StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We use StarWind Virtual SAN to create a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective solution for storage requirements. We used it to store data in a VMware environment. 

We have a small setup of servers where we use Starwind Virtual SAN as our primary storage solution to store critical data and applications. We have a 30 TB usable storage where StarWind Virtual SAN provides us with reliable, fast, scalable, and cost-effective features to store and manage critical data and apps. 

It's a scalable storage solution, and in the future, if our requirements expand, we can scale out our storage requirements pretty easily.

It helped us in providing a reliable, fast, scalable, redundant, and affordable storage solution for our VMware-based infrastructure. It's continuously running for the last year or so, which shows its reliability. 

It also helps us reduce maintenance costs as it's working pretty fine for the last year or so. So, we didn't face any issues yet. It's a solution where we can truly say that set up and forget.

I'd like to say that it's one of the best storage solutions for your virtual environment, especially for SMBs.

StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails. This feature helps us to save data or any critical application on it. 

You can scale it from a 2-node to a larger, multi-node deployment which makes it a pretty flexible solution for businesses that are growing from time to time. It has very good performance with an improved cache

It has a pretty user-friendly interface that makes it easy to install, configure, and manage storage in any virtualized environment.

While our experience with StarWind Virtual SAN has been positive, we don't have any issues yet. 

The price makes it a pretty perfect and affordable solution as compared to other solutions available in the market for the same deployment scenarios. 

I want to suggest that the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure needs to be reduced. Another thing that I want to highlight about the documentation that needs some improvement and better organization. Right now, I don't have any other issues in my mind that can be written here.

For the last year or so, I've been using this solution.

We don't have any stability issues. 

Currently, we have a small setup, and in the near future, if we need to scale our setup, StarWind Virtual SAN will help us accordingly.

The technical support experience so far has been positive.

Positive

Yes, I use VMware vSAN and FreeNAS.

The initial setup is simple, and a lot of information is already available.

We implemented it in-house.

We have been using it for the last year or so, and it's working very fine in our environment. 

StarWind Virtual SAN is a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective solution. I highly recommend using this storage solution, especially for SMBs.

I evaluated other options and found StarWind Virtual SAN is a reliable and cost-effective solution.

It's a pretty reliable, cost-effective storage solution for virtual environments.

We are an SMB IT consulting company with an infrastructure department. 

Before 2019, we had been deploying HP StoreVirtual VSA in order to deliver a typical 2-node hyper-converged cluster. Since the publishing of EOL/EOS for HP StoreVirtual we had been looking for a suitable replacement. 

We looked at and deployed various solutions - from StorMagic, Open-E, NetApp, and EMC. StarWind was the easiest to deploy. It was very inexpensive, offered the best support, and was hardware agnostic. After several deployments, this has been the best 2-node hyper-converged solution accepted by all engineers on my team.

StarWind Virtual SAN has given us the ability to bring a stable and functional 3rd party 2-node hyper-converged solution to our SMB clients. 

The typical roadblock with SMBs is the cost. It is very difficult to convince an SMB of the value of redundancy, highly-available hardware configurations, up-time, and quality vendor support until an emergency happens and solutions are needed ASAP. 

With StarWind, we are able to present best practices to SMBs and since the price point is attractive, we can more efficiently convince SMB clients to make the investment in best practices before a disaster happens.

The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across. There is very little wait and very little pain to get an engineer who is very knowledgeable about this product to assist us.

The fact that it is hardware agnostic gives us the capability to customize the solution according to the client's needs and budget.

We are in the middle of converting our own infrastructure to StarWind Virtual SAN since we are so satisfied with the ease and function of the environments where this product is deployed.

The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers. For example, the method of management of the StarWind environments that have been deployed has been a downloaded management console program. This downloaded program which needs to be installed on the network of the environment was the suggestion of the deployment engineers. 

I would like to see more consultation on a web UI management console.

Our first deployment was in 2019.

No deployments have ended badly. All are still running without issues. It is very stable.

The solution is hardware agnostic. Storage can be added if licensing is increased. It offers above-average scalability. 

Customer service is the best part of this product. The customer service and support I have received are unmatched by any other vendor.

Positive

We used HP StoreVirtual. The switch was needed as it came to its end-of-life and end-of-support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Anything complex is done by the StarWind personnel.

