StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We have been using VMware vSphere as a fail-safe storage solution in a virtualization environment since 2009. Scaling options were initially two nodes. In industrial operation, there were solutions from three nodes. The storage is deployed on a 1Gb-10Gb ethernet network and HP servers with SAS and SSD drives.

To increase performance, caching technologies based on RAID controller functions were used, and later StarWind L2 Cache functionality was used. In 2020, it is planned to deploy storage that is based on new technologies: Intel Optane memory (DCPMM storage), VMware Vsphere Enterprise Plus 6.7, and 25Gb networks.

We hope that this solution will be able to provide maximum performance using StarWind VSAN for Vsphere.

This solution made it possible to make a quick start of the project on the transition from a physical environment to a virtual one in 2009 with minimal financial costs. It was possible to fulfill the requirements for reliable data storage, taking into account the transition to paperless document management with the use of digital signatures.

The scalability of the solution made it possible to increase the size of storage, without large additional costs for software. Within one series of servers, it was possible to repair equipment without stopping the use of storage in an industrial environment.

It is fast and easy to deploy to StarWind SAN for someone who is not even a professional.

The most valuable features are:

• Multipath I/O over iSCSI and Ethernet;
• Use of standard ethernet switches for storage networking;
• High availability-cluster (active-active), in a configuration of two or more nodes;
• When using new (warranty) servers, you can forget about the storage service for several years. The users will not even notice the failure of two servers out of three;
• Caching storage using RAM and SSD media;
• Fast synchronization in case of minor network failures.

For the StarWind VSA vSphere solution, I would like to see a simpler and automated virtual machine installation process in terms of network settings.

The areas where this solution should be improved are:

• Use as a node server without RAID volumes to ensure a longer period of use of the equipment and faster recovery of the complex;
• You need a separate server responsible for the main node, which is synchronized in case of failure of one of the nodes;
• Use SSD caching to write to industrial operation;
• Monitoring the status of server equipment. Programmatically bypasses the offline state of disks;
• To circumvent the speed restrictions of the network data when using virtual adapters VMware Vsphere VXNET3.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for more than nine years.

The solution is stable in the case of failure of one node. When you exit more than one, sometimes there are problems choosing the main one.

Scaling to the size of the storage, thanks to the creation of a new target, does not affect the performance of the system as a whole.

Scaling by including new nodes-requires timing for synchronization.

Over a period of nine years, we applied three times to technical support. In all cases, the problem has been solved.

In parallel, the use of EMC ScaleIO. Unlike StarWind VSA, the license price depends on the amount of storage and only one copy of the data is used.

The initial installation in the version under Windows is very simple. In the virtual machine variant, you need to configure the network inside the virtual machines

Implementation was within the company.

The solution is cost-effective.

The cost of deployment is minimal, almost a product out of the box.

The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important.

We evaluated free options including FreeNAS and Ceph. Our experience was that FreeNAS has low performance and reliability, and Ceph was complex to deploy.

This is an optimal product for large fault-tolerant solutions.

One of the biggest hydroelectric power plants in the world asked us to prepare a project using HA Virtualization for environmental weather monitoring. In this project, we used three hosts virtualized by VMWare ESXI+VCenter (Essential Plus License). However, one of the prerequisites was that it should be able to integrate with other preexisting virtualized systems that were deployed by other suppliers and use other hypervisors like HyperV or Proxmox. That is where StarWind Virtual SAN comes in. It is really flexible and reliable. We were able to assemble this pilot project using it, and it is in testing, so far, without failures or any malfunctions. It is really an excellent solution.

The flexibility of StarWind Virtual San allowed us to create a system that is integrated into pre-existing solutions and is also independent of VMware itself, making it more reliable and robust.  

It made the system much easier to operate, maintain and manage inside the data center alongside many other systems. It is very easy to migrate the entire virtual system to other hosts or other data centers safely. 

It is really a good solution when you need to be flexible and, at the same time, reliable in a critical system.

