StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

StarWind Virtual SAN has been a welcomed addition to my network.

Overall, StarWinds vSAN is a cost-saving storage option with top-notch support.

The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space. I can focus on other IT needs now, rather than having to worry about redundancy with an aging physical SAN storage unit. If an HDD fails, I can easily hot-swap and continue the business.

Support was extremely helpful in regards to setup and implementation.

The admin portal has been easy to use and provides a great overview of health and usage.

I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal. I would like to see continued improvement with additional compatibility for other browsers to be able to work properly with the administrator web portal.

I did find out, with the help of StarWind's support, that the Firefox browser seems to be the browser that works the best with their web portal.

It also appears that vMotion is slower than my previous SAN solution, which was a traditional physical unit.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for one year.

Since implementation, I have not had one issue with performance or stability.

This is a scalable solution, as it is simple to add another vSAN.

I never felt rushed while I had to install additional host NIC cards and they walked me through every step of the setup process. Their support has been quick to respond and with frequent updates. They will always work a case until I am satisfied that I have a proper and understood answer.

I am not bombarded with additional sales calls, but they do check in from time to time only to make sure all is well. That is appreciated.

I was forced to replace my traditional physical SAN when I was unable to get additional service parts, even as it was still under a support contract. I needed a full-featured, low-cost replacement for it.

StarWind came highly recommended throughout various IT channels and colleagues.

I implemented myself, with the use of StarWind's support team. Their support team was instrumental in aiding the completion of the setup process.

The support was a great resource for setup and continued use. They took the time to really explain how their solution works, specifically within my environment.

StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup.

We looked at Dell/EMC and HPE solutions and they were all extremely expensive.

A sales rep was quick to get me in touch with an engineer who patiently walked me through my endless questions of compatibility and setup. They even assisted with recommendations for host hard drives: both HDD and SSD options.

Overall, StarWinds vSAN is a cost-saving storage option with top-notch support.

We needed redundancy in our "dark" environment. A failover cluster was the best solution for us. We have a complicated infrastructure consisting of various v-hosts and over 40 VMs in all kinds of operating systems. 

For continuity, it was necessary to update our VMs without any downtime. It's installed on two v-hosts with the most important machines. This way, we can continue operations without hick-ups. We chose StarWind as it's independent of the hardware used in our v-hosts. We did look at other solutions; however, in the end, StarWind VSAN was the best choice for us.

We needed a redundant solution for our environment, and it was sufficient to have a two-node cluster. 

The implementation went flawlessly with the help of StarWind support. However, technical knowledge is mandatory. Nevertheless, we had a quick installation. Since we had lots of different types of storage available, we were able to assign different types of storage depending on the type of usage for the virtual machines. 

We already had an unexpected outage of one of the nodes due to a memory problem, and thanks to StarWind vSAN, our operations continued as expected. It's an easy way to keep your failover cluster monitored.

StarWind vSAN is easy to use and has a very clear GUI. The most valuable in StarWind vSAN is the way it works seamlessly with the Microsoft fail-over cluster. 

We are working with a two-node setup that suits our needs perfectly. It just works without any technical know-how needed. 

The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items. 

It's also easy to add an extra node if necessary or connect if you've rebooted one of the nodes. Also, the speed of support is very valuable to us. If you have a problem or question, you'll get almost an immediate answer.

The product is as good as it promises. 

StarWind vSAN is updated on a regular basis, probably to keep up with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems. As far as I'm concerned, there should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed. 

In our dark environment, this is impossible as we don't have any mail server available in our infrastructure, which consists of a few v-hosts, redundant storage, and quite a few virtual machines, all running on Microsoft OS.

I've used the solution for three years.

Our infrastructure uses VMware vSphere, and we use StarWind as our primary storage solution. We have three hosts and use a hyper-converged setup, so our computing and storage are spread across the same hosts. 

StarWind replicates the data between the hosts giving us 30 TB of usable redundant storage. StarWind allowed us to consolidate our hardware and grow without expanding our data center footprint. It also gave us more peace of mind since there is no single point of failure anywhere in the solution.

StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution.  

We were also able to avoid a data center expansion as we could combine our computing and storage without losing fault tolerance.  

We were also using another converged storage solution from HPE as well. That solution was strongly tied to ESXi and vCenter, which meant we could not apply WMware updates when they came out until the storage solution updated their product to match without risking compatibility problems.  

