such as those from VMWARE, Dell, etc. In this way, we have also achieved clear profitability and an immediate return on investment (ROI). Of course, it has allowed us to align with the business continuity management strategy using geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources.

The StarWind support team is, without a doubt, the best part of this product. The engineer assigned to us for the implementation showed great involvement and a willingness to work and share his knowledge with our team, which was great and smoothed out the resistance to change as well as the learning curve. The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently. The team is always aligned with our needs, and they try to give maximum performance to the vSAN. So far, the solution has shown great stability with no noticeable issues. The ease of use has helped our juniors.

The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own. This problem is really solved when the team of engineers is assigned to the project since, with the willingness of the support team to provide information when required, it is very easy to move forward and solve these deficiencies. On the other hand, perhaps it can be said that it would be interesting to publish a greater number of pre-generated scripts.

I've used the solution for three years.

So far, we haven't had a noteworthy problem to attribute to the solution. We only had initial problems due to the operation error of the junior technicians while they were learning to use the tool.

The scalability for us is perfect. The solution allows us to work elastically, responding to changes in the requirements of our infrastructure according to demand. In addition, it scales easily and quickly.

In my experience of over 20 years in the IT industry, I've noticed that they provide one of the best services available today. They are very involved and proactive technicians.

Positive

We evaluated other solutions, however, it is the first one that we implemented.

In terms of the initial complexity, it would come from the previous tests in which we did not have support or all the documentation. As soon as we contracted the software and had support, everything was easy, and we had an engineer that was really valuable.

The experience of the team that collaborated with us in the deployment is undoubtedly very high. The desire to work and the availability to share knowledge are points that, without a doubt, must be valued very positively.

Replacing the previous model with a vSAN model has allowed us significant cost savings. Even if we consider the license, it will not cost much to amortize the investment.

The investment is really low compared to other options, and the stability and flexibility guarantee the security of the investment.

We looked into VMware, Hyper-V, and some other options.

The solution is really easy to implement, manage and maintain.

I used the software as a virtual SAN solution. When I tried it for the first time, I found it easy to use and working perfectly. The most important thing is that the vendor keeps developing and enhancing the solution to include more robust features.

I have three servers running VMware ESXi and used the solution as a SAN for the VMware Cluster by connecting the servers as ISCSI targets to the StarWind vSAN using a 1GB network connection peer. That helped me to run my application with peace of mind.

I am currently running servers with a hosted application for my business, and I had a problem having them online all the time thanks to of server maintenance and updates. 

That's why I used a vSAN to avoid buying a hardware SAN and use my existing servers only. The software improved my productivity by allowing me to have high availability and fault tolerance in virtualization.

I plan to invest in NVME disks where the software provides perfect integration to speed up the systems and get cache capabilities.

We like the ease of management. The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard.

The ISCSI is good. The connection using software made it easy to me to connect my servers without extra investment in hardware SAN.

I like the vCenter plugin. This allows me to monitor the SAN performance in the VMware web interface.

It offers good fault tolerance and high availability. I can update or restart the physical server without worry.

It's got great deduplication and compression. I am planning to use this feature when investing in new NVme disks.

They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor. Also, they need to provide how-to videos on social video networks about the setup, upgrades, and migration from real hardware like HPE, DellEMC, or Fujitsu to vSAN solutions.

They need to make it easy for the customers to find a solution for any error happening during migration or setup. That way, it will be more accurate and have fewer errors.

We've used the solution for ten years up until now.

We use the solution in order to share storage across multiple virtual server hosts. We are currently running VMWare ESXi with vCenter across two locations and with a total of 8 ESXi Hosts. 

We use a storage server with a 30 TB RAID10 Array which is being shared out across all servers. We are using a mixture of Dell R730XDs, and Dell VRTX with M620 Blades, all across a 10GB server backbone and a 1GB End user network. The two locations are 20 miles apart, linked by an MPLS provided by AT&T. 

We currently use Synology for our backup appliance.

Before implementing StarWind Virtual SAN, we would have to copy over every single virtual hard drive file before we could migrate and VM. With Virtual SAN, though, we can use a shared Storage volume and rarely have to move files. This has allowed us to expand our virtual server host threefold and allows us to have a more robust disaster recovery plan. I am now able to do Migrations during the work day which has saved me from having to do things like this overnight. I could not be happier with my shared storage solution.

I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN. Most other shared storage utilities either do not have a graphical user interface or a poorly laid-out one. Every single wizard I have used in Virtual SAN is easy to follow, has clear labeling, and just makes sense. There is also an overabundance of documentation every step of the way if you run into any questions about the lingo or what this checkbox does. I could not be happier with my purchase and decision to use Virtual SAN.

This is a tricky question since I do not have many issues with StarWind's Virtual SAN product. Every step along the way, if I ever had any questions, there was either documentation to answer a question, or customer service was able to help quickly. 

There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online by users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa. Customer Service can take care of the issue though without any issues. That's about the only issue I can think of.

I've used the solution for two years.

I had one issue with the product, however, reinstalling solved the issue, and it was nothing crazy.

The product is all about scalability. I have no concerns about future company growth and this solution.

The few times I reached out to technical support, my issues were solved in minuets, not hours.

Positive

I did not use a different soltion. 