First of all, the flexibility and reliability are great. 

The ability to be managed by PowerShell scripts made the management of the system really easy and efficient. We're able to do remote operations or even some operations different from the standard ones (allowed by the GUI).

It also runs under a Windows OS, so it is able to be installed in any virtualized system, independent from the Hypervisor itself.

The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way. It also makes it very easy to deploy and configure. 

It has good documentation, and I did not need technical support once during the entire deployment.

It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery. I would also recommend an easier way to back up/restore and export the filesystem images.

Another feature that I would like to see implemented is a configurable email alert and report system. While it can be managed using Powershell, it would not be hard at all to configure reports using PowerShell scripts, it would be nice to have some additional features in the GUI.

I've used the solution for about two years.

It is really stable and reliable. It perfectly fits our solution with an active-active failover solution.

The free version is limited, so it is not so scalable. If you need more scalability, you have different license options from the paid versions and the cost is totally worth it.

I did not need any service and support as it is really well documented.

Positive

We also used VMware VSAN and Nutanix. The StarWind Virtual SAN seems to be more flexible and easier to manage in the case we were developing.

The initial setup took about ten days. This included the studying of the documentation, setup, testing, and commissioning. It is well-documented and really easy to operate.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

The Star Wind Virtual SAN has a free/trial version that can be used for study and is suitable for simple solutions. The pricing for the paid versions is really worth it. When you need flexibility and reliability with good technical support, you are paying for what you get. 

We also evaluated VMware vSAN.

Our primary use case is for physical to virtual environment migration, requiring a VSAN storage for a data center we had an old BLC 460 gen 6 blades with physical storage attached. If we had any issues with the hardware or operating system the downtime for production would be for hours, so we created a virtual data center with VMware vSphere and added 3 20TB storage on each host then created 3-node StarWind scenario being shared on all 3 hosts, and creating virtual machines on 3 hosts and now running on StarWind storage.

StarWind VSAN improved our organization as we had a project to migrate from a physical environment to a virtual environment using Vmware Vsphere 6.7 and we needed a secure VSAN storage to be able to share it over the virtual Datacenter and to be able to use the vSphere high availability feature as we needed storage visible overall host on our SITE, this way we have less downtime if one of the hosts fails and HA comes out as the VSAN storage from StarWind is our main storage where all Virtual Machines are running.

One of the best features on the management console is the way you can deploy the VSAN storage, with basic knowledge you can use the GUI from the node to create partitions then, creating volumes on the management console and manage it like, sync priority, or putting them on maintenance mode to be able to restart hosts.

PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there are no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts.

• Easy migration to ZFS system that is being presented on a new version of StarWind, migrations look complicated as this restructures the whole architecture on the raid level, but could be a good option just by having it and letting the user decide this new feature migration, as based on our experience with ZFS systems they work pretty fast and secure.
• Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk.
  

I have been using this solution for over four years.

Good stability as we have a mirrored storage.

Pretty good impressions, especially the support.

Fast response and great attention.

We migrated from HPE StoreVirtual.

It was straightforward if you have RAID, array controllers, and network knowledge.

We tried at first doing it ourselves, but I recommend letting the support team the VSAN installations as we missed some configurations that based on their experience we missed as beginners.

About $3500 USD every 3 years.

its a good option compared with other vendors as licence is perpetual and wont charge every three years as HPE.

Yes, we used HPE StoreVirtual, we moved to StarWind to reduce costs. We tried VMware VSAN and the cost was too elevated for our requirements.

By letting the support team do it next time, as based on their knowledge we have the correct configurations.

Our company needed a Virtual SAN solution that would fit perfectly into our private cloud architecture based on Windows Server virtualization (Windows Server 2016/2019/2022) and Hyper-V without having to substantially modify its composition. In this case, it has allowed us to provide storage with geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources in the event of a disaster, allowing data to be migrated between the different delegations and guaranteeing that we comply with current regulations regarding data protection, as well as ISO 27001 and ISO 22301.

