StarWind Storage Appliance Reviews

We were looking for the two-node HCA. We found that VMware was also a solution, but it was a bit costlier for us. We couldn't bear the cost, so we were in search of other products similar to VMware. We found the StarWind solution. 

Initially, we took a trial license, implemented it, and tested it for one month. Then we found that it suited our requirements, so we installed it in our production environment.

So this is how we approach the storage.

There are very few OEMs providing two-node clusters with software-defined storage. This is one of the beauties of this tool, even with a single node failure, it's stable and handled well. In a one-node cluster, it provides a full data store. 

The most valuable feature is that it doesn't require any heartbeat node, a separate source, or anything else. It takes care of everything in just two nodes. 

The management console is also handy, integrating all the information. This feature is not present in other solutions, as it's already integrated within vCenter. Unlike using vSAN, there's no need for frequent updates to JSON files or DB updates in VMware. These things are not present in the StarWind solution.

The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. 

There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart.

Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. 

Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of.

Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback.

In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.

I have been using this solution for three months now. I use the latest version. 

I rate stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate it eight out of ten.

We used vSAN. The vSAN I used with three nodes initially, and we wanted to scale down to two nodes. Even when we inquired about the two nodes, the cost was high, and we didn't have that much budget in my project to afford it.

Initially, we struggled. Then, we sought support using the StarWind community forum. 

The response was very fast and brilliant. I want to appreciate them. They supported me very well and were very prompt. I didn't find these types of replies anywhere else. 

So, these forums replied within the same day or one day. I would receive a request from them and implement it very soon. I didn't face much difficulty in implementing StarWind.

We were able to implement StarWind in about one hour, which is the same amount of time it takes to implement VMware vSAN. Overall, we are happy with the ease of implementation, and we have not encountered any difficulties.

We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it.

I am happy with the price of StarWind.

I did not evaluate any other options before choosing StarWind.  

StarWind is the best solution because it is the only one that offers a two-node solution. 

We looked into VMware and StarWind, and we did not inquire much about other options. We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix.

I would definitely recommend using the solution. 

StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes.

The solution should develop plugins for third-party virtualization software, such as VMware, Nutanix, and Hyper-V. 

Finally, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We conducted in-depth internal testing of the StarWind Storage Appliance, evaluating its performance across a range of hardware configurations, including both standard fast drives and full SSD systems, such as the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 and Gen10 Plus, with various HBAs configurations. Our testing revealed that the software effectively harnessed the full potential of these systems, delivering performance in line with our expectations for the hardware.

One of the most valuable aspects is its affordability and the quality of support it offers. The support team is quick to respond, even for users who are not engaged in a production-ready demo but are simply evaluating the software. This extends to the community as well, where even without a formal service level agreement, the support team remains attentive and responsive. Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy.

Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes. 

I have been working with it for over a year now.

It exhibits robust performance, and we encountered no stability issues throughout the testing process. The performance metrics reported were not only accurate but also very closely aligned with the maximum performance achievable from the hardware itself.

In terms of scalability, StarWind software excels when it comes to a two-node configuration. You can indeed have multiple nodes, but the pairing typically occurs between two nodes at a time. If you need to expand your storage capacity, you can achieve this by adding two more nodes, whether they are storage nodes or compute nodes. This provides flexibility because if you only require additional storage, you can essentially purchase two servers with the necessary amount of RAM to run the VSA, and then you can allocate this added storage to the existing compute nodes in your production environment.

The setup process is exceptionally straightforward and efficient. You have access to an automated setup that you can install on a wide range of devices, including laptops, PCs, workstations, and even existing production servers that you intend to use as a management interface. This interface allows you to deploy Virtual Storage Appliances on your nodes and configure the desired virtual datastore.

The setup is guided by a user-friendly wizard, simplifying the process. You only need to input essential information, such as the VSA's parameters, including AP  information, storage allocation, and communication preferences. It's a quick and uncomplicated process that typically takes about ten minutes in total, allowing you to get your storage solution up and running swiftly and efficiently.