Our implementation was a hybrid of vendor-team and in-house. The vendor team has a very high level of expertise.

The ROI is for our clients. There is less downtime, less troubleshooting, fewer issues, and fast speeds. 

The setup is simple and the cost is attractive.

We also evaluated Open-E, StorMagic, NetAPP, and EMC.

I'd advise users to initiate lots of communication with their support staff. Their responses are quick and sufficient.

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.

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.

I've used the solution for about 11 months.

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.

I am using it to replace an end-of-life NetApp SAN after moving about half of our storage to the cloud. It is reducing the cost when it comes time to replace existing on-site storage (this was part of the cost justification of moving systems to the cloud but quotes provided by several vendors and consultants for replacement systems were actually more than what we paid for the EOL system six years ago). I was greatly relieved that I was able to deliver on my promise to reduce storage costs by half with StarWind vSAN.

We were able to reduce our on-site storage costs by roughly half what we paid for the previous NetApp SAN six years ago (with no noticeable loss of performance or loss of High Availability). This allowed us to help cost justify the investment we had already made in cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings with existing vendors without breaking the bank when it came time to replace our end-of-life NetApp SAN. Since only two VMWare ESXi host servers are required, it's allowing us to use local storage; we should also be able to replace the system again the next go around for a similar cost. 

The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution.  

We have detected zero loss of performance and we still have High Availability in place. vSAN has run smoothly with zero issues whatsoever so far.  

It's easy to administer.  

Support has been great with knowledgeable, helpful, and professional engineers responding quickly.  

I had initial concerns there might be a language barrier yet have had zero issues in this area. Communication has been great with both sales and service before and after the sale.

I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation. It would have been helpful to have been able to watch a video or two showing a quick track way to do an evaluation including the easiest approach to take, benchmark tools to use, and step-by-step instructions on how to go about it.  

I asked for assistance and was sent information on some tools to use but I struggled with understanding the best way to use them. Having a live person suggest the best, most meaningful way to go about the evaluation based on my individual situation, would have been helpful too. 

I've used the solution for three months.

The stability is rock solid. There is no downtime so far and I have no performance issues.

The scalability seems solid. You could add nodes if needed.

Support is fantastic. It is quick, responsive, knowledgeable, and professional. 

Positive

We have a NetApp SAN. We switched as our storage was downsized by about half due to moving systems to the cloud and the SAN was EOL.

The initial setup was straightforward. A couple of hours on a remote support session with an engineer and we were up and running.

The solution was implemented in-house.

I'm not sure how to quantify ROI.

The setup cost was included with the price - so that was great! Buy from them directly rather than going through a reseller and you get 20% off.

We evaluated NetApp, Dell, SAN, and NAS solutions. All were way too costly.

Sales and support have been great to work with and the solution is solid without breaking the bank.

The primary use case we had was covering with StarWind vSAN was to provide customers with a redundant solution that was able to guarantee flexibility. In terms of physical storage, we can aggregate in order to provide a redundant, replicated solution. At the same time, we were looking to keep the total cost of ownership as low as possible as the customer may have multiple venues to cover with the same schema of the system. 

With StarWind vSAN we were able to set a simple 2-node cluster leveraging the internal disks to create a replicated vSAN - eliminating any SPOF at a reasonable price.

StarWind, compared to other competitors in the market and in the same range of price, allows us to design system plans with the resilience of enterprise-grade storage, however, we are able to use smaller storage even at the consumer level. This makes us more competitive as the total price of the offered solution was comparable to a usual non-HA system yet with all the resilience features that StarWind is bringing with its product. This combination of low price with enterprise-grade HA features is key in the market.

There are tons of valuable features that StarWind vSAN brings to the table. It is very difficult to choose one to be raised as a role model.

The unique capability to create a vSAN on a 2-node cluster while all the other competitors will require users to have at least an external witness to set the Virtual SAN.

The service team is very collaborative and skilled and followed us from the implementation to the go-live of the system constantly.

The license price is one of the cheapest in the market.

The price is the key aspect (yet not at the expense of reliability and stability). It is not so easy to find an aspect where StarWind can improve their offering or any additional feature they can include for the price they ask. 

