StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

The product is used to host windows virtual machines. We have various workloads hosted on this environment, from file servers, AD, DNS servers, and IIS servers to SQL databases. We run dozens of production virtual machines on this solution, and use Veeam Backup to backup all the workloads on it. 

It's a Microsoft Failover Cluster with StarWind storage added as CSV disks. The solutions can be managed via the Hyper-V console, Failover Manager or StarWind console. On the physical side, we have 10GB switches for the management, live migration and cluster communication and physically separate 10GB switches for the storage communication. Storage communication happens over the iSCSI protocol.

It has improved our performance and the support/time required to manage and maintain the HCI solution. It's an all-flash storage subsystem which provides really good disk read/write I/O and law latency. 

With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you. They also help you to migrate any workloads/VMs from the existing solution that StarWind is replacement for. 

They do proactive monitoring so if they see any issues like disk being in predictive failure or some lag/error on the solution they will reach out to you/call you proactively and will fix the issue for you.

It's very easy to deploy and manage. 

I like the idea that the storage is virtualized and that StarWind is a software company with a product that can be installed on any hardware you want/prefer. It will work with any networking equipment you have. 

Their proactive support is great and just offloads the whole management of the hardware/software of the HCI for you. The updates to the new versions are very easy and straightforward. Best of all, it's done by StarWind support engineers so you don't have to worry about it.

The monitoring and reporting console can be improved in the sense that it can have more information on it. 

Granted, StarWind takes care of the monitoring/maintenance. However, as an end-user, it would be nice if, when you login to their console, you could be able to see information about the underlying hardware and how the cluster is performing. 

It would be nice if they created hardware integration packages for various hardware OEMs such as Dell, HPE, Lenovo, etc., so you can manage the hardware via the StarWind console and be able to run firmware updates.

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

The solutions is very stable. StarWind have proactive monitoring so if they see any issues they will call you and will work on the resolution.

Solution is very scalable. Its easy to add more nodes and StarWind support will usually pre-configure and add them to the cluster.

StarWind support is excellent. They are very knowledgeable and thorough. 

Positive

We used a Microsoft Failover Cluster created on Dell servers and using Software Defined Storage (Open-E).  The storage communication was via iSCSI on 10GB network switches and the cluster, live migration and cluster communication was on a different VLAN. 

Its was very easy and straightforward. StarWind will ask you information about your switches, uplinks, IP addresses, domain name etc so they can configure the solution

It was via the StarWind team.

18-24 months

The setup is done from StarWind. It's easy and fast and therefore there is nothing to worry about there. You just need to provide them with some information such as IP addresses, subnet, DNS server, AD name, etc. 

On the cost side, StarWind is a really cost-effective solution. It costs a fraction of what the big name HCI solutions cost yet provides similar performance and capability. 

On the licensing side, generally, the customer provides the licenses for the workloads that are running on the HCI solution. 

We have evaluated other HCI solutions and Storage vendors such as Nimble Storage, Scale Computing, StorMangic, Dell EMC VRTX etc.

It's a great solution. You can set it up and forget it and is the kind of HCI where all the management and maintenance is done by StarWind support so you don't really have to do too much on a day-to-day basis. 

We went with StarWind HCA primarily for Hyper-V Clustering. 

We were having hardware issues that lead to downtime on our single server environment. 

We aren't "huge," so IT budgeting is tight. However, every dime spent on our HCA has been 100% worth it. 

Since implementation, we've had nearly no downtime. No downtime has been thanks to the HCA itself. I'll definitely go with StarWind when we're ready for a hardware refresh. It's a no-brainer. The prices are obviously more than we had been used to in the past. However, it's been worth the investment.

Uptime alone has been substantially increased. 

Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing. 

Monitoring is provided free of cost to StarWind, which also reduced expenses.

In instances where we had issues outside of the HCA, StarWind support has gone above and beyond to help us diagnose Windows issues. 

