StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

StarWind vSAN is set up on our two host VMware ESXi systems. Each system is running a Linux VM for the vSAN storage and a Windows Server 2022 VM that runs the StarWind vSAN management software. 

The two hosts are connected on a dedicated 25GB backbone with a 1GB management network and a 1GB heartbeat network. ISCSI is run on a separate 25GB connection between the two hosts.

There have been zero issues with stability or downtime in the past three months. One of the servers experienced a random system crash and the vSAN was not affected and there was no downtime with the VMs running on the vSAN storage solution.

It was relatively easy to set up and the support was great. After purchasing the license, it was relatively simple to follow the StarWind documentation on their website.

It has allowed us to set up vSAN with ESXi without spending extra on an ESXi license or needing to buy a third host. This saved us thousands on initial setup costs and hundreds in licensing yearly.

An issue with one of the hosts caused the server to crash, however, our services and VMs running on the vSAN storage were not impacted. The storage implementation experienced zero downtime and behaved exactly how we wanted it to. 

vSAN implementation is straightforward and easy to setup. 

The support has been amazing and quick to reply. They also reached out and made sure that everything was setup correctly. Support quickly answered any questions we had and setup a screen share meeting to validate our install and give optimization tips. 

After the initial meeting, they reached out a few weeks afterward to double-check that their recommendations were implemented properly.

Their support did not try and upset anything and were very helpful and knowledgeable about their product.

Documentation could be a little more clear on what the most recent version of the documentation is. 

I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN. However, it was easy to follow and set up once I did locate the correct documentation.

It would also be helpful to provide the software download links with the documentation. I had to find the vSAN Linux VM and the vSAN management software in separate locations and with separate download links. It wasn't initially clear that the Linux VMs and vSAN management software needed to be installed. 

I've used the solution for three months.

It seems to work fine on our two host systems. It seems like it would easily be able to expand to a larger system. 

Customer service and support replied quickly and ensured everything was implemented correctly. They checked in and ensured we implemented all their recommendations so that we would have the best experience. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

It was easy to set up once we found the documentation.

We deployed it ourselves in-house.

The solution allowed us to have a high availability system without having to purchase additional hardware or support licensing.

If you email StarWind, they might give a discount on the licensing compared to what they list online. 

We looked at VMware vSAN.

When support reaches out, they're not trying to sell anything. They just want to ensure everything is set up correctly and you have a good experience! 

The primary purpose of the storage area network is to provide an active-active replicated SAN for Virtual infrastructure and file storage. This has replaced an active-passive infrastructure that relied on a competitive storage solution but was too old and inflexible to meet the company's growing needs. The active-active nature of the plan needed a reliable storage solution that could deliver over a large distance as such additional infrastructure was also needed. The outstanding support helped us achieve this goal. 

We went from an active-passive model. This has resulted in us being in a much better position. It has allowed us to meet business continuity needs; half of the infrastructure can go out of operation without impacting the business, or we can use this to perform planned updates and maintenance. 

StarWind SANs, along with their amazing support, really helped us achieve these improvements. When implementing this solution, we experienced firsthand how good the solution was; we applied some massive configuration updates without business downtime.

StarWind SANs provide fast and reliable storage. Migration from the old system has meant the storage is much faster now. In turn, this has improved our virtual infrastructure's reliability and access times.

StarWind SANs come with outstanding support. We decided halfway through to change the implementation in a major way, contacted their support, and found that they understood what we were trying to achieve and offered the best help and guides. Not only did they help us, however, they also provided remote assistance where necessary.

This currently relies on a virtual machine. This may be migrated to a container approach or integrated into the solution in the future. However, this isn't really a large area of concern. 

A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is.  

You need to know what you are doing to get this set up. It could have a wizard-like setup for basic scenarios. This would need to be able to be skipped, however for advanced setups.  

I've used the solution for a few months.

We used to use Netapp and switched due to the cost and reliability.

We did look into a Netapp upgrade.

I'd advise others to use their support; it really is great.