The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement. From our perspective, the cost of what it offers is quite reasonable and even considered cost-effective. It aligns well with the budget constraints of small enterprises.

It functions as intended, making it a suitable choice for small enterprises or those implementing highly available infrastructure in a modest-sized environment. The performance is commendable, and while it may not be as feature-rich as some other solutions, it still provides satisfactory functionality. The maintenance experience is straightforward and user-friendly, ensuring minimal disruption and efficient updates. If you opt for it, I strongly recommend avoiding the use of extremely cheap hardware as the performance of the software is directly dependent on the quality of the underlying hardware, especially in smaller setups. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

In my company, we have customers at remote sites for whom we use the solution most of the time. In our company, we want to have an edge location where we do not have many user activities. In our company, we use a two-node cluster most of the time since we have multiple location sites where we deploy two to four nodes. My company uses StarWind Storage Appliance to support some manufacturing units and some remote users where there is no advanced WAN connectivity.

I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product since most of the time, I have seen that whenever in our company we have some issues, though there is a sequence, we can shut it down, and it is easy to manage. The best part of the solution is that the payments made towards the licensing part are on a per-node basis.

From an improvement perspective, I can't comment much about StarWind Storage Appliance since we use only two to three nodes in our company, with which I am currently happy. If I use the product at an enterprise level, maybe I could see some issues in it, which is something I don't have any experience with currently.

With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong.

I have been using StarWind Storage Appliance for more than three years. I am a customer of StarWind.

In each of the eight sites our company deals with, there are around 50 users, meaning there are around 400 people who use StarWind Storage Appliance.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

With StarWind Storage Appliance, I have seen that the initial setup phase is a bit difficult most of the time because there are a lot of configurations to be done after the installation since there is a need to connect to a VM. Most of the time, I have seen issues with the initial configuration of the product, making it a bit difficult, but support-wise, StarWind is good.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

When it comes to the deployment process of StarWind Storage Appliance, the replication part takes most of the time, especially in the initial setup phase, since you need to replicate all the VMDK disks, which will take two to three hours to set up.

In our company, I am a part of a two-member team that can easily manage the deployment of the product, including the setting up process. The infrastructure part is taken care of by the data center team in our company while I am involved in the setup phase. If I face any issues, StarWind's support team helps me.

With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company. StarWind Storage Appliance is a cost-effective product when compared to Nutanix or VMware. StarWind Storage Appliance is a great option with respect to cost.

StarWind Storage Appliance supports a set of heterogeneous hardware products, meaning you can use multiple hardware tools. You can use multiple hardware tools or operating systems, so there is no need to stick to Microsoft, ESXi, or RHEL specifically. With StarWind Storage Appliance, you use Microsoft, ESXi, or RHEL, a reason why my company chose StarWind over other products.

I would say in VMware, you can only use ESXi. In StarWind Storage Appliance, you can use RHEL or Hyper-V, meaning there are some mix-and-match combinations possible. In my setup, since everything is up and running, I am happy with StarWind Storage Appliance.

Whether I would suggest someone use StarWind Storage Appliance or not is something that is purely dependent upon that person's requirements. If your requirement matches the solution offered by StarWind, I would ask that person to go with that product. As per my requirement, I wanted to do deployments in remote sites. I wanted a tool that should be easy to use since I don't have sufficient team members to help me with the management part, so I chose StarWind, which requires a one-time setup. The issues with StarWind products are very few, and whenever any issue crops up, StarWind's support team helps me. Basically, whether there is a need for StarWind Storage Appliance depends upon your requirements and how you want to use it in your environment.

With StarWind Storage Appliance, there is no need for any extra HBA cards, giving it an edge in its price. For the solution's licensing part and its robust and secure features, along with its good security and areas like deduplication and replication, I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one. 

I have been working with the product for one year. 

The tool has only two or three clusters. I rate its scalability a seven out of ten. 

I don't use the solution's technical support. They have good videos. 

Positive

StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft. 