I've been in IT for 15 years now, and you kind of expect to have to "work on things" as part of your job description. That said, we're 3 years in, and I have yet to "need" to work on anything with the hardware or software. It just works.

Support is the highest on my list in terms of great aspects. You simply cannot have issues, as they're on top of monitoring and resolution. 

Uptime is the second-best aspect of the product. The software solution is so solid, you don't really have issues; however, when you do, support is there to jump in and help you fix it. 

Honestly, with those two items, there's no reason to "not" use them. In my experience, you want your solutions to work, and when they don't, to get them fixed fast. It's a combo that StarWind has perfected and is the reason I don't even want to look anywhere else for other solutions.

I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it." Best practices ask you not to reboot both servers simultaneously, as it breaks the "heartbeat" between the servers. I didn't know that during my first week having it, and sure enough, I had some issues. Maybe there could be some notifications like "are you sure you want to reboot" or whatnot to prevent issues like the one I experienced. 

StarWind did release a VM that had some integration into the Windows cluster side of things. However, I found it easier to just use the Windows tools. Maybe if it was more robust, I'd use it. That's not the case at this point in time.

I've been using the solution since 2019.

We do not need to scale. Still, you can scale to more than 3+ servers in the StarWinds solution.

Support is the best thing about StarWind. I can't praise them enough. The initial setup and purchase are a single point in time and support is ongoing. You need an amazing support team to have an amazing product. And StarWind is an amazing product.

Positive

We did not switch from something else. The adoption of this product was just a massive upgrade for our company.

The setup was easy. The hardware came pre-configured, and support did the rest of the network-specific setup after we had the hardware installed. It was the best experience I've had with a vendor.

StarWind support only employs experts. I have yet to deal with anyone on their support team that didn't know the product inside and out. It's really refreshing compared to other vendors I have to deal with.

We produce 15-20 full kitchens a day. The ROI was almost instant when you consider we had been down two days the month before.

Pricing was a bit high. That said, it was on par with other solutions we looked into. It's worth it alone for the support.

StarWind had me sold. I was looking at doing a SAN with two Hyper-V's, however, why buy additional hardware when it can be done more simply with the same results.

We utilize StarWind HCI appliances for our virtualization infrastructure. 

We needed the ability to deploy application workloads quickly while also maintaining High-Availability and Fault tolerance. We oversee several remote locations and maintain a virtual footprint at each location. We are an agile company, and having the ability to deploy a virtual workload from any of these locations was needed. We also needed to ensure the workloads were backed up and highly available in the event of a host outage.  

Before StarWind, our virtualization infrastructure was combined with several different vendor offerings. This created unnecessary complexity and administrative overhead trying to support and maintain.  

We also had equipment going end-of-life, which created challenges and required 3rd party vendor warranties to keep running. Managing all the different hardware and software made troubleshooting very difficult for our team.

StarWind appliances eliminated multi-vendor complexity and drastically simplified our virtualization landscape.  

Some of the features that have brought the greatest value have been the unified architecture, reliable support, and host monitoring. Not only do we have a unified platform that is simple to use, yet their level of support has been exceptional.  

The support staff was knowledgeable and helpful from sales to deployment and migrating our workloads. An added bonus was their monitoring service.  Anytime we have an outage or an issue with our StarWind appliances, we receive an alert from StarWind support. They also monitor for updates that our hosts and software need.  

At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues. That said, there was nothing that couldn't be worked through. This made it tough when trying to understand or explain some of the issues we were encountering.  

The user interface for the StarWind product could sometimes be tough to navigate and understand. However, that was not a deal breaker. We would like to see that simplified in the future.  

Another feature we would love to see is a dashboard that gives a comprehensive view of our entire StarWind infrastructure along with metrics on how everything is running.    

Our organization has been using Starwind appliances for the last three years.

StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware. Their software works well and rarely has issues.

Our experience has been positive when adding additional StarWind appliances to scale out when additional compute resources have been needed. Support is easy to get a hold of if there are any questions when scaling their appliances with additional resources or adding to a new environment.

