StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We use StarWind as redundant, reliable, and fast storage for our two-node cluster in a Hyperconverged Environment. The cluster is a cost-effective way to create a reliable and scalable environment by utilizing all the available hardware while keeping complexity to a minimum. 

StarWind serves as storage for our Hyper-V appliance, ranging from databases to fileservers, which are all critical for the company. The storage has a size of around 70 Terabytes, and all traffic is routed through a redundant switch stack of two units. 

StarWind's task is to provide a reliable, fast, and redundant storage solution for our virtual machines while keeping cost and complexity as low as possible. At the same time, it managed challenges in a two-node environment, such as the feared split-brain scenario. 

With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability. Our downtime over the year went from two reboots a week for maintenance to zero (in combination with the cluster). 

Another improvement is the L1 and L2 cache, which boosts the overall performance of all VMs.

The overall biggest impact on the company, and especially the IT department, is the reduced time investment in maintaining the platform. StarWind has been a "set-up and forget" solution over the past year and already paid itself in the hours it has saved compared to the previous solution.

Three features were extremely important for us as a result of using StarWind since its setup:

Reliability and Maintainability. StarWind has been extremely reliable until now without any software-related downtime. Update-related reboots of the nodes were handled without any issues by StarWind and its Fast-Sync technology, which synchronizes data in the background without the need for a full sync.

Performance. Utilizing StarWind with its L1 and L2 Cache helped us boost a variety of file sizes, ranging from databases to renderings. Additionally, StarWind has a market-leading performance in throughput. Benchmarks in our environment showed a transfer of over 750 MB/s from a Windows Fileserver VM to a client device through a 10Gbit connection.

Community. The StarWind Customer Support was excellent, and it helped us clear any remaining questions regarding the setup. In our case, it was the setup of the SSD cache. A StarWind Technician offered us a personal support session with many follow-ups. 

While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell.

Another thing we found out afterward is that StarWind offers several free software solutions to benefit the performance of server infrastructures. One of them is StarWind iSCSI Accelerator/Load Balancer. We would like to ask StarWind to give a more thorough implementation guideline for such free solutions during the setup of storage infrastructure.

I've used the solution since May 2021.

StarWind has been pretty much active for the past year without one error or failure. Server maintenance during office hours and the synchronization afterward have never been an issue. No corruption of the storage, no VM crash, nor split brain has occurred in our two-node setup up until now. The heartbeat interfaces are very reliable and show an error through the Management Console when they are down.

One of the main reasons we bought StarWind was the scalability of the storage. We plan the storage in our Hyperconverged Infrastructure through the addition of storage arrays. Since we have bought the unlimited storage package from StarWind, we are confident that this task will not be an issue.

The customer support was excellent. We initially opened a post on the official StarWind Support page and received a response from a StarWind technician within two hours. By the end of the week, we had a private support session with him where he solved our issue and checked our config for any weaknesses. Overall great experience, and of the reasons we will be staying with StarWind.

Positive

We did not use another storage solution like StarWind. Rather, we used an array of NAS Servers, which served a combined iSCSI storage. This approach is more professional and in line with the industry.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward. The manual was up to date and with images. The only complaint I have is that the guideline is mostly tailored to the paid version of the StarWind Management Console, and for the free version, you need to use the PowerShell templates. The manual should address them more.

We implemented mainly in-house with the exception of the support of a technician, as mentioned in the next field.

While I can not give an exact number, compared to our old setup and the maintenance we put in, the ROI should be over 100%.

Through StarWind, in combination with HCI, we managed to reduce our overall hardware costs by about 50% through the avoidance of additional servers and software licensing. My recommendation is to utilize the community when setting up StarWind, which is a very good and strong point that speaks to StarWind and is also one of the main reasons we will stay with them.

Yes, we evaluated StorMagic before deciding on StarWind.

When setting up StarWind, it is fine to experiment with the config file; however, do back them up incrementally. Take your time in setting up a redundant infrastructure and meet hardware requirements (such as redundancy for Sync and Heartbeat Interfaces). Having solid ground to set up StarWind helped us to have a headache-free solution in the end. But that should be self-explanatory.

StarWind was the perfect solution that I was looking for: a true, two-node virtual SAN solution.

We're too small for three physical hypervisors, however, we still have two and want high availability. Native vSAN for the hypervisor we use requires two nodes plus a witness, or three, and we just couldn't do that.

In a search for an alternative, I found StarWind. They offer a true two-node setup with agent VMs on each host and two high-bandwidth links to each other, and that's it!

We're a visiting nurse association and rely on redundant hypervisors to keep our patient software up and running around the clock.

It has cut costs that we would've spent on network links and SAN appliance(s), allowing us to just include drives with our hosts and run a Virtual SAN.