The StarWind Virtual SAN product has allowed us to improve the availability of our services, as well as their security. On the other hand, it has allowed us to make these improvements without having to make a large increase in investment, as could have happened with solutions such as those from VMWARE, Dell, etc. In this way, we have also achieved clear profitability and an immediate return on investment (ROI). Of course, it has allowed us to align with the business continuity management strategy using geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources.

The StarWind support team is, without a doubt, the best part of this product. The engineer assigned to us for the implementation showed great involvement and a willingness to work and share his knowledge with our team, which was great and smoothed out the resistance to change as well as the learning curve. The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently. The team is always aligned with our needs, and they try to give maximum performance to the vSAN. So far, the solution has shown great stability with no noticeable issues. The ease of use has helped our juniors.

The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own. This problem is really solved when the team of engineers is assigned to the project since, with the willingness of the support team to provide information when required, it is very easy to move forward and solve these deficiencies. On the other hand, perhaps it can be said that it would be interesting to publish a greater number of pre-generated scripts.

I've used the solution for three years.

So far, we haven't had a noteworthy problem to attribute to the solution. We only had initial problems due to the operation error of the junior technicians while they were learning to use the tool.

The scalability for us is perfect. The solution allows us to work elastically, responding to changes in the requirements of our infrastructure according to demand. In addition, it scales easily and quickly.

In my experience of over 20 years in the IT industry, I've noticed that they provide one of the best services available today. They are very involved and proactive technicians.

Positive

We evaluated other solutions, however, it is the first one that we implemented.

In terms of the initial complexity, it would come from the previous tests in which we did not have support or all the documentation. As soon as we contracted the software and had support, everything was easy, and we had an engineer that was really valuable.

The experience of the team that collaborated with us in the deployment is undoubtedly very high. The desire to work and the availability to share knowledge are points that, without a doubt, must be valued very positively.

Replacing the previous model with a vSAN model has allowed us significant cost savings. Even if we consider the license, it will not cost much to amortize the investment.

The investment is really low compared to other options, and the stability and flexibility guarantee the security of the investment.

We looked into VMware, Hyper-V, and some other options.

The solution is really easy to implement, manage and maintain.

A customer wanted to build a test environment for his VMware. However, he was running out of financial resources. 

I suggested this product (vSAN in particular), and he was quite happy with its features. Later, he decided to convert his test environment into production using the same StarWind products, and to date, he is a happy customer. 

After this success story, I have referred many of my customers to use this product; no complaints so far. 

Happy customers mean good business, and the company is progressing well, so I'm enjoying the benefits as well. 

StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer. It's a user-friendly solution. We are integrators and deployed vSAN from StarWind with multiple clients and all are happy with its performance. 

Creating the new server and deploying it to be used by hypervisors over ISCSI is good. It is very easy to configure. 

I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided. That way, the customer doesn't have to log in to a specific server where the product is running. That could be very beneficial. 

I've been using the solution for four years.

I have deployed this product at multiple locations (for clients) and have had no complaints so far. It is a fully stable product. 

The scalability is relatively easy to manage on StarWind. When having real hardware, it's a bit complex to scale, yet way easier with StarWind than with other options.  

Customer service is easily available by email. I have not tried by phone. However, it's my understanding that they would be of great help if I reached out that way too.  

Positive

I have worked with NetApp, Lenovo, EMC, and some other brands as well for storage with VMware and Hyper V. 

StarWind is easy to manage as compared to these and is a cheap solution with very similar features. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Any IT professional can handle it after some studying and training from Youtube. 

After reading the help material and watching some Youtube videos, I deployed this product myself. 

A happy customer is the best ROI. I have many happy customers using StarWind. 

It's quite easy to deploy this product. 

Any IT professional can read a few documents and watch some videos and maybe go to Youtube to learn about deployment and management. It's a very simple and user-friendly product. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This has been very stable over the last 12 months.

We did not previously use a different solution.

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

We did look at other hardware solutions.

