StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We use StarWind to synchronize storage between nodes of our hyper-converged Hyper-V cluster. We then publish the storage to each cluster member via iSCSI.

We run the cluster on a 10GB network (though when we first implemented
it in our testing environment, we were on 1GB and it still worked fine),
with two physical servers. 

The synchronization between nodes is fully synchronous, meaning that if the mirror NICs aren't at least as fast as the front-end NICs (and preferably much faster), it could cause access bottlenecks. We haven't faced that problem though.

We needed to implement a cluster so we could offer VM hosting as a service to our customers. We have implemented clusters for some of our clients and used much more expensive vSAN options there. We were leery about using such a lower-cost alternative, but the other SAN options proved far too expensive for our very modest budget.

We tested with a free version of StarWind (which allows no GUI administration but otherwise is fully-featured), and it was stable enough for our use for about a year for testing and for the client that wanted to be a guinea pig (for an important but not mission-critical system; suitable for testing with). But when we were ready to roll the program out more broadly, we decided that in case of a problem, dealing with the lack of GUI would be an issue. Upgrading to the full GUI-capable version was only a matter of a few clicks, and it did fit into our budget.

We use StarWind as a basic SAN with multi-node synchronization and push the storage out to the cluster nodes via iSCSI. For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job.

When we were using the free version, adjustments to the storage volumes were difficult and finicky, because we had to use Powershell commands which are unfortunately not documented nearly as well as they should be. However, the GUI administration is easy, at least for the basic administration needs we've had so far.

StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used, which has spoiled us.

The management console is very simple -- reflecting the limited feature set that StarWind provides. I'm concerned that if sync breaks or we face another kind of major issue and have to fix something, it might be hard to track down the source of the problem. I would very much like to see greater granularity in reporting of active iSCSI channels, for example.

That said, we haven't had any problems yet; that says something in itself.

I've used the solution for just under two years.

We've used other solutions with some of our clients, and while we like them better, they're also an order of magnitude more expensive and didn't fit our budget.

If you know your way around a cluster, setup is easy. Pricing is straightforward, which made this choice a no-brainer.

We did not evaluate other options as the other options were prohibitively expensive.

I am doing a change from physical to virtual servers and my goal is to change all the servers. There are a total of nine, and at this moment I have three servers that I have migrated. They now work better than the physical ones.

I am also doing backup copies of these virtual servers in case I have problems with any server, since in this area, we have problems with electricity and I already lost a physical server from that. That’s why I decided to make a new network of virtual servers with copies and clones of these servers and so far, it has worked very well.

StarWind Virtual SAN has been a great solution for this organization. In this area, we have electricity problems and the physical servers can be damaged - something that has already happened once. 

I made the decision to migrate the servers to virtual ones due to the fact that, if a virtual server is damaged, I just have to take the backup that I have already made of that server and replace it without any problem. The end user of the company does not notice the change. 

My intention is to have all the physical servers become virtual

StarWind Virtual SAN is a great solution when it comes to making virtual servers. I like this tool as it is simple and easy to use, robust, and 100% working so far. It’s also compatible with Windows Server 2019.

I was able to easily clone virtual machines. I save both physical and virtual space. You can also run Linux virtual machines and make it easy to manage replication between nodes within the cluster when needed. iSCSI support is also included and very good support from the technical staff during the installation phase.

I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page. Better documentation would have saved me time in the beginning. The documentation is hard for new users to understand.

I have been using this tool for six months.

It is a very stable software; in these six months, I have not had problems with any virtual machine.

They are very good and the product is scalable. It is excellent that it adapts to the needs of each company.

The technical support can be a bit complicated by language barriers, however, the objectives have been achieved. 

Positive

I previously used VMware and switched to StarWind Virtual SAN for the cost savings.

The initial setup is a little slow at first, however, after researching and installing the software, it was easy to finish the installation.

We handled the setup internally.

The ROI is very good since the system has offered me a solution to change physical equipment for virtual ones and in the future the expenses will be reflected in that I do not have to buy equipment or hardware.

The price seems good to me compared to other tools that offer the same thing. That said, it's still worth seeing for yourself and looking at other tools before making a decision.

I used VMware and HyperV before, however, a colleague used StarWind Virtual SAN and he taught me how to use it and I liked the tool.