Since StarWind isn't tied to the hypervisor, we don't have to worry about how updates to one part of our infrastructure will affect the other.

StarWind support is really good. They help you with the initial setup and will support you down the road as well. The support staff really know their product.  StarWind isn't a black box, either. You can see exactly how the storage and replication are configured, so you know what is going on, and can quickly diagnose any problems.   

Many virtualized storage solutions are incredibly picky about what hardware you deploy them on - even down to the model of a hard drive. StarWind allows you to use any hardware, and they will support you on whatever infrastructure you want to deploy it on.

The management interface is missing some of the flashier features and hand-holding of other enterprise products.  It might be intimidating to someone without a lot of experience, yet StarWinds setup services are good for walking you through everything. The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting.  

The documentation on their website isn't bad, and yet it could use some better organization. There is also some feature disparity between the Windows-based solution and their virtual Linux-based solution. I'd love to see deduplication added to the virtual Linux appliance.  

I've used the solution for four years.

I only had one stability issue with StarWind. That said, that was down to me not following best practices and not reading their updated documentation. When configure properly, StarWind is very stable.

It's a great option for SMBs. If you start getting into double or triple-digit host count, the increased configuration time may not be worth it.

The StarWind support team is very knowledgeable. When you need support, you speak directly with someone who knows the product well. I was able to get on a Zoom call and have my issue resolved the same day I opened a ticket.

Positive

We previously used a traditional SAN from Nimble and the virtual storage solution, HPE Simplivity. Both other solutions were more expensive. HPE was strongly tied to both the underlying hardware and the hypervisor and didn't allow for any flexibility.

The initial setup was a little more complex than setting up a traditional SAN as additional networking was needed for the replication channels. Planning ahead and help setup help from Starwind makes this manageable.

We did our implementation in-house. We know our infrastructure better than an outside vendor and were confident in our ability to deploy it.

StarWind has the most straightforward licensing model of any storage solution we evaluated. Their pricing was also the best.

We had experience with HPE Simplivity and VMware vSAN.

In a VMware environment, StarWind works best if you can dedicate the RAID card or the HBA to the storage controller VM, so you should store the hypervisor on a separate RAID card or on an SD card. 

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.

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.

We originally had a three-node Nutanix cluster. However, we were asked to spend six figures on replacing it, as the Nutanix license was bound to the hardware. StarWind Virtual SAN could use this existing hardware without any special reconfiguration. 

We decided to go with their Linux appliance and quickly learned we could achieve the same resiliency with two nodes as we did with three nodes on Nutanix. 

They provided guides to help us set up the most efficient cluster, although we did have to use MD/RAID as there wasn't a guide available for ZFS.

Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier. The performance is much higher than we anticipated and outperforms the other solutions we've tried. 

They provide numerous guides and whitepapers to help set up your own environment, yet can also walk you through the setup, so you understand each component of it. Thanks to their extensive support community, we are no longer 100% dependent on support (or a support contract) for minor troubleshooting issues.

The most valuable feature to us is the basic setup, which makes it easy to understand what's happening under the hood. This, combined with the low price point, allowed us to rapidly implement the solution while giving us better performance than all other products we tested. 

All of the documentation is openly available and isn't hidden behind a support paywall like many other options. Since the setup was so simple, I opted to do the majority of setup myself, however, support was always available to answer any questions or to provide guidance.

A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one. All of the setup and configuration is done via a dedicated Windows application, so you'll have to install it on every machine that you want to manage the cluster with. 

Most of the documentation is heavily windows-based, so finding guides on their Linux VSA can be difficult, however, support can usually assist you in finding the documentation. 

An easy/native ZFS option would also be welcome, as we did end up having to use a mdadm setup, but none of these are deal-breakers.

I've used the solution for three months.

It's stable enough that I sometimes forget it's there. There are so few components in it that there's just less to go wrong.

We were able to have the same resiliency with two nodes as we did with three nodes under Nutanix. It also managed to outperform Nutanix by a fair amount.

Support has been phenomenal. They have always responded to emails in mere minutes, and everyone seems to know their stuff. I've never been transferred around, and they've always answered my question or resolved the issue in minutes.

Positive

We previously used Nutanix, which was extremely expensive and nearly ALL of the documentation was behind a support contract. Most of the components had cryptic names, and there were very few options for finding a solution yourself.

The initial setup is extremely simple, and support can walk you through it or give you guides if you are a do-it-yourself kind of person.

