StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We have a four-host VMware environment with over one hundred and forty virtual servers that runs everything on our network except for backups and video storage. We are using Dell R730xd servers filled with a combination of hard drives and SSDs, as well as some PCIe storage for high-performance VMs.

We were able to create a much faster SAN with much more storage while saving a lot of money. It cost less to build an entire new SAN based on StarWind than to upgrade our old SAN. Now, when we want to expand, we can add storage in any way we want. This allows us to find the best prices without being tied to proprietary hardware.

The most valuable feature is the fact that the nodes are Active/Active, and allow us to do upgrades on any node without any downtime. This solution runs on standard hardware and allows us to use servers and storage that we already have, as well as non-proprietary hardware that doesn't cost a fortune.

The ability to manage the SAN with vSphere would be nice. It would also be of benefit to have more vSAN-like features, like not having to worry about creating multiple volumes. It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool.

We have found the software itself to be highly stable. It just works.

This solution seems highly scalable, with the only limitations being management after a certain point.

I had some issues, early on, that ended up being hardware issues on my end. The StarWind support people were more than willing to help me out with them, and this including jumping on remote sessions to figure things out whenever I needed help.

We used Compellent (bought by Dell). When we bought it, they discounted it heavily to be competitive, and it was at the low end of what they offered. When we needed to expand it, the costs to do so seemed outrageous.

This initial setup is extremely straightforward. You install the software and then create volumes, which then show up on an iSCSI scan. Nothing complex about it.

We performed the implementation in-house.

We were able to build an entirely new SAN with much greater performance and more capacity for less than the cost of just upgrading our previous SAN, so the ROI was immediate.

The licensing is pretty simple, and the costs are straightforward. Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs.

We looked at EMC and HP, but both were also much more expensive than a system we could build ourselves based on the StarWind software.

Unless you need a lot of special third-party integration with other systems, it is a great low-cost solution that gives you whatever level of performance you decide, based on your hardware.

StarWind VSAN is used as shared storage for our Hyper-V cluster. We have two nodes, HDDs in RAID 10. HPE ProLiant servers, Windows Server 2016.

Thanks to StarWind VSAN, we were able to move to a cluster from stand-alone hypervisors with DAS (Direct attached storage). Before VSAN, hypervisor configuration changes and updates resulted in VM outages. Now, downtime is dramatically reduced.

The ability to use existing hardware, with no need to purchase hardware appliances is the most valuable feature. 

The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious. StarWind's guide for a two-node cluster can be found at (https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-hyperconverged-2-node-scenario-with-hyper-v-server-2016) and it is a long document to work through. I am not sure if it is possible to make the confiugration process more streamlined on generic hardware. This only affects the cluster configuration, not it's production use. I am very satisfied with the StarWind features so far and not interested in additional ones.

The technical support is very good.

StarWind is our first hyper-converged solution.

The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available. 

Use the trial version before buying. Contact StarWind support in case of questions or issues. The support is very good.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated HPE SimpliVity, Scale Computing, and Dell EMC.

In my opinion, StarWind is a great solution for businesses with limited infrastructure budgets.

The primary use case is backup storage for our VM servers. 

Our day-to-day servers are all on StarWind and our backups went from nightly to every minute. That improves disaster recovery time from hours to minutes.

In addition, it has helped us to maintain high performance and data high availability on minimalistic resources. We haven't bought any hardware, it was all stuff we already had. We just reconfigured it and got new features. In terms of costs, it has reduced what we would have had to pay. We have saved approximately 80 percent. We would have had to buy a $100,000 server. Instead, we ended up with a $20,000 server and a little bit of software.

I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have.

In addition, we have it integrated with vCenter which makes the failover automatic. It's basically set-it-and-forget-it.

I'm sure it needs bug fixes, and there are new features coming down the pipe, but it works great.

It's been completely stable for us. There were some bugs initially which slowed us down, but those were related to VMware and not StarWind.

You can resize things on the fly as needed, add more storage as needed. Since it's all on Windows, you can expand the disk as much as needed and as quickly as possible.

Their support has been excellent. They will walk you through every step of the way and help you with anything you need. They're great.

We were using direct-attached for the primary servers and FreeNAS for the backups. We switched for the real-time replication and the failover.

The initial setup was straightforward but it was also complex. There were a bunch of steps, but it was all very well documented and very well laid out. You follow steps and you end up with a working system at the end.

It took me a couple weeks, but that was because I had other things going on and a rather complex system. But if you just wanted the basics, you could probably get it set up in a couple of hours.

As part of my implementation strategy, I first set it up on three-way replication servers and after that was done, put it into production.

The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go.

We didn't evaluate any other vendors. In our price range, this was the only vendor.

The pricing is based on the amount of storage, so you should evaluate how much storage you're going to need for your license. I believe there's an unlimited tier which is also very reasonable.

In our organization, it's the backing data-store for the entire company, which is about 85 users. Programmers and management people make up our studio. For deployment and maintenance, it's just me with the support team at StarWind.

We don't have plans to increase usage. We're a small studio and we're not going to get bigger.

I give StarWind a ten out of ten. They have great support, a great product, it's simple and easy to use, and has a great price.

Our organization was facing issues with storage. The main challenge was the secure backup and its restoration. 