We have a failover Hyper-V cluster and a stand-alone Veeam server. We back up our VMs via Veeam. We wanted to get our backups 3-2-1 compliant with a backup to disk backup, a second backup to another medium that was a virtual tape in our case, and backups to the cloud. 

We had a second physical server with tons of storage, so we installed StarWind. We were able to create a VTL and have tons of virtual tapes. We utilized iSCSI and were able to get Veeam to use this VTL as a destination for tape backups

In addition to Veeam being able to back up to tape now, we were also able to get the StarWind software to connect with our preferred storage vendor, Wasabi. Now, we back up to disk, back up to tape, and then ship those tapes offsite automatically to Wasabi.

The StarWind software was easy and quick to implement/setup and now our backup process is fully automated. 

Our backups are 3-2-1 compliant, which satisfies several audits and cybersecurity/insurance questionnaires. In addition, the process is fully automated.

We now have multiple copies of our backups and in the event of a complete disaster we also now have a DR strategy in place. 

Prior to this solution, we had a single point of failure when it came to backups. Now we, essentially have three targets, two of which are completely air gapped for security.

Lastly, the virtual tapes I've been told are impervious to ransomware. 

A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic. This is one less major thing to worry about.

Before, we had a lot of stock and pressure on our singular backup server. It carried a lot of weight. Now with the VTL software in place, we have three backup targets. The primary backup server is still critical but if that server were to go down, we would still have backup data intact. If our data center went down, we would still have backup data intact thanks to the offsite options. 

We can rest easier knowing our data is fully protected. The fact we have a DR strategy is priceless.

The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive. Perhaps introduce a few right-click options, as that's my general go-to approach as opposed to searching for specific menu items.

I also feel that when dealing with a magnitude of tapes perhaps better formatting or color-coding will help locate or identify tapes easier than scrolling through the list. Also if the lists' real estate on the screen could be increased that would be helpful as well. 

Other than that, I have no complaints or issues with the software.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for six months.

I haven't had any issues with the app becoming unusable. It's very stable and I have yet to experience a problem with it.

The software can be upgraded with each release, so it's very scalable. 

The technical support is amazing. Five stars. They are quick to respond and are able to handle issues very quickly and provide great feedback and explanation. 

We did not use another similar solution prior to this.

The initial setup was very straightforward and simple. I had the support team guide me along the way but the setup process was intuitive and there was nothing confusing about it. 

I implemented it through their support team. After we purchased the software, they helped set us up. They were very knowledgeable and fast. We had tape backups working in minutes. 

I don't have exact figures in terms of ROI but I can say the product was well worth the cost.

The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint.

We did not evaluate other options.

After we purchased the software, we were able to contact support right away. I would suggest you take advantage of this, as they are quick to respond and got my software up and running literally within minutes.

We had a need for some high speed I/O in our data center to run some specific high demand virtual machines. We currently have an older SAN unit, but it's slow, since it uses mechanical drives. Therefore, we decided to obtain a bunch of Intel SSDs and attach them directly to the two virtualized hosts, then I used StarWind virtual machines as the controllers to tie them together into a VSAN. After that, I moved the VMs over. Once everything was hooked up and talking to each other, it works fine.

It is more of a perceptual thing with the users. The system that we moved onto it is our ERP system, which handles everything. It handles our orders, workflow, and shop work orders. It was by far the slowest, clunkiest system that we have here. When we put it together the StarWind Virtual SAN, and we moved it onto the flash drives, everything seemed to run a lot faster. I went from a drive system that peaked out at 2000 IOPS to a system that could now do over 200,000 IOPS. It was absolutely a night and day difference. Everything is just snappier. When you open windows, they instantly pop up. It is not sitting there, twiddling its thumbs, waiting for stuff to come up, which is huge. It seems user systems and interfaces have gotten so slow over the last 10 to 15 years. When things happen fast and snappy, it is a huge bonus in the user's eyes.

