StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

In our remote offices, we have two servers on VMware. With no HA for the 10 VMs, StarWind VSAN came to use to address this need. As I had previous experience with it and truly believed that this was the best option, I set up our first remote site and used it for three months on a test. I used that time to gather information on my company's use and tested fail-over, replication, and sync. I was concerned about network usage for replication in my company due to the volume of VMs and data modification needed to replicate; it turns out it was never an issue.

It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget. 

There was always a need to have HA in our remote offices. However, it was never addressed due to a lack of budget. For a time, we experienced faults due to failing hardware, and, finally, when the budget allowed, we started using StarWind vSAN and never experienced outages again. 

As we adopted StarWind vSAN we also replaced some hardware that was the root cause of our problems. Nevertheless, StarWind vSAN provided me the certainty of reliability and much-needed tranquility to sleep again.

The reliability is the most valuable aspect of the solution. It does not need constant babysitting as it is stable as you need it to be. In our company, the team is small, and we do not have the time to keep checking everything all the time. As unadvised as it is, I simply do not have time to always monitor and check. With this product, I have gone months without even accessing the management console. Support is also reliable, and it is necessary to know you can trust it! I've not used it much; however, the few times that I did, it provided me with the help and guidance I needed.

The documentation can be better for the free tier. I've learned that in my home lab. To be fair, I cannot imagine anyone that will use this without performing several tests beforehand. Overall, documentation can be more explanatory and straightforward. That said, it is not bad, it just can be better.

I honestly like that the product is simple and does the job well; for the next release, I hope they keep it that way.

I've used the solution for several years now. I've started using the free edition on my home lab and never let it go. I still use it today at home. I'm decommissioning at my company as we are removing the servers of our remote offices.

I did not use a different solution. After researching my needs, I found a post guiding the simple home lab test use, and it was good enough. I've tested it, loved it, and never looked back.

The setup costs depend on your approach. I like to test everything, and as I do this, I learn. I like to implement everything, so the cost is time allocation in my case. In my company, this is a good investment. As for price and license, there is not much room for negotiation.

I did not evaluate other options. 

Go for it; it is awesome.

We have two Windows Servers (2019), and two locations, and needed Virtual SAN so that we can use disks that are installed on each server. With StarWind Virtual SAN, we created multiple SAN disks that helped us create a real-time failover cluster replication service for data and SQL. 

Installation of Virtual SAN from StarWind was very easy, with a pre-ready directory full of PowerShell scripts that you can easily edit to suit your needs and just run them. That way, you create an environment that fits your needs and is something that you can edit very easily or delete.

We have been searching for a Virtual SAN for a long time. When we found the Virtual SAN from StarWind, our problems were fixed. The easy PowerShell scripts are ready to edit and run for everyone. We are using it for GEO Failover Cluster and have now been using it for a few months with no problem. We also have real-time replication that is working great. We've had no errors. The startup when using Windows is working with no problem with StarWind, so we connect very easily.

The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run. It comes with a bunch of free PowerShell scripts that you can edit and run, and also you can create your own with help of PowerShell.

Not so many Virtual SANs work great with a failover cluster as StarWind does; it has no lag, is working great, has no errors, and we can log it easily.

It has minimum hardware usage, which means a lot to us.

The deployment of StarWind Virtual SAN is very easy; they have online manuals that can help you and guide you with your installation.

We are really looking forward to the release of more PowerShell scripts that are easy to use and can be edited by rookies. 

Their support is really fast and reliable. You can get it via email or the there's forum community where you already find a lot of questions/answers to your problems and the community will help and guide you through the problems that you have.

We tried to find a con, however, it's really hard. The product just works. If I had to find something, then it would be the GUI. For someone entering the IT sector with little knowledge of storage, iSCSI, and virtual disks, they might not find the GUI immediately obvious.

I've used the solution for a few months now.

The stability is great.

The scalability is great.

They offer great support.

Positive

The initial setup is easy.

We handled the setup via an in-house IT team.

We added vSAN capability for Hyper-V. We had a three-node standalone that used Microsoft Hyper-V and we wanted to convert them into a hyper-converged solution instead of formatting the servers and losing the windows licenses and installing VMware with the high cost of licenses (especially since we have two CPU sockets on each host). 