Not only that, but the addition of two 10GB links now means that our hypervisor can live-migrate virtual machines very fast between hosts, and data is also synced between StarWind RAID arrays quickly too.

All this combines into a very efficient, fast, and reliable Virtual SAN solution that blazes past our previous physical SAN infrastructure.

The accessibility is great. It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly. It's pretty darn fast at syncing and I appreciate how friendly it is to SMBs.

Pricing is also very fair and their support is top-notch. I had some trouble setting it up. That said, it didn't take long at all to get in touch with support reps and they were knowledgeable on the product, not just an agent reading a script.

PROS include:
• Relatively easy to use
• True two-node vSAN
• Redundancy
• Stability (no issues in the years thus far of using it)
• Friendly pricing for SMBs and great support
• Great solution for SMB environments overall

The only thing I could suggest to improve is the documentation. The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc. However, they've improved the documentation greatly since I got started in 2022 (writing now as of 2025.02.19)

CONS include:
• Documentation for initial setup can be a bit ambiguous at times, yet support helps you get through it; you're good once you're up and running.
• It's not native and not a bad thing. Just keep in mind it's a third-party solution so it won't be as "drop-in" as a native solution offered by your hypervisor.

Since 2022

So far. I have had no issues or lapses in performance/stability.

The solution is scalable. It is very easy to add more virtual disks.

Customer support is very good! The support rep knew what they were talking about and quickly got back to me with an answer.

Positive

Before we had a physical SAN, maybe the HP MSA P2300 (I may have gotten the model number wrong).

It was just too expensive and demanding of physical links/resources to go with another MSA, so we decided to try a Virtual SAN.

The initial setup was both straightforward and complex. It wasn't too hard, however, there were some little parts in the documentation where I got stuck without much help other than calling for a support agent, which solved my issue and cleared up the confusion.

The implementation was done in-house.

Pricing is pretty fair and includes one year of support (as of purchase in August 2022).

The license is based on how many hosts you have and how much in TB you need the vSAN to accommodate.

We looked at our native Hypervisor's vSAN product, however, it required three nodes (or two with one witness node) and just wasn't feasible for our setup as an SMB.

We use the service to provide two-node hyper-converged storage to our application servers. 

We previously did not have any type of high-availability storage, and as you can guess, it was a mess. Getting high-availability storage was one of our first priorities when a new IT team was formed. 

Through talking with other customers, this is a great solution for us. In the more than six years of use now, we have not had any issues and support has always been great. They have helped us make config changes and do updates without any downtime.

Moving us to high availability storage has made our websites and applications more reliable. It also has allowed us to perform updates on storage and application servers without having downtime. Previously, to do any of those things was a pain as we would have to shut services down to perform any updates, whether security or features.

When compared to other providers, StarWind provided a great product at a reasonable price. Cost is also very important to a non-profit.

Having high-availability storage has made our lives easier. Having a two-node cluster without dealing with split-brain saves us the extra costs in hardware and maintenance. This is especially important to us since we are a non-profit. 

Having support is also very valuable to us as we are a small team. We have had very few vendors that we never had frustrations with their support and StarWind is definitely one of them. As for reliability, we have never had a single problem.

Since our needs are simple in comparison to large corporations, when it comes to needs, we often just need the basic plans. Therefore, we cannot speak much into what we want to see improvements in due to our simple needs but also because we rarely touch it. We mostly touch it just to do updates. 

As for the financial aspect of this, there is not much need for improvement either as they are much cheaper than the alternatives. We have found this product to suit our needs. 

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

Never had an issue with stability.

We have never had issues with scaling and we run applications and databases using the storage solution.

Their support did most of the work when it came to the setup.

Our primary use case for StarWind is providing our clients with a cost-effective HA storage solution utilizing existing virtualization technology already installed at the client site.

In the past, we have used other solutions. However, StarWind is our go-to and only virtual SAN solution at this point due to a number of factors which include reliability, simplicity, and the completeness of the offering. 

Further, StarWind has made no moves towards acquisition which was a large concern for us as previous vendors were acquired which ended our relationships.

StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective. We are able to roll out solutions with confidence with StarWind as a partner.

StarWind has also provided us with a very stable platform that is extremely well-supported. Their support staff excels at identifying issues and guiding us to best practices ensuring each of our clients receives an excellent experience.

The level of confidence and support within the StarWind organization is second to none.

The simplicity of scaling the StarWind solution has also been a boon for us.  In the past, most solutions relied on a per GB or per TB model while StarWind is a simple licensing structure per node. This has enabled us to scale clients' infrastructure as needed without being concerned about running into an artificial ceiling. 