My overall experience with StarWind has been very positive. It is a very simple solution. It is not tied to any hypervisor or hardware configuration. Their support people are excellent and offer assistance in setting up the solution in your environment. While there is a bit more setup than some other products, all you really need is a basic understanding of storage and networking.

We were looking to migrate to hyper-converged architecture with an affordable, scalable solution.

StarWind is a fantastic hyper-converged solution for SMBs. The price point and pricing options allow for SMB deployment of a plug-and-play, scalable solution that won't break the bank.

Compared to other options in the HCA space, StarWind stands out. Their monitoring and support are built into the solution and allow for a production-ready environment that doesn't take many resources to manage or deploy.

If you run a Hyper-V environment, their single-pane monitoring command platform will greatly assist the management of the environment.

StarWind allows organizations with a small budget to deploy a modern, robust HCA solution.

Organizations that have a need for remote office deployments can find a resilient solution with Starwind HCA as well.

The ability to scale by simply adding additional nodes to the stack provides a unique opportunity.

A vendor agnostic solutions provide the organization with more purchasing power with other vendors utilizing the hardware.

Migrating from one vendor to another within the HCA opens the possibility to shuttle between costly solutions with market volatility.

The following aspects of the product are very useful:

• The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions.
• TCO is lower versus traditional compute, storage, and network architecture.
• Ability to scale with the organization's needs created flexibility.
• Scalability, resilience, and affordability.
• Fantastic hyper-converged solution for SMB. The price point and pricing options allow for SMB deployment of a plug-and-play, scalable solution.
• Without vendor lock, organizations have the ability to migrate as needed based on both needs and costs.

This solution is necessary in today's volatile market.

StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V. I was disappointed to find there was no disclosure of VMware incompatibility so the single-pane management system was not available in a VMware environment.

Understand your hardware lifecycle and align it with the available options StarWind offers for their HCA. There are options available that could be expanded on regarding hardware. Further options from a hardware perspective would add value to the company and allow for a broader audience.

I've used the product for two years.

We needed an efficient solution to replace SAN-based clustering that we can build and drop into branch offices without consuming too much rack space or requiring a great deal of expertise. Starwind VSAN delivers exactly this alongside best-in-class support services.

The value for money is fantastic, and the product's simplicity makes it accessible even for beginners. It's easy to recommend Starwind for its support, pricing, scalability, and compatibility with both Windows and Linux. 

We are more confident than ever in the reliability of our office services thanks to the mini-clusters that Starwind has facilitated. We no longer have to plan outages to perform updates, which betters our ability to harden the security in our offices.

Starwind VSAN exceeded our expectations as a two-node cluster storage solution. It offered a cost-effective alternative to expensive hardware SANs and is a great product offering good value for money.

One remarkable feature is the elimination of any single point of failure of storage, which was common with traditional 3-2-1 approaches.

The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices.

One of the most crucial aspects of Starwind VSAN is its ability to provide high availability and redundancy across our Hyper-V clusters. By creating a fault-tolerant environment with redundant storage, it ensures that our VMs keep running even if a node or storage component fails. This feature has proven invaluable in maintaining uninterrupted operations, especially during critical times.

The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment. The iSCSI configuration stage would benefit from some sort of bootstrapping to get it set up the way Starwind recommends.

Introducing a centralized web-based management interface would streamline the administration process. A user-friendly web console that allows for easy monitoring and configuration of the entire VSAN infrastructure would be a significant improvement.

While the product currently supports Hyper-V, expanding compatibility to other popular hypervisors like VMware vSphere and KVM would increase its market reach and cater to a wider range of users.

We've used the solution for four months.

Since implementing StarWind VSAN, we've experienced little to no downtime. The system has been running like a champ, handling our workloads without a hitch. I can't stress enough how crucial this stability is for our business operations. Knowing that our critical data and virtual machines are in safe hands brings a sense of relief.

The scalability of StarWind Virtual SAN is one of its standout features that really impressed me. It's been a game-changer for our storage needs, allowing us to grow our infrastructure seamlessly as our business expands. The way it handles scaling is just so smooth and efficient.

The customer service and support provided by StarWind were exceptional. Whenever we reached out with questions or concerns, they were quick to respond and genuinely attentive to our needs. 

The support team was knowledgeable and patient and went above and beyond to ensure our issues were resolved quickly. 