The solution can be deployed in a few hours with the help of five engineers. 

Microsoft needs four drivers, while StarWind Storage Appliance needs only one driver. This reduces cost by at least fourfold. 

I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten. 

The tool is mostly for medium companies and requires no maintenance. It has a good price and performance. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We use it together with Microsoft services.

The integration with StarWind Storage Appliance is the most valuable.

The dashboard features are not in the free version. Today it is normal to have the full features in both versions and only pay for support.

I have been using StarWind Storage Appliance for the past three months.

StarWind Storage Appliance is stable.

We have only measured scalability currently with two servers.

For the first time, it takes a little time to know how the concept works. There is a learning curve when you do not know if you can also use it as a boot drive or if that is not possible. It takes days to deploy.

We do it in-house for all the customers and we test it.

That is a problem with StarWind they do not tell you the license cost. On the homepage, you can not see the pricing.  There are different solutions, free and standard costs.

I would rate StarWind Storage Appliance an eight out of ten.

We were using 4GB FC to support our 3-host ESXi cluster and switched to StarWind over 10GB iSCSI. We installed one 2-node SAN for proof of concept, then another one so we could retire our FC SANs, then another SSD-based one when we needed better performance on critical VMs. We were able to select hardware from our preferred vendor. Two of the clusters run on standalone servers, and the SSD SAN runs on our ESXi hosts, giving us a hyper-converged environment for those servers that need the additional performance.

We had end-of-life (and end-of-support) 4GB FC switches and SANs which were going to cost us a ton of money to upgrade, and decided to switch to iSCSI over a 10-GB backbone.  Going with iSCSI simplified our infrastructure. Instead of running FC for storage in parallel with our ethernet, we were able to purchase 10GB switches that could handle both and that gave us combined visibility and manageability with one management interface which also handles our periphery switches and wireless in one interface.

First of all, it is iSCSI. We were looking to get rid of our FC infrastructure and go to pure ethernet switches, and this enabled us to do so. Second, the Proactive support has been excellent. They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us. They are experts in hardware and software and are able to troubleshoot and fix underlying issues like firmware and drivers. The solution also has excellent performance.

I'm really not sure what improvements are needed to the product. It works pretty well and I haven't seen anything that obviously needed improvement. We elected to do the physical installation ourselves, so they preconfigured the equipment and shipped it - complete with excellent installation instructions. Once we did the physical install, they connected remotely to do the final configuration and helped get us into production. They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end.

I've used the solution since about 2015.

It has been very stable.

It is widely scalable. It is as simple as plugging in additional hard drives into the server and adding storage space up to its capacity.  The software license is independent of hardware and is for Unlimited storage, so you can replace the entire storage server and use the same software license.  It can run on your virtualization hosts for a hyperconverged environment or on standalone servers.  There is even a free version with full functionality.

It's been great. They generally call if there is any issue.

We previously used FC SANs from EMC and Xiotech which were end-of-support and were going to cost us a ton to replace.

If you want turnkey, they will come onsite. Our setup was more complex due to the fact that we did the physical install, however, they were available every step of the way.

We had our in-house team handle it with support from StarWind.

It gave very good ROI. The alternative was to spend a lot more to upgrade our FC infrastructure and that was just not acceptable.

Licensing is straightforward, per node and capacity, with only 2 capacity tiers. It wasn't difficult. They will install it onsite or preconfigure it and ship it to you. We saved a ton by installing it ourselves. The pricing was great and simplifying to iSCSI saved us even more money in the end. 

We looked at several options. I swore I would never buy EMC again, but we looked at Xiotech, NetApp, Dell, and others.

We love it and rely on it.  We also have had no problems. Others likely will like it too.

I manage a number of different IT environments ranging in the 10 to 500 staff level, and the StarWind Storage Appliance is one of the products that I use in this role.

StarWind is very good, performance-wise. I opt for all-flash arrays every time, and I see they made the announcement that they are only selling all-flash. This is a great move, as all-flash at the server level is an absolute game-changer.