The software just works. That is what I like about good IT software. I rarely, if ever, have to go into the StarWind servers. I go in every couple weeks just to check if there are any Windows updates for it. However, for the most part, it is all hands off. It just works. It just does its job. I don't have to mess with it. I don't have to monkey with it or do anything. I am going into our backup system more often than I am our VSAN controllers. I have to go into the email on Office 365 to change things around (or figure out why somebody lost emails) more often than I have to worry about StarWind. 

In the IT world, anything you can just let run is amazing.

• The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN. 
• The synchronization is very nice. 
• I like its flexibility. It is more flexible than most VSAN solutions that I have seen. For example, you can run it across two hosts. You don't need a third host observing it.

For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there. When I access the console on the computer, where is it going in through:

• The computer's connections?
• The heartbeat connection?
• The iSCSI connection?

It is a little odd as far as making sure those networks are isolated just for their function.

On the console, there is no good way to see how all the networks are allocated. Other than that, once they are set up and allocated, everything seems to run nicely. I just don't want, e.g., my heartbeat network bleeding into other things, like the iSCSI.

For this market, in general, it would be nice if I could go to a website where they had all the pricing listed comparatively, then maybe I could shop around.

It just works. I don't even know if there is a new version of it out there. I haven't checked if there's a new version, though I should probably upgrade it. Now, that I have the system sort of pulled apart, I am in the middle of upgrading everything. I moved our ERP system back on to our old SANs for a while. Now, the whole StarWind array is cleared off to be pulled apart and have new drives put in, I should probably look at whether it is all at the latest version.

It has good scalability. You can add in almost anything that you want. The only oddball thing is with the three-tiered licensing. If you are looking to do anything highly scalable, such as replace your SAN, which is what we are doing now, you might as well go straight for the enterprise version. Just save yourself the headache of anything else. However, if you have a small project, and only need a couple VMs on some high speed stuff, you can use the free version or standard version. The standard version has the support, which if you are in corporate IT, it would be foolish not to get it.

The times that I have called the StarWind ProActive Support, they were immediate and right there. I have had no issues with their support. When I call them, I am talking with somebody in very little time, and the people that I have talked to have all been incredibly knowledgeable. They knew exactly what was going on.

The only issue that I had was, at one point, we had a power failure which took out our main power system. The battery system powering our whole data center and the main switch (or something) blew out, so the whole thing wasn't delivering any power, even though we had it coming out from the wall. It took down all our hosts, just dirty, with everything running. When we brought everything back up, we had a hard time getting the VSAN to reinitialize properly. So, I gave the support a call. They went through it, and we found because it went down like that, we had to step everything and ensure the first one comes up, then the second one, then sit and synchronize them. Afterwards, we sent things out for it to rescan the array, then once it got up and running, everything was fine again. However, that was the only time that I was on the phone's screaming, "Help!"

This is our first VSAN solution.

It was a little bit complex with VMware, because it seems like they are a little more used to Windows Hyper-V.

The initial setup didn't take long. The only hang up was I didn't have some of the networking in place. I had to get a pair of ten gigabit network cards to run between the two servers for iSCSI links and the synchronization (the heartbeat). Once I got those in place and plugged together, then it was pretty quick and easy. 

Once the solution was up and running, it was pretty good. There were some extra scripts that we had to run on our end. 

I do all the maintenance myself. Now that it is deployed, maintenance is approximately once every two weeks. It is not even StarWind, it is checking on the Windows machine that it's running on. 

Recently, we have been in the middle of a project to completely retire our mechanical SAN and replace all those drives, each of which are about a quarter terabyte. We want to replace them all with four terabyte drives (SSDs), then move everything to a giant StarWind Virtual SAN controlling it.

I did the deployment mostly myself. However, with the purchase, I was able to receive some help. Therefore, I brought StarWind in just to check things over, ensuring everything was good. That is when we tweaked the scripts a bit, so if the servers were to reboot, it would tell the machines to rescan for the iSCSI connection once it came up.