Their dedication and responsiveness made us feel valued as customers, and it was a pleasure working with them throughout our journey with StarWind.

Positive

We used native Hyper-V replication before this, which didn't provide the high availability we were looking for.

Setting up StarWind Virtual SAN was remarkably smooth and user-friendly. 

The installation process was well-documented, and the setup wizard guided us seamlessly through the steps. Using our existing hardware was a breeze, saving us costs without compromising on the benefits. 

The management console was intuitive, and real-time status updates provided confidence. The support team was responsive and helpful, making the initial setup a positive experience. 

The scale-out architecture allowed us to grow our storage infrastructure effortlessly. 

Overall, StarWind made it easy to deploy a solid and reliable storage solution.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

I can't speak to the current ROI.

Compared to other vendors in the shared storage space, Starwind is extremely price competitive and has a simple licensing model. I recommend it highly if you're on a budget.

We did not evaluate other options.

We have a  pair of StarWind hypervisor servers that share the internal storage using Starwind's Virtual SAN, eliminating the need for a separate, physical SAN. The primary purpose of this deployment is to provide highly available hypervisors to run file servers, domain controllers, critical servers, and DNS servers.

The vSAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm the health of the sync. The high availability nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end-users noticing any downtime. While it isn't used for StarWind exclusively, the Remote Console access on the Enterprise iDRAC is invaluable to me in my daily duties. We have had great success live migrating VMs as necessary and adding, removing, backing up, or restoring VMs.  

I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful.

The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought.

Our inability to use Azure File Sync Share meant we had to deploy a separate hypervisor for a file server that isn't on the Starwind High Availability setup. We could not install SentinelOne EDR on the hypervisors without getting too many warnings in the storage event logs.

We deployed a pair of StarWind vSAN hypervisors in January 2020 and have been using them for more than three years.

StarWind seems highly stable after three and a half years.

StarWind vSAN is highly scalable and easy to configure.

I rate StarWind support 10 out of 10. They are fantastic. The StarWind team proactively alerts us about the latest firmware, including iDRAC and BIOS. They reach out and schedule a remote session when they see warnings on our event logs, such as the time we deployed SentinelOne to the host machine. The StarWind engineers are always knowledgeable and take control to "drive " the session. 

Positive

We used single hypervisors but had never had a failover cluster before StarWind vSAN.

Support walked us through everything after we got the server racked and online.

The in-house team provided access to StarWind support for deployment. After that, we sat back and learned from the support person. StarWind later provided us some training materials.

It is hard for me to quantify the ROI as an IT person, but we would buy it again in an instant.

We underestimated how many guest VMs we would have running on these hypervisors after three years, and would have bought more Windows licenses upfront.

We briefly researched Dell and Microsoft options, but those were physical SAN solutions, not vSAN.

I rate StarWind Virtual SAN 10 out of 10. I recommend purchasing support and contacting them before you install any new agents or sync with Azure File Sync share.

We have faced performance issues due to less storage in our organization. 

We decided to shift to a product that led us to automate the worry of being out of space. 

First, we tried the free license, which has more than the expected features. By using the free version, we were capable of using it in production. One month's trial can be used as proof of concept. It has an easy software-based visualizing environment. Setup is easy and all in one place.

The trial version can be upgraded to the production one if required, which will cause less hassle to start it all over again.

It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage.

We have gotten the most out of the trial version. Once done, we easily shifted to the production one. StarWind Virtual SAN offers faster performance than conventional storage solutions since it pools the storage space of several servers or disks.

We get fast responses from the support team. There is proactive monitoring of storage.

There is high availability. StarWind Virtual SAN is designed to provide high availability for mission-critical workloads. It uses a variety of technologies, such as synchronous replication, automatic failover, and real-time replication monitoring, to ensure that data is always available and accessible.

The segregation of the concept of memory virtualization is quick and effective. All the storage features RAD0, RAD1, RAD10, and RAD5 are available. You can also have the local backup option available. The best part of StarWind Virtual Scan is that you can move your trial 30-day license to production. The instance can be shifted easily, which makes it easy to convert and use in production. Both two-factor authentication and multi-factor authentication are also available. Cloud backup is also available.

The management interface is too techie for those new to the specific product.

Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing.

Trial licenses should be around two months so that the end user can get most of it.

The guides and documentation are not always up-to-date, and old documentation is not labeled as having been superseded by newer documentation.