We used StarWind Virtual SAN with was a cheaper solution while leveraging the existing all-flash standalone servers. 

The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was pretty easy, and the configuration was done in no time.

We were looking for a cheap vSAN solution that worked with Hyper-V. StarWind Virtual SAN gave us the capability to have shared storage between hyper-v hosts without buying external storage or using VMware instead of Hyper-V. 

Using this solution improved our organization to take advantage of existing servers while we had a very low budget. 

While we have a worldwide issue in the supply chain of servers, this was a very essential solution that helped the organization meet the application team requirements for the new solution installed.

We can turn Windows Hyper-V nodes into a hyper-converged solution. 

I like the high availability and redundancy of the Hyper-V nodes.

This solution does not have any specific hardware or disk requirements that can be found in VMware, for example.

The solution was very easy to use and configure the three-node failover cluster - and you do need to configure the multipath and the network interfaces prior to the StarWind software installation.

It provided a way for replicating data and a way to have HA, which was very straightforward to set up.

The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional.

Other products like VMware vSAN have a bigger user base and more forums. It will take more customers to use Starwind Virtual SAN to change this. For example, You can find more PowerShell scripts on internet forums, and GitHub related to PowerCLI (VMware) than you can find StarWindX Powershell scripts. 

Reporting capabilities of StarWind vSAN are also limited compared to VMware, which is considered a more mature product in the market.

I've used the solution for six months.

It's been so far, so good regarding stability (we've had no issues).

The performance provided by the solution is good for SMBs and specific departmental solutions.

We are using VMware vSAN on other solutions, and we are still using it, however, it is better to use VMware only as a hypervisor (obviously). Also, the hardware requirements are very costly to be compliant with, while using StarWind Virtual SAN there are no hardware or hypervisor requirements.

The initial setup is straightforward and easy to perform.

The setup is pretty easy for any mid-senior administrator.

StarWind Virtual SAN is a cost-effective solution.

Support also is very good.

We evaluated the following other options:

• Using traditional architecture by buying external storage and connecting it to the three existing nodes 
• Using a VMware solution. However, this will lead to losing the Microsoft licenses, and VMware costs more than StarWind Virtual SAN

It is good to have diversity in this market, and StarWind Virtual SAN is a good solution.

I've used this mostly for lab testing with vSphere, where a SAN was not available. In that case, a vSAN was the best product for testing.

We didn't want to have to purchase a whole load of new hardware just to complete some testing for ESXi/vCenter/vSphere, et cetera. We had a fairly large server in terms of computing (CPU, RAM) and storage that wasn't being used, so we decided to use this to host nested ESXi hosts. 

We didn't want to purchase a SAN to complete the testing works, so we could deploy a Windows VM, pass the storage through and use StarWinds vSAN software instead.

It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls. 

There are 5 ESXi servers (all virtual, nested inside the host ESXi server, so six in total). We then have a single Windows VM deployed with storage passed through directly to it. This was then set up very quickly with some PowerShell scripts. This immediately made the storage available over ISCSI to ESXi and then allowed us to complete testing of failovers and DR, et cetera, without impacting anything live and also keeping costs down.

The ability to deploy this software in full for free is great. The fact that StarWind provides this product with pretty much full functionality for free if you're willing to invest your time into working through PowerShell is very helpful. You get a lot out of it. You can also make it highly available, again, all for free! 

The fact you can use the deploy to the same host it will also be managing is excellent, and also, the update process for the software is nice and easy. It's just next, next, next. I've had no issues. It also seems to not suffer from any obvious performance issues on the Windows VM. The resources I've given to it are low in terms of computing and it plods along without issue.

It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI. However, when you're using it for free and have the full functionality of the product available to you with scripts and other means, you can't complain. 

Right now, I don't think there is anything I would think to add for my use cases. It's mostly used in a lab environment, and it does the job for us perfectly. If I was to use it in full production, I would certainly look to purchase it rather than use the free one, mostly for the simplicity of using the UI for lots of tasks.

I've used the solution for one to two years.