I know that StarWind can scale out easily, however, I wasn't in the position to test that. I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves. 

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

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test the scalability aspect.

As it was driven by StarWind reps, it was running very smoothly.

There's nothing to finger point on the StarWind team. They were great.

We also evaluated StorMagic, VMware vSAN, and Datacore.

We successfully virtualized our entire company's data infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN. This implementation allowed us to consolidate and optimize our storage environment, improving overall efficiency and reducing operational costs associated with managing and maintaining a traditional SAN.

StarWind Virtual SAN seamlessly integrates with our existing hypervisors, providing us with a fault-tolerant and high-performance storage pool for our virtualized environments. 

The most valuable feature we found was the ease of use. This aspect greatly simplified the setup and management of our storage environment, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. While the solution has been instrumental in enhancing our storage infrastructure, we believe there is room for improvement in certain areas. Improvements in documentation and support resources could further enhance the user experience. Integration with containerization platforms to support modern application development practices would also be beneficial. 

More advanced configuration options would cater to our specific needs. Looking ahead, we believe that future releases of Virtual SAN could benefit from additional features such as enhanced monitoring and reporting capabilities, integration with cloud storage providers, and support for automated data tiering. 

Overall, StarWind Virtual SAN has significantly improved the efficiency and reliability of our storage infrastructure, and we anticipate further enhancements in future releases.

We utilize StarWind Virtual SAN for managing the storage area network (SAN) in our data centers. The solution enables us to ensure a fault-tolerant and high-performance storage pool to support the needs of our virtualized environments. Its seamless integration with our existing hypervisors allows us to efficiently and reliably manage the storage resources required for our virtualized applications and workloads. 

StarWind offers a free version, allowing users to test the product without any initial investments. This version runs on top of existing hypervisors and hardware, making it ideal for test and development processes in the pre-production stage. Users can easily upgrade to a commercial version later, ensuring a seamless transition without disruptions.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include:

Simplified setup and management: StarWind Virtual SAN offers ease of use, simplifying the setup and management of storage environments. 

Seamless integration: It seamlessly integrates with existing hypervisors, providing fault-tolerant storage for virtualized environments. 

Cost savings: Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs. We successfully virtualized our entire company's data infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN. This implementation allowed us to consolidate and optimize our storage environment, improving overall efficiency and reducing operational costs associated with managing and maintaining a traditional SAN.

The solution could improve:

Documentation and support: Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience. 

Advanced configuration options: More advanced configuration options may be needed to cater to specific needs. 

Feature expansion: This could include:

• Integration with containerization platforms for modern application development practices could be beneficial. 
• Enhanced monitoring and reporting capabilities to provide more insights into the performance and health of the storage environment. 
• Integration with cloud storage providers to enable hybrid cloud deployments and data tiering capabilities. 
• Support for automated data tiering to optimize storage utilization and performance based on usage patterns. 
• Advanced data protection features such as encryption at rest and in transit to ensure data security and compliance. 
• Integration with containerization platforms to support modern application development practices.

I've used the solution for six months.

Started with a trial and then moved to the paid version. I have a 3 node cluster, (20) 1TB spinning drives, RAID 0, (3) 800 GB SSD drives, RAID 5 and 18GB RAM cache per node. Using 10G Infiniband for the iSCSI & SYNC network loops. This is to support local disks of VMware Horizon View full clone desktops.

• Very fast (replaced EMC SAN). Ultra reliable. I had many, many problems with one of the hosts (ended up being a motherboard) and I never lost a thing. Once you get used to it, it is fairly easy to manage, and the tech support is stellar.

• I would love to give it more RAM. Even marginal increases in RAM yield dramatic results. No more boot storms.

• Because of the way VMware has shuffled license "classes" over the years we got ripped off not getting the native VMware vSAN. It seems that maybe for our use case StarWind VSAN is even better and compared to re-negotiating VMware licenses cheaper.

Performance, reliability, I love the management console (once I got used to it). It works and it works well. Maybe not exactly a feature but tech support is beyond great. It is fantastic. The techs are supportive, understanding and really care about your implementation. I feel they really want to see you succeed. I'm so pleased with the tech support that I consider it better than any feature.