When StarWind considered a pricing model change we discussed and worked with them to ensure that the solutions and changes prevented did not have a negative impact. They are a true partner.  

We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind. The guidance is always pertinent. However, you can tell there are times when it's just a matter of preference from engineer to engineer. Although not a detriment to the product offering, it creates some minor quandaries within our own organization as to best practices.

Overall a simplified support model where each engineer provides a similar answer and not "what works for them" would be beneficial however the difference in style of each engineer has not had a negative impact on us.

We have been using this solution for five or more years.

We utilized HPE Lefthand vSAN as well as VMware vSAN. As noted previously, these products were simply not a good fit for us or were phased out.

Look at their HA appliances. The cost for these is competitive enough to our own hardware that we have begun to lean on these appliances as opposed to rolling and supporting our own.

We did. We evaluated a number of solutions which I won't name here. StarWind came out on top.

StarWind is an excellent solution with top-tier support.

We needed a solution that provided highly available storage via ISCSI, replicating to multiple physical sites synchronously. We needed it to be easy to use, easy to manage, and cost-effective. Ideally, there would be no vendor lock-in or special hardware needing to be purchased. 

We found StarWind, and this 100% solved our problem. We've used StarWind on a pair of nodes populated with a large amount of flash disks. They then are running on dedicated switches for ISCSI back to our Hyper-V hypervisors, as well as utilizing a dedicated sync link for replication across our metro wan. With this, we're able to have real-time replication of our data between multiple sites.

The ease of management of StarWind, compared to other vendors, has made it a top winner for us. Not only is it possible for junior sysadmins to understand it - it's also reliable. It's backed up by time-tested systems, such as MPIO, ZFS, and ISCSI. 

There's no vendor black magic in a StarWind Box. It's just a box that works. By adding the synchronous repped storage, our system is able to keep real-time data in sync for our virtual machines without having to look into application clustering.

The highly available setup and synchronous replication without the need for a quorum node is huge for us. We wanted storage that would sync the replication between two sites as fast as possible. By utilizing StarWind, we were able to set this up quickly, using dedicated connections, and not have to worry about it. 

It works as well as can be expected. In addition, the ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain.

The company is going through a changeover in its current product lineup. This has led to looking stuff up via search engines, hitting both the new and old content, which makes answering questions on your own difficult. I also would have preferred it if I had been able to get pricing before contacting them. 

For additional features, I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software. I'd also like to see a more robust API for controls.

I've used the solution for 12 months.

The stability has been rock solid. We're running it on a KVM hypervisor and have had no issues in the slightest.

Scalability met our needs; however, it would not perform as well if you added more nodes, as you're increasing your replication delta.

Customer service and support have been great for the little time that we've had to talk to them. They are out of Eastern Europe and are obviously on a virtual phone. This can lead to some audio issues, however, nothing stops it.

Positive

Historically, I had used HPE Lefthand for sync rep storage. While it did the job, it was definitely older technology and has been unsettled.

The setup is extremely straightforward. The software is delivered via a template, so rolling it out is like any other VM. Also, the software includes setup support directly with an engineer who is more than willing to answer questions.

We did a combo of both in-house and vendor. We deployed the VM and then had the vendor assist us. I'd rank them a ten out of ten for knowing how their system works and offering various hypervisors access storage.

Our ROI has been difficult to calculate as this was a required purchase.

The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own hardware costs.

We have gone through the gamut of technologies and examined Linbit, Ceph, non-clustered ZFS, cluster ZFS, HPE Nimble, Pure, and more.

The StarWind vSAN product is not used directly by me. We use it in the organization via one of our clients. It is used as a shared storage solution for a Hyper-V converged project with two nodes. The project consists of a cluster with two Hyper-V nodes in which several virtual machines are running. 

The hardware is quite common. The disks used on the two virtual hosts are normal 7000 SATA disks. Only the synchronization interests are 10GB. Otherwise, there's nothing special; they are usual servers with Xeon processors from the 2018 generation.

StarWind Virtual SAN was the most optimal choice, both from a financial point of view and in terms of compatibility. It is an excellent choice for use together with Microsoft Hyper-V. Other options would have been the use of Microsoft Server Datacenter licenses on the two nodes and the use of Storage Replica and Storage Space Direct as a storage solution or VMware vSAN, both of which would have cost considerably more without bringing anything extra from the point of view of functionality or reliability, compared to Starwind Virtual SAN.

Although StarWind Virtual SAN free is fully functional and can be used in production, the support that comes with the license is priceless, the expertise of the StarWind support specialists is worth all the money. 

Also, the administration console, which is only available for the paid version, is extremely useful, being very intuitive and easy to use. The information displayed in the console is excellently structured, so that the complete solution can be seen in a single screen, which is very useful in monitoring and diagnosing the system.