As for implementation strategy, I had always kept StarWind in the back of my head in case I had a need to use it. When we had a need, I decided to make the suggestion. I went onto Spiceworks, where I knew some people there from StarWind. While I don't know if they are full representatives, they definitely spoke highly of it. So, I hit them up, saying, "I'm looking to do this. Is this thing possible?" 

One of the guys from Spiceworks put me in contact with a StarWind sales rep. When I described my project to them, he said, "Yes, it's easily done. All you have to do is this and that." He pointed me to some documents on their network to read through, and it was simple from that point. It's like, "I could do that, and I could probably do this all myself."

I got the free version at first. Then, I got the thing up and running, for the most part, without any help, aside from the reboot scripts. 

I tested it on a couple like dummy VMs, checking what happens if I reboot a machine. Everything worked beautifully. It was totally transparent. I never lost my network connection nor storage. So, I saw it was a win. Later on, I got the actual licensing, and this is when the guy came in to check over my installation, etc. Everything worked at that point and has been running ever since. That is when I moved the ERP system over on one weekend and have never really looked back.

This solution helped maintain high performance and data high availability on minimalistic resources. For example, with our ERP system, we went from an old spinning rust array to a all-flash array. Because StarWind allows that and for it to be a VSAN for high availability, if I lose a host, the ERP system will still continue to run. If I have to put a host into maintenance mode, and move all of its processing to the another, I can do that because it is transparent. StarWind doesn't care. When I get the host powered back up, the array resynchronizes, and everything runs as normal. So, it works, as far as high availability. Like any other good system, it is transparent. Behind the scenes, it does what it's supposed to do.

I was so impressed by what I saw, because at first, you set it up for free. I set it up for free to see how it worked, because I was losing nothing but time. After I set it up, and everything worked, I was like, "Okay, I don't need anything else for this. Let's get the licensing and go."

The pricing is more than reasonable.

The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight. However, that is just one drive size upwards in an array. You are first going from two terabyte drives to four terabyte drives, then you will soon be going to eight terabyte drives and upwards, for SSDs which are coming out.

Therefore, it is weird that they have the middle tier in there, their pro tier. Then, they have their enterprise, which is unlimited. I can see their licensing better structured if their lower tier either had less drive space or the middle tier had more, by maybe a factor of four rather than doubling it. 

From a sales and marketing point of view, the difference between going from pro to unlimited is unclear. It seems like, "Why not just go unlimited? Why even have the middle tier there?"

I did explore VMware's native VSAN solution. However, its biggest limitation is it requires three nodes. We have two very heavy duty host servers and getting a third one would have been costly. Each server is roughly around $25,000 USD. Therefore, getting a third one, so we could run a VSAN using VMware, was a bit prohibitive. This is why I went to StarWind in the first place.

Go for it. Just set it up and follow the instructions. Start with the free version. Make a test bed and play around with it. Then, see how you like it and how it works. because it works. There is nothing hard about it. Once you get it working and understand how the system is implemented in your data center, then everything else is dotting i's and crossing t's. You can get the official licensing for the support or any larger array sizes that you may need. You can allocate and tell it to transfer things as you normally would, as it is a very impressive system. It is probably one of the things that I have been happiest about in my environment.

The Log-structured Write Cache feature works works transparently, so I haven't really noticed it. I assume it helps with application resiliency and performance since it is working.

NVMe over Fabrics would definitely be incredibly fast. It is something that I don't have the architecture to even consider here, but it does sound very cool and fast. I have worked with NVMe drives and SSD systems, and the interface is much wider and faster than your typical, older systems, like SATA and SAS, which were meant for mechanical systems. It would be very impressive, and I would like to get a chance to work with something like that to see its performance.

I was not even aware that there was a way to integrate the solution with server OS native management tools, like vCenter. We are using the vCenter appliance, which is Linux based. It doesn't seem to integrate things too well into it, even though it is the recommended way that they have us doing it. If there is some plugin, or something for it to directly integrate, I would be totally up for that.