Our experience with customer service and support has been very positive. Sales staff helped us size the appliances we would need for current and future computing needs. 

Their support has been very helpful when dealing with any issue and their response time was quick. Their monitoring service is also very beneficial for us and allows us to focus on other IT initiatives.  

Positive

We used a virtual solution that was pieced together with different vendor hardware. We switched due to the fact that StarWind offered a converged virtualization platform that eliminated the complexity of dealing with different vendor components.

The initial setup was very straightforward. StarWind offered plenty of documentation on their product to give us an idea of what would be needed to integrate their appliances into our environment. 

We ran into issues when migrating virtual workloads from older hardware over to the new appliances, however, their support staff helped us manage that complexity.

We implemented the solution using an in-house team.  

Our ROI has been huge, considering we were able to simplify our reliance on several different vendor offerings for our virtual environment, including software-hardware warranties and licensing fees.  

StarWind was very straightforward with their costs, including setup, which was free. The only thing to watch out for is licensing costs for your chosen hypervisor or backup vendor such as Veeam.  

We evaluated offerings from VMware, however, the licensing costs were too high.

StarWind is a great solution for SMBs and offers a hyper-converged solution that is well supported and easy to deploy in your environment.  

The number of physical servers in our environment was quickly growing. It seems every new software package we purchase needs a web server, utility server, and database server.  

We started searching for a hyper-converged solution and went with StarWind.  

Since we implemented the solution four years ago, we have had zero downtime and have not had the need to add any new physical servers to our environment. This has completely stopped our server racks from growing out of control.  

We only have two hosts and have only needed to upgrade storage and RAM.

We were able to consolidate our ever-expanding server rack down to two hosts.  We have not needed to purchase new physical servers in four years. 

The only purchases we have made are additional RAM and storage drives.  

This has been a massive cost saving for us. We now only need to worry about server licenses and not costly hardware when taking on new projects.  

Also, the time it takes to admin the system is slim to none. Support handles the upgrades. The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play.

It flat out just works. It requires very little time to administrate. The support is great; they can quickly install updates/patches when available. 

Most of the time, they send me notifications before I even know anything is wrong.  

We have had a few drives go bad, and they worked directly with Dell to get things fixed fast. This is one less thing we need to worry about daily.  It is also incredibly easy to take a host down for maintenance. Updates can be readily on one host while the other runs all of the VMs.

We have had a great experience with StarWind, and it is hard to find much that needs to be improved. 

The 24/7 monitoring is good but not great. There is a bit of a delay in receiving the emails. We are in a bit of a rural location, so we occasionally will lose internet. We typically receive emails from StarWind to notify us that our system is down a few hours after the outage.  

The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss. I don't use it much as it is a bit slow and buggy. 

I've used the solution for four years.

The stability has been rock solid. We have experienced zero downtime. 

The solution is endlessly scalable.

This is the first solution we have implemented into production.

Hosts came preconfigured and required a short phone call with support to set up.

The implementation was done over the phone with support.  

The setup is very simple. The hosts came preconfigured. Everything was up and running for about an hour on the phone with support. 

The price seemed a bit cheaper than comparable solutions. 

We looked at Scale, Nimble, and Nutanix.

It is a great solution. We will definitely be using them in the future when it is time for new hosts.

We currently have it set up with VMware. We use StarWind as a two-node cluster and VMware to host all the servers. All the servers are Windows-based.  

We use two Lenovo servers with SSDs. We were able to move from three physical servers down to two with the StarWind setup. Also, we wanted a new setup with an easy way to expand.  

StarWind will allow us to expand with very little setup after our initial configuration. We also set up our servers with multiple 10GB NICs bonded together and were able to separate our traffic easily with the software.

Before StarWind, we used HP Lefthand.  

While HP lefthand did work, the price difference was a major. Once we started to use StarWind, we found it to be very reliable and fast.  