While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a strict set of requirements, and StarWind Virtual SAN explicitly fulfilled that set of requirements, we were not looking for a solution with many options. That's why I can't say if improvements are necessary. The options used in our project have everything we need and they have managed in excellent time regardless of the citations that have appeared so far.

We have been using this solution for over five years.

It is very reliable. In the five-plus years since we have had it in production, it has coped brilliantly with all the events that have occurred.

It is extremely scalable. The free version is limited to three nodes. However, the licensed version has an unlimited number of nodes.

The support was excellent. I was assisted well and all the steps were explained to me, including how it should be set up and why, making the initial implementation of the project easy.

Positive

We opted from the beginning to do the project with StarWind Virtual SAN.

The initial setup was quite intuitive. That said, I had full support from StarWind at the beginning of the project implementation.

The solution was implemented in-house.

Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.

I evaluated Window Server Datacenter licenses for Storage Space and B2B, and another attempt with VMware vSAN. Both did not fit very well and were also considerably more expensive.

You can use the free evaluation version to see if it is what you need.

Our use case is for an oil and gas site with 200 ATEX cameras and 30 administrative buildings that have 400 indoor and outdoor cameras. All of the cameras are connected to a VLAN switch in each area. 

All of the switches are connected to the core switch in the data center through a fibre network between buildings. 

We add all cameras to management servers and they are divided to recording servers. There are 30 cameras for each recording server. 

We create a Microsoft failover cluster to achieve redundancy between management servers.

Another use case is to create a storage pool (4TB) to store SQL DB to achieve database stability and make it reachable to each server.

It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times have changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage

From time to time we face some issues with the storage unit and the whole cluster goes down. We replaced the storage with virtual SAN on both the nodes of each system using StarWind and now the system is more stable and has failover redundancy.

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check the storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” accessible by all hosts. 

StarWind cuts down virtualization costs and complexity by eliminating the need for physical shared storage (SAN). 

It offers enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployable and easily configured. We get technical support from their team for the implementation software and if we have any issues.

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. 

Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, 

The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I have a two-node high-availability setup. The first goal is to use it as a hyper-visor for critical servers to be hosted locally. If this use case works well over time, I may use the Virtual SAN as a storage cluster for multiple servers to connect to.

Two servers used for Hyper-V hosting, with high-speed NVME underlying storage, are being used for high-availability hosting and storage. No additional hardware is required beyond a high-speed network connection between the two (25gbps fiber optic in our case).

The storage/hosting cluster is currently being used for test servers. We have hosted some of our test SQL servers on the devices to ensure seamless failover and good IO performance.

Once it moves out of testing, we will host critical servers on these devices and will be able to quickly transfer servers between hosts to allow for host server maintenance without VM downtime. It will also provide instant failovers in case of hardware failures, reducing downtime that would otherwise occur while a VM is being restored from a backup or the host server is fixed.

The ability to host high availability storage between existing servers without additional hardware is a great benefit. This not only saves money but also reduces the complexity of the hardware configuration creating fewer points of failure.

I also appreciate the alternative this product provides compared with the very restrictive options provided by large vendors for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. That this solution can be configured on existing hardware and managed on Windows servers as opposed to a proprietary hardware-tied HCI solution is a positive in my book.

Including their own hyper-visor would be a valuable improvement over simply integrating with Hyper-V. 

A more streamlined setup where components like the iSCSI connectors were configured from the application would be useful as well (currently, there is a lot of back and forth between the StarWind application and Windows Server High Availability configuration screens when setting it up)

The only issue I have dealt with is slow contact with support and things like trial license extensions through my sales rep.

I used the free version a few years ago and have been using the paid version for around six months.

The application itself has operated without issue. That said, it is utilizing a number Windows Server roles and hardware devices that themselves can have issues. The web of interconnected components can be harrowing, however, it still is a superior option to a closed-box HCI option that provides no insight for troubleshooting.

You could have significant scaling by just having more two-node or three-node clusters, but you cannot scale a single cluster past three-nodes currently.

My experience with support was terrific. The only issue was having to communicate through a sales rep instead of being able to directly contact the engineer.

Positive

Our previous solution utilized Direct-Attached Storage devices. We are evaluating this vSAN-based approach to storage and integrating hosting to reduce surface area, improve I/O performance, and provide more seamless failovers.

The setup is very complex, particularly regarding network configuration.

Pricing on this product is controlled largely by the number of nodes and the storage volumes involved. One of the cutoff points for license cost is 10TB. If you intend to use storage volumes beyond that size, expect an uptick in cost.

I did some basic research into Azure and Dell HCI options.