• The documentation is sub-par. The pre-sales documentation and information is sub-par.
• StarWind is not cheap. It is not hard to set up but not a cakewalk either. Having tech support set you up is certainly a good value. I would say the performance cost ratio is great, if not fantastic. Be sure to plan well and ask lots of questions.

• Next release needs to include complete documentation. Even if it's download only or even optional.

As I mentioned earlier in my review - one of my nodes had a sick motherboard. it would reboot for no good reason and the most inopportune times. With StarWind HA enabled it wouldn't miss a beat. VM's vMotioned across, storage was stable and when the host came back everything was always OK. Not the ideal way to test stability but it passed the test nonetheless.

I am planning on adding another node to the cluster in the coming weeks. It will be compute only and we will be adding (2) Infiniband switches to support that additional host. Note: only need a switch on the iSCSI side. The sync side will not be involved.

Seems that 2 node to 3 node is relatively easy. And 3 nodes or less and you don't need a 10G switch for your fabric. Gives you some options. Beyond that I'm not real sure.

Tech support is fantastic. As I mentioned I consider StarWind tech support one of the main features. And if the poo poo hits the fan they will back you up and get you going quickly.  I did have issues with quotations from customer support. But we worked it out in the end.  

We used a conventional hardware SAN. EMC VNXe. It was end of life and I even tried replacing it - EMC could not make it work right. It kept dropping connections. I kept running the old VNXe and discovered StarWind VSAN. Glad I did.

It was complex and had many steps and procedures but if you don't start with the FREE version they walk you through each step and procedure. I did it the hard way of course. 

I am the team. I did it in house. Then when we moved over to the paid version tech support helped me correct anything that was missing or wrong. 

I don't know.

Be very clear in what you want. I was misquoted what I needed and ended up having to go back to the boss two times. And was running crippled while doing that. It was not pretty. Make sure they know what you have and what you want. Especially sizes. --This really only applies if you do the FREE method first.  

I thought about another SAN but just didn't want to go down that road. The cost to upgrade my VMware licenses to get vSAN from them just didn't seem worth it. 

I think StarWind is a serious contendender. Especially if you don't have the right VMware licenses. But even then - I'm running a 3 node cluster and don't need a separate "witness" box. If you're an SMB and doing VMware you need to consider StarWind as your SAN solution. 

We needed a redundant solution that would be able to switch automatically to the backup side if necessary. 

Once StarWind was installed and configured the failover becomes automatic. 

However, it is also easy to do it on the fly manually (even during production hours). This allows you to almost completely eliminate maintenance windows as you can put all of the VMs on one appliance and run maintenance on the remaining appliance. This saves time and money not having to have someone come in off-hours to do said tasks.

It is so easy now to create VMs that have failover if one of the StarWind appliances fails. This nearly 100% uptime has allowed our organization to pretty much eliminate downtime during production hours. In fact, since we deployed StarWind we have had zero downtime during production hours. This peace of mind is priceless.  

We now have automatic failover thanks to StarWind Virtual SAN, on-prem backups, and cloud backups. This has also improved our DR strategy allowing us to recover more easily.

The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down. 

The ease of adding SSDs or memory is a valuable feature too.  

However, the most valuable part of this whole process has been the support.  They are available 24/7. If they notice something wrong, I will get an email, even if it is in the middle of the night or on a weekend or holiday.  

The SLA is about four hours, however, I can't remember a time when it took longer than 30 minutes to get a response. Scheduling them for maintenance or configuration issues is also a breeze.

Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs.  

When planning to purchase and deploy a StarWind system they monitor your resources for a week and build your StarWind appliance accordingly. It would be smart for the end user to really take into account the anticipated company growth and add on more computing initially. That would be a more streamlined approach.

We have had StarWind for a little over two years now.

The solution is incredibly stable.

The compute part of it should be more easily scalable.  

Customer service and support is the strongest part of this company. I have zero issues with them and wish other vendors would use them as a model.

Positive

We did not use any other solution. StarWind was our first.

The initial setup was fairly complex, however, StarWind support walked us through every step and made it a breeze.

We used StarWind support for setup with one IT person in-house. 

Since installing StarWind, we have not had any downtime. The ROI from not having even one downtime event is immeasurable. 

StarWind is by far going to be your best value for money.

We evaluated Dell and Nutanix.