Most of the implementation was done in-house, but support was available at any time to answer questions or to provide suggestions. Everyone we worked with on support seemed to know what they were doing.

It came in 80% cheaper than all of the other solutions, and the yearly support contract was a third of the price as well.

If cost and performance are your goals, then definitely look at StarWind. It's a smaller company than almost all of the alternatives, yet they have very dedicated support staff and a great development team. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles as some others. However, if you're looking for a simple hyper-converged solution, this is your best bet.

We evaluated multiple options, including a software-only Nutanix solution and the VMware vSAN. These were both very expensive and had a very strict hardware compatibility list, which caused the project's budget to swell exponentially. We also looked at some open-source options such as ESOS and GlusterFS, however,  these required many hours of setup and there wasn't a real enterprise support option for either.

They have a great trial system with full support, they even extended mine due to my limited time to deploy and test everything.

We decided on StarWind's Virtual SAN product due to the fact that it was a simple way for us to use vendor hardware to achieve SAN functions. 

It allowed us to implement a robust solution without needing to buy dedicated SAN hardware for the remote site.  

We set up a 2 node cluster using Dell servers and Dell-provided hard drives and used Starwind to create several redundant disks across the two hosts. This solution allowed us to enable High Availability across the hosts using the shared storage without the need to purchase dedicated hardware.

The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget.  

We built out a pair of matched servers with vendor-supplied hard drives and were able to provide a fully redundant storage array between the servers. VM hosts can now provide high availability failover if either host goes down. Not needing to spend a huge amount for a dedicated solution was a plus and the system is easily expandable if we need to make changes.  

Their support team has been excellent in helping us throughout the project process.

Support was great and provided presale support for our test environment before the purchase and after to help us configure the product before it went into production.  

They have also been great in following up on our project and helping with other implementation issues.  

Being able to use existing hardware was a big factor in our purchasing decision and helped this project fit the needs of our client's budget. Using existing hardware greatly reduced the project costs and overall complexity of the solution.

The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us.  

Starwind provides excellent pre-sale support and scheduled several meetings between our IT staff and their support team to review the configuration and answer questions. This helped immensely in deploying the software in our test environment and helped us to understand the product better. Support was always willing to help with any documentation that we were confused over and continued to follow up with us after the project went live.

I've used the solution for eight months.

The product appears to be very stable and robust.

The solution appears to be easily scalable and adjustable to fit future needs.

Vendor support has been very responsive and provided help with all issues we have encountered.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

Setup can be complicated and the documentation is not always clear. Support from the vendor was needed in our test environment setup.

We used an in-house team with vendor support during the implementation. Support has been excellent and has followed up regularly with our team.

We did look at Dell and VMware SAN products as well. 

We built a two-server Hyper-V failover cluster. We build typical servers like we normally would with NVME drives and plenty of storage. This software works hand in hand with Microsoft hyper-v failover manager for a seamless setup that has not given us any issues since implementation. 

Live failovers are tested every week, and the customer does not even notice when the failovers are tested. The performance was exceptional, and everything worked as expected. We went ahead and got the three-year 24/7 support contract since it's a critical customer. While the price is a bit steep, this process and product have given us a lot of peace of mind that the servers will continue running even if one of the physical hosts goes down.

It's a very easy Implementation with the help of support. We received quick responses from support for any questions we had throughout the entire process. StarWind is a stable product that allowed us to build the cluster exactly like we wanted hardware-wise. This product has allowed us to build a two-node failover cluster without a SAN. 

We also did not need the datacenter edition of server OS. We were very worried about the implementation process. However, they helped us with the entire implementation, leaving no stone unturned and all questions answered.

Overall, it was a great experience dealing with the various StarWind team members from the pre-sales all the way through to implementation. This was our first experience with a hyper-converged failover cluster, and the team at StarWind made it easy for us. 

Before making the choice, we were weighing out all the cluster options, and everything kept coming back to StarWind. I'm glad it did, as we definitely feel we made the right choice. We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected.

Pricing is a bit high. That said, the support is worth it. It's really hard to point out any other negatives. The licensing and support pricing structure could have been laid out a little simpler, and then pricing could have been less, of course. However, the truth is the support really does make up for the cost, in our opinion. We did decide to go with three-year 24/7 support due to implementation in a critical communications center. We feel like we won't need to use them for much at all since the products just work. Due to this, the pricing could have been better, especially with us purchasing all three years at once.

I've used the solution for one year.