Whole environments run so much smoother and this really makes the IT admin's life easier. If we have to deploy on-premises servers, it's all-flash or nothing for us.

Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night.

StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage.

I work with environments ranging from 10 to 500 users.

What also sets StarWind apart is the support. They have techs that are not just call-routers, but that actually know and can troubleshoot issues 24x7. Most do have accents, which may be an issue for some, but everyone I have worked with, in their support team, has been patient and professional. So, in my opinion, this is not an issue.

Besides, at the end of the day, the goal is to solve issues and this is something you will definitely achieve.

StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck.

The big players are a stretch price-wise for the clients in this range, and StarWind beats them every time.

There are several other competitors in this space that I did look at, but StarWind was just really easy to work with. They have resources on every team to get you what you need. This includes pre-sales, design, management escalation, and technical support.

They provided the specs I needed, so I didn’t really need to look much further.

How they can offer all of this and 24x7 level support and provide the hardware at extremely affordable costs is beyond me. There is no question that for future purchases, StarWind will be my #1 go-to.

It's the main storage (CSV) for our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster. We have two devices on Dell hardware that have StarWind VSAN installed, they have 25GB NIC in between for storage replication and all the storage is replicated so we can easily work on one node while the other is active. It's in Active-Active state so the load is shared. The storage is formated as CSV and it works over iSCSI protocol so we use our same network so there is no need for expensive fiber links. We run hundreds of virtual machines on this storage that needs to be always available. 

It improved our uptime dramatically where we did not have any outage in the past 12 months. Also, we were using multiple storage vendors in the past and were able to replace them with a single StarWind solution. As its primary software solution, you can choose the hardware it operates on, if you have purchased just the software license is really easy to move it from one hardware to another or increase the underlying storage system or add more hard drives as your need increases. An additional benefit is their support which is great.

It works as a service and does not require too many resources on the host, it has really fast replication if you have it as an HA storage. Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. It's really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it. 

It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage. 

It also will be great if it will be able to send weekly reports about the status of the storage, any issues, etc. More features that will provide how many IOPS you have per volume/disks, with nice charts, etc so you get some insight into what your environment is using.

More then 12 months.

It's very stable, works on Windows OS, and does not have its own hardware so stability partially depends on the hardware you are running it on and if your windows os is patched regularly but if you have sorted those two things their software is really stable. 

Scalability is not an issue, depending on the hardware you have it the scale really fast.

Their support is very knowledgable and willing to help, they always go well beyond what is required to make sure things works as expected. 

We were using Open-E storage solution. It was software-defined storage so in sense similar to StarWind but it was way more complex to configure and operate and there was no option to be used as HCI as it was coming with its own OS so you can't really use the box for something else. 

Its very straightforward, they have great documentation that if followed can be deployed really easily, plus they have superb support .

We did the deployment in-house.

Cost is really something that attracts us to begin the journey with StarWind many years ago but then we simply realized that their solution works with superb performances and are really happy to stick to it. We use it on HCI mode where we just purchased the software and build our own solution with our own hardware and also we have purchased a ready-made appliance from StarWind, both work fine and we are happy with them.

We looked at pure storage as well but it was too costly.

Their support is great and they are improving their software with every new iteration. Really happy to be their customer. Keep up the good work guys!

The use case is that it is cheap and easy to set up. There are no complex software complications. Use this solution for a simple, high-availability setup.

The management interface is the most valuable feature for us.

They could improve by providing integration with HP.

I've been using this solution for ten years.

Its stability is very good.

This solution is scalable, but our use case is in the lower end of the market. We are in the SMB market.

Their technical support team is excellent.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It costs about 50,000 euros.

I recommend this product. I would rate it as nine out of ten.

We use this product as a backup and storage solution. We have the need to back up mission critical data on a regular basis and this solution provides that service without any issues.

We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location. Before this solution, we had an unreliable and very expensive solution. StarWind changed that for us.

It is very easy to use and very cost effective. I've been able to administer this system with little training needed.

An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products.