We are very happy with moving from HP Lefthand to StarWind. During the conversion of Lefthand to StarWind, we used the support and found it very helpful. They were very knowledgeable and easy to work with.  

We needed three servers for our setup when we were using HP lefthand.  With StarWind, we were able to downsize to only two.

One of the best features is how it just works. We had issues with our hardware on our servers; however, once we have the hardware issue fixed, the StarWind services would sync right up.

The documentation is also a plus. We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times.  When we needed help, support responded and followed up, verifying our setup was working correctly. We also used their knowledge base and found it very helpful also.

Not having to purchase specific hardware is a plus!

The user interface needs an update for the Windows client. I would prefer it if it was all web-based. This way, you do not have to manage an installation program on a server. If it was web-based, it would work on any platform.

With the new interface, maybe some more reporting features would be nice.  Also, some notifications would be helpful for issues coming about with the system.

We would like to be able to shrink volumes. We know we can increase volumes when we need it, however, shrinking would be helpful.

I've used the solution for five years.

Support is amazing. They are very friendly and helpful.

Positive

We used HP Lefthand. We moved to StarWind due to the price and found it had excellent support.

The solution is mostly straightforward, however, we had to have help a few times.  

We received assistance with the setup from the vendor team. They were very knowledgeable and took care of all issues.

Be ready to use support to get through a few steps; however, after the initial configuration, it should work great!

We did not evaluate any other solutions.

It's an amazing product.

We use StarWind managed HyperV service for virtualized servers and redundancy servers. The StarWind support alerts us if there are any issues with the HyperV servers. Their phone support is professional and great.

The central management, redundancy, and 24/7 alert systems are managed via a service provider. This is a key component that we are looking for. The HyperV servers come preconfigured and the product sales specialist recommends hardware specs as needed for our environment. 

In case of updates for the firmware and StarWind software, StarWind support contacts us since it is managed service. They remotely do the upgrade - which is great. 

Our organization has improved via:

• Internal/operational efficiencies via the central management
• Improved compliance and risk management
  
• Cost management
  
• Product functionality and performance
• Strong proactive customer service and support
• Managed Support and service for the HyperV environment
• Alert Notifications via email 
• Redundancy and 24/7 alert system via the managed service provider
• User-friendliness of the interface
• Great phone support 
• Managed updates such as Firmware and StarWind Software
• Sales specialist recommendations in the case of hardware upgrades

Instead of having multiple servers and managing them separately, we could have redundant HyperV servers. This creates efficiencies in terms of the management of the servers.

The central management of servers and StarWind software that can show us the health status of the servers are great. 

Product functionality and performance are wonderful.

Customer support is proactive and contacts us if anything needs to be paid attention to with good follow-ups.

The user-friendliness of the interface is great.

Redundancy of Hardware via RAID and power system is good for critical environments. 

Overall, we are happy with the level of service, in the past due to time zone differences, getting to phone support later in the afternoon sometimes meant not getting a hold of second-level technical support on the same day, however, this has been improved in the past year. Normally we can get to first-level support immediately and then if an escalation is needed, we schedule a time with second-level support later. A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar.

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

The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-v for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution. Its works with all hypervisors on the market today.

My use case saw it removing SAN architecture in favor of hyper-converged storage directly attached to my hosts, in testing the speed of which is comparable to any other storage solutions available.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization footprint whilst reducing my overall physical server footprint.

It has removed the need for large shared storage that is not directly attached to the virtual hosts make it a deal to deal with, it also self heals in the event of any major incident or down time, along with the 24/7 support and the most knowledgably staff when needed.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization foot print whilst reducing my overall physical server foot print.

This solution has allowed me to remove other storage solutions reduce physical footprint of equipment as well as power usage.

The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great. 

The support staff knows the product inside out and any issues that were thrown up they knew how to resolve immediately.

The ongoing maintenance and monitoring are key to the product catalog and allow for smooth and seamless ongoing use. 

It is helping reduce out-of-hours calls and it also helps with identifying predicted failure patterns, to assist in the very most uptime of production servers 365 days a year and 24/7.