The product is for clients who require high availability of their servers, from file servers and domain controllers, through to line of business applications.

I've done installations of two-node HA clusters running Windows Server Hyper-V. With the HA cluster we then ran virtual machines, both Windows Desktop, Windows Server, CentOS and Ubuntu. We have installed on pysical servers with both DELL PowerEdge and HP Proliant server hardware (Windows clustering requires exact server hardware to be matched - so two-node DELL, and two-node HP).

As an MSP, stability is important for our clients. StarWind's virtual SAN solution has allowed us to have an always-on architecture allowing survivability of hardware failure. We install it for all clients who need high availability of their virtual servers on-premise.

Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses.

We have multiple sites running StarWindws Virtual SAN, which have been running for years without any issue.

The thing that impressed me the most about the product is the technical support from the vendor. Everyone knows the benefit of high-availability clusters, but setting one up and reading the documentation is an enormous task in itself.

With StarWind Virtual SAN and the installation support, we have high-availability clusters running within a couple of hours. This has been repeated over and over on many customer sites, so they have their process perfected in this regard.

The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation, although I will make two comments on this.

The high availability of virtual SAN is by its very nature not a simple drop-in thing, so the documentation will understandably be complex.

Secondly, the installation process is completely guided and done remotely by StarWind certified installation engineers, who handle all aspects.

Given the above, the only thing I can really say needs improvement is that I am not keen on the pricing per storage tier model, however, understand this is a common model charged.

I've done multiple client installations over five years.

No, there was no other solution that we have tried.

Consider how much space you will need as pricing is per node and data.

No, we found the price point compelling, which led to immediately trying StarWinds versus traditional SAN costs from DELL and HP, etc.

Overall it has been a great product and company to work with for the past five years and many more to come.

We have a two-node hyper-converged system set up. Our main electronic medical record system runs on top of this system. We can fail over to one host, which lets the virtual machines run on the other. We can perform maintenance and move the virtual machines back. As a medical facility, it's important for our products to be up and available. This system allows us to do that. We have plans to purchase an additional host this fall, which I hope to be able to add to the VSAN. I believe there's an additional purchase to do so, however, I'll look into that when we get closer. 

StarWind allows us to move virtual machines from one physical host to another, which greatly reduces the downtime required for maintenance. I've been with the organization for about four months now and came in not knowing anything about StarWind. To become better acquainted, I asked if StarWind would give us a 'demo' of our current system. They showed us how our configuration was set up and helped us make a couple of suggested changes. We have since restarted one of the hosts without any trouble on the StarWind side at all. 

It's very stable and is easy to use. The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry. Support has been amazing. I wasn't at my position last year, but we had a hard disk in a host machine fail last year. Through a series of unfortunate events, a VM failed. StarWind support helped the technician pull the system back up and even assisted with restoring the VM, something he didn't have to do. I've since read other accounts of service like this. The community and KB articles are also very valuable. In any event, I know I can get help with this system.

I'm actually really satisfied with Starwind. Their product and support have been top-notch. They even have a version that is free, though it is a command-line only. 

As for additional features, perhaps some integration in with systems like IT Glue.  A way to push the configuration into IT Glue in the event of an outage or just for documentation purposes would be nice.  

Overall, however, the product does what it is supposed to do. Adding features for the sake of adding something may not be terribly appropriate in this case. The system just plain works.

My organization has been using StarWind for several years now. I'm new to my company and have been learning how the product works.

We've had no stability issues with the product.

Currently, we have this running on two nodes, however, I believe it can be scaled up significantly. For our limited purposes, I have no concern about scalability.

Amazing! They've gone above and beyond with helping us when we had hardware issues last year and again this year when I asked for a demo of how things are set up.

Positive

We did not use a different solution.

While I wasn't around for the initial setup, I performed a handful of test installations to become more familiar. StarWind has a wonderful KB article that covers the process, step-by-step.

It's my understanding that it was all done in-house. The configurations are exactly as the KB article mentioned above has it spelled out.

We can keep our electronic medical record system running while we do maintenance. We've used Starwind for several years, so the investment has covered itself.