The stability is excellent so far. We've not had any issues and I've been using it for a couple of years.

So far, scalability is excellent for the paid version. 

I've not needed to speak to them for any support. That said, I've spoken to a customer service rep, and they are very nice.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. I was looking for some vSAN software for testing, and this fit the bill immediately.

The installation is very easy. It's just a typical next, next style. The configuration of the product afterward was a little more complex, however, StarWind provides you the tools, even for free, for setting it up (PowerShell scripts).

I implemented the product personally, in-house. 

I'm using a free edition at the moment. ROI does not apply.

I would start out by testing the product in the free edition. You get full functionality, and you can see how it will perform in your environment. If you're happy with it overall and want to use it in production, I would certainly pay for it for the UI aspects and the full support as well.

I tried to use things like FreeNAS/TrueNAS. However, it just wasn't quite right for my needs, whereas StarWinds vSAN worked as expected.

The solution can be used for configuration and management as well as a backup repository.

I have used it for Veeam Backup and Replication and VMware NFS Datastore and it has really worked well.

One point to highlight is how easy it is to configure and manage. You don't really need to be an expert. However, it is important to know the storage concepts.

Simply by following the intuitive interface, you can configure your devices. Following a tutorial, you get the basic administration you require.

The process of choosing this product was not very difficult. It fit what we were looking for and it fulfilled the technical requirements for the project. As for the IT department, the management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly.

In the implementations that I have carried out with StarWind, something that is noteworthy is the way in which it impacted the processes based on the way the solution was chosen to how it was implemented.

They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network. They should continue with the development of protocols such as LACP that allow aggregation and maximal connectivity.

As for the V2V converter, it would be a good option to develop it not only as a converter but as an option for the migration of virtual machines between platforms, creating integrations with Azure, AWS, and GCP. 

It could even be a way to migrate machines between HyperV, VMware, Nutanix, and other virtualization and hyper-converged environments.

I've used the solution for four years.

We had indeed tried a different solution, however, we opted for StarWind. Qnap did not have everything we needed at the moment.

The cost-benefit ratio is really well balanced.

We looked into Qnap and Synology.

This is a very user-friendly product that works well overall.

We provide managed web hosting services, including dedicated servers in physical or virtual configurations, for various customers, including small, medium, and large companies. We started hosting operations in 1995 and operated our own hosting infrastructure in data centers in North Carolina and Virginia, USA.

Our infrastructure included physical and virtual hosting environments based on VMware, which is where our StarWind Virtual SANs were deployed.

With our growing needs and customer requirements and demand, we added virtualization to our infrastructure, based on VMware. Storage requirements for the virtualized infrastructure also grew rapidly. We explored all available options, from hyper-converged solutions to the large "big name" solutions. Our infrastructure was too big for hyper-converged solutions. However, we were not ready for the major investments that a full-sized storage infrastructure would need. StarWind's offerings were a perfect fit for us, and remain so until today, almost ten years later.

Prior to StarWind, we were using "local storage" with each hypervisor, and this had many drawbacks, including size limitations, performance, technical management, and redundancy. 

With StarWind Virtual SAN, we could easily deploy and manage the storage solutions, add additional storage servers when needed, implement automated redundancy and failover, and scale storage allocations as and when needed, including adding high-performance SSD solutions alongside traditional hard disk solutions.

The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well.

While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage, for example, when servers are rebooted. Bitlocker solutions require a physical presence in the data center to enter the encryption string on the server's physical console.

Built-in "Data at Rest" encryption would be an important need, especially for customers with sensitive compliance requirements e.g. Government customers, healthcare customers, eCommerce customers, and many other compliance-sensitive application areas.

We have been using the StarWind Virtual SAN product since 2014.

StarWind Virtual SAN is very scalable, simply by adding additional Windows servers and installing the StarWind Virtual SAN software on it.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Compared to similar solutions from NetApp etc., our savings were likely in the tens of thousands of dollars over the years, and we did not need to pay for features that we do not need.

We were very happy and impressed with StarWind's products and the technical support from StarWind's support team. If and when we needed assistance, StarWind's tech support has been very responsive, thorough, and very helpful.