It is slightly difficult to manage. This is being addressed with the new StarWind Command Center.

Overall it is a cost-effective product.

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

This solution is stable.

It was straightforward to set up as it is an all-in-one appliance solution.

The vendor team helped us set it up. They are extremely professional, and response from them is quick.

We set up a virtualized environment with the need for extreme flexibility and reliability to provide our IT-Services. 

We had to implement a solution that could take on this task and was very pleased with StarWind Virtual SAN. 

We could implement it into our environment easily with low maintenance and could focus on achieving our central task. 

It made our whole project a lot simpler and more user-friendly. We benefited from the scalability to expand our Service capability and were able to do so easily with StarWind vSAN.

We had a rough time using our previous solution. StarWind vSAN made our whole operation much easier and added a lot of particularly useful features. 

In our highly virtualized environment, we had a requirement for high flexibility due to our wide spectrum of services. 

StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time. 

Scaling our systems was something we'd been worried about before due to growing demands and the complicated software we had before. With StarWind vSAN, we could easily accomplish all of our tasks and could benefit from the amazing performance and reliability this software had to offer.

The web-user interface was very user-friendly, and it did not take a lot of time to school our employees about this product. 

All administrative tasks could easily be done, and integrating new systems was easier than ever before. 

This saves us a lot of time as even more complicated tasks can be resolved in way less time than before. We used vCenter and were very happy to see a dedicated vCenter plugin for StarWind vSAN. 

It made our whole operation much more smooth and reliable, not to mention the saved time on schooling employees.

I would say a point that could be improved upon would be the level of documentation and guides that are available. 

While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation. User guides would be greatly appreciated by all of us. 

Preferably these documents could be directly in the console. That said, I wouldn't mind having it not as tightly integrated. We have some apprentices that use the console, and we don't want to make them call support every time they don't understand something.

I've used the solution for six months.

It is very reliable, and we were confident storing data using StarWind vSAN.

The scalability is great. We were able to scale our systems effortlessly.

They were very friendly and helpful, staying professional and competent at all times.

Positive

We did use another solution. The previous solution was open source, and we needed some kind of real support on the other end to guarantee reliability.

The initial setup was very simple and straightforward. We were able to implement StarWind into our system, and we did not require special help.

We implemented it ourselves, in-house.

We prefer not to publish our ROI.

StarWind vSAN has great value and is definitely worth the price.

We did not evaluate other options. We used other software from StarWind beforehand and were convinced of the quality of their products, so the first thing we looked into was StarWind's solution to our problems.

I highly recommend the solution. It saves a lot of stress, hassle, and time.

The primary use case is for on-premise synchronous replication of high-availability fileservers. If the primary node fails in our virtualization environment, thanks to simultaneous replication, the backup is immediately available. StarWind keeps both of the disks mirrored.

We are using StarWind as a virtual SAN Solution for our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster environment. We were looking for a simple-to-use, reliable and cost-effective solution. For our purposes, we also tested Veeam and VMware vSAN. StarWind suits us better.  

StarWind Virtual SAN improved our disaster recovery strategy and made it much more secure. The software is cost-effective when it comes to licensing and maintenance. We don't need any extra hardware just install it on our existing virtual machines

The config, which was initially prepared in cooperation with StarWind technical support, is easy to replicate for purposes of maintenance (the user didn't notice anything in performance during the maintenance).

The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free.

It's a reliable software, which you set up once, and doesn't need much maintenance. 

Thanks to detailed technical documentation, it is easy to set up. The technical support team from StarWind is experienced and collaborative. 

We did the implementation by ourselves without any third party (StarWind's technical support team checked the configuration made by our administrators), which is cost-saving. Also, our technical team can provide effective first-level support (which you don't often need as it's a reliable product).

We don't find any parts in need of improvement. We don't use all functionalities which StarWind offers. Maybe we could find a cheaper solution, however, when it comes to the above-mentioned pros at the end of the day it's good value for money.

For every issue we had during the implementation or during the period of usage, StarWind Virtual SAN's technical support helped us to find an effective solution.

If I have to find any area of improvement, there is only one thing - other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users. 

We've used StarWind Virtual SAN for more than three years.

We did not previously use a different solution.

We took into consideration VMware vSAN or Veeam. However, we chose StarWind Virtual SAN.