Pricing is simple. You can buy a support package that gives you access to updates to the software or you can buy premium support, which expands the time in which you can get help from the company.

I was not around when the decision to use StarWind came about. I don't know if there are other 3rd party vendors like StarWind. 

We were looking for physical tape backups to protect against DR situations but were concerned about the fact that it would require the manual intervention of changing the tapes and sending them offsite as we could easily forget. 

Luckily, I came across  Starwind VTL which is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes. 

The whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc. It's been six months and it has been working well without any issue with the jobs completed within 24 hours which meets our RTO. 

In regards to the cost, we ended up saving a few thousand dollars as well due to the high cost of the physical tape library.

With Starwind VTL, it eliminates the need to manually change and remove tapes and schedule them for offline pickup which users would not have the time to do.  It is also cost-effective as having a physical tape library would cost thousands of dollars. 

In addition, the virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection.  

Furthermore, having virtual tapes locally and on the cloud provides an additional layer of protection in addition to our normal backups that are performed. 

The cloud replication feature is most valuable as it copies the local virtual tapes from our on-prem storage to object storage where we can set object locking and governance.  This is a great feature in case something happens to our on-prem storage. 

Also, since it's virtual tapes, there is no manual intervention of changing tapes and scheduling them to take them offsite which is another additional cost. The support team is also good as they were able to resolve the majority of issues during the initial implementation.

There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA.  

Also, there is no date/time column so you don't know which is the latest tape that has been uploaded to object storage.  

You also cannot search by tape name so you have to scroll through the tape list if you ever need to cross-reference.  

Another shortcoming is that the tapes do not remove from the list once they've been deleted via the retention policy so you would have to manually remove them.  

I've requested all of these in a feature request with their R&D so hopefully, they will be included in future releases.

We've been using this solution for over two years now.

We did not have a previous solution. This was an add-on solution to our existing backup solution.

The pricing is very reasonable compared to a physical tape library.  

We evaluated the physical tape library, however, it was too costly.

The initial setup will take time, however, their implementation team will assist all the way through.

We used Starwind to provide HA ISCSI storage to a Hyper-V Cluster for VM Storage. This was mounted through MPIO on Windows for both nodes, using data locality for high levels of speed and performance. 

The devices are connected via fiber over a 10-mile line, over an isolated subnet. This has been great, as we've been able to shut down an entire site and have the machines not notice any difference. This was done over our existing network, using an isolated VLAN to have traffic be in its own area with no other issues.  

Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost. We were unable to find a solid replacement for our aging HP Lefthand solution, and Starwind stepped into that fantastically. 

Prior to this, based on a design issue, traffic for storage replication was served on the same network as ISCSI traffic. This had the expected issues you'd think, leading to bad performance. Starwind doesn't allow this by default, and as such forced our architect to realize the mistake and worked to get it set up better, with Starwind support. 

The support has been top-notch. The engineers you get are knowledgeable and are able to solve issues right out the gate, which is huge for us. We don't get finger-pointing between vendors with them either, as they own issues and take care of them from the beginning. The installation and setup were done with a dedicated engineer, who went through the system step by step and made sure our techs understood the process while getting a great setup out the gate. This was all handled via Zoom, which was a nice thing to not worry about it. 

It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings. However, we normally don't have to. 

I do see a lot of info about them now offering a VSAN-like software that is a Linux VM base for VMware. I'd like to see this same option available for Hyper-V, or at least make it more apparent the differences between the two. 

I would like to see more US-based resellers. Working directly with the company was fine, but we prefer to have local resellers available as needed. 

I've used the solution for two years.

It is as stable as the Windows OS it runs on. Take that as you will. 

It appears to scale horizontally well, as you're able to keep data locality present and it will allow you to pick which data is replicated or not. 

Support is easy to get a hold of, and usually first-call resolution. 

Positive

We used HP Lefthand/StorVirtual, which was end-of-life. 

IT was straightforward, as it was vendor-led and handheld through. They helped us every step of the way. 