We found the licensing costs and pricing to be very affordable and manageable.

We looked at big-name solutions such as NetApp, Cisco, and others.

Our storage infrastructure had been operating flawlessly with great performance and reliability.

We are using the product for a three-node stretched cluster spanning three buildings based on VMWare and StarWind vSAN technology.

We use this to host all the company servers (as VMs), which are a mix of Windows and Linux systems, providing various services such as domain controllers, file servers, print servers, application servers, license servers, etc.      

This setup allows us to quickly migrate servers between buildings for service or in case of a network outage.

The product allowed us to deploy the three-node stretched cluster, which has, in turn, allowed us to fully virtualize our infrastructure with all the resilience, performance and ease of management that comes with it.

The biggest improvements have been:

1. Resilience. The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service. It also enables vSphere high availability, so when there is a problem, service can be maintained

2. Management. Having everything virtualized has made it much easier to manage.

The solution's best aspects include:

Rock-solid performance. Since it has been in production (three years), we have had 100% uptime. This means that services have only needed to be briefly interrupted for maintenance and has created a great user experience for our end-users.

Easy management. The interfaces are intuitive and all IT staff can quickly be brought up to speed on how to use

Superb support. The support really is second to none. You can always quickly get through to a technician, and it's usually the same one you are used to dealing with.

The documentation could be better. It's not bad, however, it is quite often out of date. That said, this is mitigated by the fact that the support is so good that you rarely need the documentation.                                        

If I am really searching for a fault. To be honest, the licensing model is a bit confusing. They could definitely make that a bit more intuitive. However this is a minor gripe as it is such good value, and you only have to deal with it very occasionally anyway.                   

I've been using the solution for three years.

This was our first move to a vSAN solution.

This solution is of excellent value.

We looked at VMware vSAN.

I highly recommended the product. It has transformed our IT infrastructure.

StarWind is used as our primary physical server with nine VMs. This serves different locations around the US. 

One application is shared using RDS where as before it was being shared using individual pcs for each remote user. This caused major issues with data integrity.

Also with the two-node environment, not only are we benefitting from the redundancy, we are able to load balance between the servers. This allowed us to bring our hosted ERP environment in house. 

The price was right. It is very hard to beat this system! 

We had a very dated infrastructure. One that had been a hodge-podge over many years with no clear direction or future needs planning. 

I was brought on board to correct this and give us some growing room in the future. As the business continues to grow at this time, redundancy/DR planning became a significant focus as well.

StarWind, with a low-cost two-node HCA system, was truly turnkey.

With the redundancy and efficiency of the software and servers, we are running better than ever, with room to grow.

The ease of use of the system overall. If you don't understand something or need any help at all, support is there. I cannot speak highly enough to the value the support team offers. They are very knowledgeable and willing to help. They work on your time, not theirs. I agree with some other reviews that they can be hard to understand at times, however, they are more than willing to make sure you understand. 

The redundancy is a big factor. As a very small IT department, that gives us the peace of mind needed as well as knowing that support is there to help me through any glitches.

Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so. Though truthfully, it's not bad.

I have had to call support to help me through some of the updates, so I know they are done right.

A missed SSD update caused a few headaches. That said, thanks to support, no data loss occurred, and considering the issue, we had minimal downtime.

Overall, I find StarWind above par and am excited to see what they think of next.

I've used the solution for 1.5 years.

Support is nothing but stellar. The support staff is very knowledgeable and willing to help.

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward.

We implemented it through a vendor team. The experience was extremely positive!

The initial cost included setup, and it was genuinely turnkey. It would be hard to find a lower-cost solution that offers what Starwind offers.

I was hoping to implement a High Availability and redundant system without sacrificing performance or my budget. Looking at various HCI and vSAN solutions, the cost was a bit prohibitive.  

I really wanted my cake and to eat it to; however, VMware's vSAN offering and looking at a few HCI solutions (vXRails, Nutanix, etc.) just did not fit my budget. That is when I read a review on StarWind free vSAN, which got me interested, but I knew I wanted (and needed) support.

We set up a three-node cluster on new, identical servers with VMware's vSphere and added StarWind's vSAN product to expand our capabilities.