The setup wizards are amazing!

I did the implementation myself.

We witnessed an ROI in six months.

I was intimidated at first about the setup, however, it is super easy.

I did evaluate VMware vSAN.

I'd advise new users to give the free version a try to see if the product is right for them. That's what I did, and I am so happy with the solution.

A customer wanted to build a test environment for his VMware. However, he was running out of financial resources. 

I suggested this product (vSAN in particular), and he was quite happy with its features. Later, he decided to convert his test environment into production using the same StarWind products, and to date, he is a happy customer. 

After this success story, I have referred many of my customers to use this product; no complaints so far. 

Happy customers mean good business, and the company is progressing well, so I'm enjoying the benefits as well. 

StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer. It's a user-friendly solution. We are integrators and deployed vSAN from StarWind with multiple clients and all are happy with its performance. 

Creating the new server and deploying it to be used by hypervisors over ISCSI is good. It is very easy to configure. 

I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided. That way, the customer doesn't have to log in to a specific server where the product is running. That could be very beneficial. 

I've been using the solution for four years.

I have deployed this product at multiple locations (for clients) and have had no complaints so far. It is a fully stable product. 

The scalability is relatively easy to manage on StarWind. When having real hardware, it's a bit complex to scale, yet way easier with StarWind than with other options.  

Customer service is easily available by email. I have not tried by phone. However, it's my understanding that they would be of great help if I reached out that way too.  

Positive

I have worked with NetApp, Lenovo, EMC, and some other brands as well for storage with VMware and Hyper V. 

StarWind is easy to manage as compared to these and is a cheap solution with very similar features. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Any IT professional can handle it after some studying and training from Youtube. 

After reading the help material and watching some Youtube videos, I deployed this product myself. 

A happy customer is the best ROI. I have many happy customers using StarWind. 

It's quite easy to deploy this product. 

Any IT professional can read a few documents and watch some videos and maybe go to Youtube to learn about deployment and management. It's a very simple and user-friendly product. 

I purchased a StarWind Hyper-Converged Appliance from StarWind in order to fulfill a multitude of needs for my end client. Chief among them was that the system would be a rather small installation. 

Compared to a traditional configuration using three Servers and a SAN, the StarWind HCA allowed me to provide the user with two Server boxes that could handle their redundancy requirements in a fraction of the space and with a significant cost reduction. 

The installation called for using a VMware vSphere that would house about a dozen VMs with redundancy for every component involved in the system. The reduced size of this installation also made it possible to install the HCA alongside the existing servers so that they could be removed at the client's leisure when they were comfortable with the new installation.

StarWind Virtual SAN, and specifically its implementation in their StarWind Hyper-Converged Appliance, gave us a competitive advantage in the bidding process. This is specifically true for smaller installations where the economies of scale of having a centralized SAN and compute-only boxes don't have a chance to kick in. 

In addition to the StarWind solution allowing you to save on the hardware by only requiring two boxes containing all components, it allows us to avoid the unfortunately expensive solution provided by VMware for their own virtual SAN solution.

The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem. A split brain occurs when two machines in a redundancy scenario have lost their connection to each other yet have maintained connection to the clients. This causes both devices to think they are running as the master, and their configurations will drift apart from each other, making reintegration all but impossible. Instead of using a third client as a witness, they have solved this problem by creating a secondary heartbeat signal to be carried on an independent hardware NIC, thus solving the problem.

The only current drawback that I see for the configuration as it stands is that it can be a little complicated to configure compared to other, more traditional solutions. 

If it were up to me, I would focus on streamlining a vSphere appliance for configuring the virtual storage machines. 

I would also like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure. Currently, it requires you to jump in and out of virtual environments placing storage components on or offline, and all steps must be done in their proper order, or you can create an issue. It seems to me that this could be integrated into an add-on for vSphere that could handle the details of the startup/shutdown procedure more gracefully and with less manual intervention.

We've used the solution for about two years.

I did not experience any stability issues

This solution has the ability to scale into very large systems. However, it really shines in the small to mid-size range.

Customer service gets back to you promptly and is highly knowledgeable.

Positive

In most instances, I have used a regular vSphere running a SAN and multiple compute hosts. I haven't precisely switched. I'd say that you need to provide the right solution for the end client, and in smaller installs, specifically, the efficiency gains in space and cost of the StarWind Virtual SAN can be hard to beat.

The initial setup for the StarWind Hyper-Converged Architecture I purchased was largely done either by StarWind or with their assistance. If I had to do the whole thing myself, it would have taken me quite some time based on the complexity. They do have good documentation and videos, so it would not have been an insurmountable task.

We mainly did an in-house implementation.

I didn't calculate ROI. I can only state that it was about 30% cheaper for the end client than the alternative.

Do your comparison shopping, and if you are working on a small system trying to ensure redundancy, that will almost certainly bring you back to StarWind.

For the application, I compared it to a regular vSphere SAN. However, I did not compare it to other Hyper-Converged solutions. At the time, it was pretty clear that they had a long track record and a good reputation which aided in deciding on them as a solution.

Before you deliver this to an end client, make absolutely sure that you provide adequate documentation about how to start up and shut down the system. That part can be a little bit tricky and requires you to do things in the proper order.