The implementation was vendor-led, and they were highly available. 

The ROI we witnessed was within 7 months, due to hosting on our system. 

The cost isn't too good to be true. If you're able to use commodity hardware, it's worth a look. 

We looked at Truenas. 

Give it a shot. They may not be the biggest, however, they're able to play in the field. 

We found StarWind when trying to look for a hybrid storage space that could handle various physical hardware as well as virtual operating systems.

Upon first contacting the company, the sales and technical demo were superb compared to other products and they clearly explained and showed us a live demo of our potential environment.

The whole purchase process was swift and followed up by calls and emails from their team.

Compared to other products that we looked at, the cost-saving was so great that choosing StarWind was a no-brainer.

When I need something urgently and very technical, I get the answer back that I want. I don't have to battle through with a first liner that tells me to "turn it off and on again".

The solution has improved our organization by:

1. The variety of services offered

2. The financial viability compared to the services offered

3. Product functionality and performance is suitable for our organization

4. The strong consultation accessibility for customers that wish to discuss the product first with their experts and start the process how they like it, not how the company wants it to

5. The support team has the expertise of a strong service in the products that their customers have purchased

6. StarWinds, in general, has a strong user community that offers help on forums and other sites

7. The company has a firm customer focus keeping in touch with us at all times, even after purchasing the initial product after two years

The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful. However, now that we have a handle on it, it saves a great ton of time on management and caring about the hardware part of it as all it is is a software-based solution. I love managing the cluster that we have set up via the Virtual Storage Attached Network device, with the Web Management being so simple yet packed with all the features that I require. The management of the traffic and the speeds are awesome as well.

Some users have commented on online forums and others that the documentation and KB articles could be clearer or better written. However, I found this to be the case a couple of years ago. Now, in 2022, this has been rectified and you can usually find the information that you are looking for.

Another problem that we have come across is that when you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind.

I've been using the product for around two years now.

We previously used the standard SAN hardware solution from a big IT company - we switched to basically save on hardware costs and maintenance.

The initial setup cost will be great, especially with the new hardware. The StarWind pricing isn't that expensive compared to others, however, there are yearly maintenance costs to be aware of.

Yes, we had a look at Lenovo XClarity as well as Nutanix AOS and VMWare vSAN.

I'd advise new users to not hesitate and just go ahead with it.

After deploying a HA SQL Failover Cluster, we started to notice performance issues due to our storage, which was an off-the-shelf NAS.

I had already heard about StarWind and its VSAN software from previous blogs.

A VSAN solution seems like an ideal solution as we already had the hardware, minus the disks required. We already had two Dell R540's with six available bays in each server.

After reviewing their documentation, the setup process was simple enough to follow and so I decided to run a little test environment.

I was pleasantly surprised by the performance gains even on spinning disks and the overall setup being fairly painless.

I decided to go ahead with this solution, got the cost signed off, and implemented it in production.

We had some initial issues, however, their support was extremely helpful in resolving these and was very patient as we deployed this to a secure environment with no internet access. Yet they still offered support and worked closely with a single point of contact.

I then later moved to a different company and implement a similar solution in the Oracle Cloud using their free offering, again this was simple to set up using their collection of PowerShell scripts.

Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete.

In addition, their support contact was fantastic. They spent several hours troubleshooting an issue with me and due to the complexity of our environment this only made it more challenging, yet they were persistent and helped resolved any issues

Additionally, their white papers were a great starting point to get started.

The forums can lead to lots of topics with no resolutions.

The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent. However, when they do occur, it makes it very challenging to figure out what the cause is.

A feature that would be helpful, is a way to update the software automatically on all the hosts. Instead, you must find the download link, which in itself can be challenging, and then manually upgrade each server one by one. This process can take a while depending on the time to resync your VDISKS. 

For about 3 years, in which I deployed it in 2 companies.

Previously we were using a Synology NAS

Try the free version and see if it meets your requirements. 

I did look at purchasing EqualLogic, however, the cost of that hardware would be far greater than StarWind's