Not much can be improved, to be honest. The solution is clean, quick to install, and has had no issues since the day we started using it. The features are improving every version level, however, I cannot think of anything I would really require to change at this moment in time.

It also offers an exclusive version of StarWind Virtual SAN which can be installed on just a few nodes in a much bigger cluster. There’s absolutely no need to enable it and pay license fees for all of the nodes. 

Some vendors will currently ask you to pay for all nodes in a cluster. StarWind Virtual SAN does best breed of scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

I've used the solution for six months.

I have done vigorous testing prior to live install and the stability of the system is excellent.

The scalability is amazing as it allows for a scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

Every time I have called, I have gotten the person I need along with an answer to my questions.

Positive

I just used a SAN Storage solution. I switched for reduced physical servers and power consumption.

The initial setup was a breeze. StarWind support did it all for me.

The StarWind in-house team did it all for me and I would rate them ten out of ten.

Currently I do not have any ROI figures.

StarWind can help identify exactly what you need and help identify the best hardware for the best price.

We looked at Dell Equal Logic SAN Storage solutions.

We have a three-host clustered environment which is being used to host about 85 VMs. We have over 1TB of RAM and about 72TB of storage available. Since we are a cloud host provider, we needed a solution that would allow us to rapidly expand and support our ever-growing user base. It is extremely easy to spin up a server using StarWind Manager. It allows us to create a base image and quickly clone new VMs off that image. We have tons of storage space and we can easily add more resources to a VM on the fly. 

It improved our organization by providing us with more resources to allow us to grow our customer base. 

We were able to make a call and quickly get the assistance we needed and had a cluster built in no time. 

The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently. 

The best part is the ability to fail VMs over quickly and hassle-free. It is extremely easy to make any changes and modifications.

The best feature is the StarWind Manager. It allows us to easily duplicate VMs and manage the infrastructure. Hyper-V is a little clunky, so their software allows for a more friendly interface and easier to manage your servers. 

Another feature I like is the ability to quickly failover in the event of any issues with the three hosts in the cluster. We have had small instances where we need to either perform maintenance on one of the three hosts, or one of the hosts is having an issue. When that is the case, we can quickly drain the roles and force all VMs off that host. 

The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it. This can be frustrating at times when you want to quickly log in and make changes on the fly. I wish there was a way to make the server more stable so that we don't have to perform a reboot every time. 

Honestly, we do not have too many complaints. The best part about StarWind is the customer support. 

The guys on the team are great and have been willing to work with me at any time of the day as well as on the weekends. 

I've used the solution for two years.

The product is extremely stable. We have only had issues from external sources, for example, our Data Center losing power. Whenever you lose power to a SAN, you run the risk of data corruption. Once we got the power back on, the support team was ready to help get our environment back online. They were able to get all the shared storage synced and vm's started again. To no fault of theirs a couple of our vm's had data corruption on the OS level, however that is the extent of the damage. We were able to restore the vm's from backup and were right back to productivity. Meanwhile we noticed other people in different racks had terrible issues with their SAN's. Some people had complete and total data loss, while others were unable to get their environments to boot. Those people were at a total loss. This is why I was so happy to see how quickly we were able to get back online and get back to production. Between the durability of the cluster and the excellent support, we were back up and running in no time.

This is a great solution that offers robust scaling options.

Customer service goes above and beyond to help you. I've never dealt with a more capable team in my years of doing IT.

Positive

We used VMware and we switched in order to find another solution that was more cost-effective and just as robust.

It was straightforward to set up as the support team got us up and running very quickly.

We implemented it through an in-house team and their level of expertise is exceptional.

I advise users to trust the sales team as they will help point you in the right direction as far as your needs.

We only evaluated our history with VMware and decided to make the switch.

Everyone on the support team and all of their efforts has been great. I know that some of the workers are from Ukraine and my heart goes out to them. I am praying for them and their families.