Our servers started out with 8 HDDs, and after production, we added 4 SSDs which StarWind assisted in getting online in the vSAN.

We have High Availability, failover, redundancy, and the ability to move workloads on the fly with no impact on the organization. It is great for patching and updates to the servers.

The ROI is great on this product.  We did have to upgrade our licensing to enterprise level as we surpassed the 8TB limit by adding additional storage.  Purchasing a three-year term helped bolster our ROI even further.

We did have a vCenter failure during an upgrade. StarWind support was able to get the systems back online and syncing with no data loss or impact on production (and even improve the installation by moving the critical StarWind components on the Boss Card).

I feel very confident in the support team's abilities.

First and foremost, StarWind has awesome support. You work with the same engineer throughout implementation or any issues.  

They explain the process of what and why they are doing whatever it is. You are not left high and dry when looking to implement the vSAN and can solve issues that may arise or even configure additional added storage.

The stability is great. The solution has been running with no issues due to vSAN itself. It is one of those "set it and forget it" types of systems. Perhaps this is a bad thing as you kind of do not think about it.

The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas. I would love to see more comprehensive walk-throughs or perhaps even videos. With this being such a critical piece of infrastructure, I do not like to take chances. Fortunately, support will be there to help hold your hand or even perform the process for you, ensuring everything is working.

It would be really nice to have a documented "Best Practices" list to ensure you are doing everything you can to ensure stability and performance. I have to be a bit nitpicky; overall, there is not much I can really add.

We demoed the product in early 2021. We have been using it in production for over a year now.

It is extremely stable thus far. We've been running well over a year without any issues due to StarWind itself.

It offers great performance and has the ability to add additional nodes to your cluster.

I would say StarWind has the best customer service and support. They are quick and aggressive in resolving any issues as quickly as possible. Not enough good things can be said about how they treat customers.

Positive

We used an MS 2008r2 Cluster many years ago. Prior to StarWind vSAN, were using static servers.

For a three-node cluster, the setup seemed complex. However, upon purchasing a license, StarWind's excellent support took over and created a PoC install for us.

We worked with the vendor team. They were great to work with. Over multiple days, you work with the same engineer, which is a great way to work versus getting transferred from tech to tech.

While you can add nodes later on, I would suggest really putting thought into how many nodes you want to start with, as networking can get challenging if you omit a good 10+GB switch.

I looked at a few HCI (Dell, vxRail, and Nutanix) and the VMware vSAN solution.  It was cost-prohibitive for me

I cannot say enough good things about the support this company gives; more companies need to model this.

We were looking to replace three to four physical hosts running 10-12 virtual servers with one solution requiring less maintenance and full high availability. 

We could have developed our own stack. That said, this was so turnkey and useful that it made the most sense. We now have two physical hosts with more power and high availability than all the previous servers combined. 

Support has an incredibly fast response to requests such as size increase of the SAN and installation software updates whenever we need them. 

This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business. It allowed us to take advantage of all the Hyper-V features and live migrations without the expense of dedicated SANs. 

We can perform maintenance on either host during the day, and the users don't even notice a difference in performance. 

We survived a couple of facility power outages. However, due to the redundancy of the entire host, the HCA failed over quickly and accurately with no downtime. Support also helps us improve our infrastructure with the best practices of other organizations. 

There is immediate redundancy and HA without a huge amount of configuration - which is ideal. Their support was even better - with proactive monitoring and efficient setup and configuration changes. 

We recently upgraded the physical hosts and maxed out the memory and hard drive space, and their support team walked us through the upgrade every step of the way. There were no issues. Even with an older HCA we have plenty of room for future growth. 

We also can install security patches with no problems during the day instead of after-hours. 

Some of the new hyper-converged tools seem basic as a single pane of glass dashboard. However, they are constantly looking at improvements and updates. 

The actual interface is somewhat cryptic, so we wouldn't know what configuration changes to make. That is kind of the point. We have their full support, and we don't have to staff a Level 5 engineer to make large configuration changes. 

I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions. That said, they continue to release updates, so I'm sure that's on the roadmap. 

I've used the solution for three to five years.