StarWind Virtual SAN helps us get rid of storage issues within the organization. The best part is StarWind Virtual SAN supports a hypervisor environment and our organization was also using the same platform for infrastructure which makes it easier for us to deploy and implement. 

It also has built-in multifactor authentication which makes it compliant with our local regulations for the banking sector.

Our organization now can easily back up and have the data also available. Our main issue was to have a solution that has high availability of data and this solution solves that problem. In the internal audit, we also observed how helpful it was to have a proper backup solution with high availability which is now achieved by StarWind Virtual SAN. The solution has high performance which means the backups do not suffer from restoration and availability. It also has different storage RAIDs which helps to manage data in a proper way. We can use it without any latency.

The management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is user-friendly.

You can also manage the storage in different segregated RAIDS.

It has built-in multifactor authentication available.

The performance of the solution is accurate and concise.

It gives great high availability.

The cost of the solution is overall effective.

Reporting is a great tool available in the product to demonstrate it to senior management.

StarWind Virtual SAN has very appropriate features available with the solution and it is all in one solution.

Overall the experience with StarWind Virtual SAN is good. One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting. It has all predefined reporting. They should introduce reporting which can be customized according to the organization's needs. 

They need to have local support available for the product which will make response to the support cases easier and more effective.

Overall, the experience with StarWind is good and the product is precise and readily available.

I've used the solution for less than one year.

The solution is overall stable and effective.

The solution is highly scalable.

They have very responsive customer support.

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously. Only the backup was done on local systems.

The deployment is pretty straightforward and we implemented it with the help of the vendor.

The overall vendor team is professional and skillful. They helped us a lot. 

It gives good ROI to the organization since it is cost-effective.

They also offer a free trial version of the product with basic features. An organization should test the product before implementing it.

We have evaluated VMware and found the cost was a bit high compared to StarWind Virtual SAN.

We have a hypervisor environment and it works best with that. If your organization is running any other environment for infrastructure, you need to ensure all features are up and running before implementing them in production.

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.

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.

We are using StarWind as a two-node Hyper-V Cluster in order to have a highly available virtual environment. The two servers are interconnected with 25GB network cards. 

We then have our VMs installed on Hyper-V using the shared storage. Virtual machines will then instantly fail over to the other node in the event of a server hardware failure. StarWind keeps both of the disks mirrored to ensure no data loss. This has worked with no issues over the last year on many clusters that we have set up using StarWind. 

StarWind has been straightforward to configure. As a company, we have been able to install many StarWind clusters with no extra hardware required, meaning less hardware to maintain. The software is also cost-effective vs purchasing dedicated hardware SANS. 

We now have a defined config that is easy to replicate and works well with no downtime or maintenance required. 

StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software.

Shared storage between two devices is great. It was done seamlessly. StarWind has been straightforward to configure and installs StarWind organize a time and configures the software using their best practices. As a company, we have been able to install many StarWind clusters with no extra hardware required, meaning less hardware to maintain. The software is also cost-effective vs purchasing dedicated hardware SANS.

StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software.

A central management console may be nice to see all nodes.

I've used the solution for more than one year.

This has been very stable over the last 12 months.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Licensing used to be good. However, the pricing may have gone up in recent months. 

We did look at other hardware solutions.

We built an HCI Hyper-V two-node cluster without SAN or S2D at our main site. It is used to run 25 virtual machines that host operating systems and applications including Windows 2016/2019, Debian, SQL, and PostgreSQL. It provides business continuity to my organization.

We also implemented a "Windows 2019 Guest Cluster" inside a Hyper-V Cluster without any problem. 

I'm not an IT Manager but an insurance broker with limited IT knowledge, and I was able to install, configure, and manage a hyper-converged cluster in a couple of hours without any problem.

VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage. I received precious support before buying, during the installation, and after.

All of our mission-critical applications and services are now completely redundant.

VSAN doesn't require either an expensive SAN or the expensive hardware required for Microsoft S2D on Windows Server Datacenter Edition. I can have an HCI two-cluster node using our 2,5" SAS HDD in RAID 10 without an SSD and the performance is great.

In the case of power failure or critical events, it's very simple to get back in production. The console is very simple and clear, and the PowerShell commands are very useful. 

Using one of the numerous tutorials, we created scripts to shut down and restart the cluster in case of a power outage.

There is no Italian-language version of the software available. Although I'd prefer an Italian version, I received extensive and comprehensive support in all of the deployment steps. This included communication by email, call, and video.

During a long power outage our UPS batteries was completely discharged, on power on Starwind vSAN wasn't able to choose which node was the correct node to sync from so we had to "mark as Syncronize" one of them. Then we wrote some powershell scripts to power off and power on   the nodes in sequence  before ups completely discharghe and then on power on. I'd like to manage these cases directly on GUI. Something like "in case vSAN isn't be able to mark as Syncronized a node, mark this node as sync"

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for six months.

StarWind is extremely stable.

In case we should decide to add other nodes, I think that this solution will scale easily.

Technical support is perfect.

We did not use another similar solution prior to StarWind.

The initial setup is very simple.

I was able to install VSAN on my own and I'm not an IT manager but an insurance broker. I received great support from StarWind technicians.

We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear.

We evaluated Microsoft S2D before choosing this product.

In summary, I think it's the best solution I could buy to achieve my goals.