StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We decided to migrate our infrastructure from Terago Cloud to a Tier III datacenter. It was primordial for our company to have redundancy at every level. It was not an easy sell to make that move and I needed to prove to management that we could have a very secure environment.

I needed to have a software that could create a fail over between my hosts that would work well with VMWare 7.0. After researching several company we made the decision to go with Starwind.

Of course, once we had everything in place, we made a test failover. It failed. I went back to Starwind and this was fix within one phone call. Missing configuration. The following test was successful.

The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing. Also, it was easy to test the solution to make sure it worked. How many companies out there install software without testing it?

It was easy to get organized and test to be sure it was performing to its full capacity. During the failover, only a few seconds of downtime were seen, proving to me that I can count on StarWind during business hours and know that they have our back at the Host level. Who can afford downtime?

Without a doubt, it would be support. Either we were sending an email to our Rep or simply calling in to open a case, a returned call could be expected within the hour. Always courteous and helpful. Those guys know there products and surrounding, like VMWare. They also keep on following up until you say that all is well.

We were having issues with our vCenter when we first deployed, and we had to call back technical support a few times. Each time was a fast and professional service that was offered to us.

This is a tough question. One that I wouldn't have put in here for the simple fact that I decided to write a positive experience with Starwind.

Now, if I want to be picky, I could simply say that the price is not cheap. I started with the basic package, for 4 TB. Than I had to purchase to go up to 8 TB. It does look now that I will have to pay the remaining fee to purchase unlimited data. Should I have done so first, maybe but things change very rapidly and what wasn't needed not too long ago is now. SO overhaul, price. I would also need to pay extra to be able to have support during the weekend, otherwise, you have support only from Monday to Friday. Can be inconvenient if your business work 24 hrs shift Sunday to Friday.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN since the rebuild of our infrastructure in August 2020.

So far so good and since it is running directly on VMware, I do not see any issues in the future either.

With the right licensing, I do not see any issue with scalability.

The installation was straightforward but it still was a new product for us and we didn't know how it was going to integrate with VMware 7.0. At this time, I am seeing a few issues with 7.0, so I wasn't sure if we would have any problems during installation. Nevertheless, StarWind support is what is making me write this review today. Compared to any other company we may have called, no other is as fast and as good to get the problem resolved.

This was our first installation.

The installation was fairly straightforward. Although the first test didn't work for us, only a phone call was required to make this work. We have successfully tested the solution and can see first hand that it work great!

We did in-house with the help of Starwind tech. If you want to make sure it work properly, this is the way to go and their support is fantastic.

N/A

Make sure to look for the next package that they offer for the licensing part. Adding Drives will happen faster than you hope it will.

StarWind came highly recommended and rightly so.

We have Microsoft Hyper-V.  StarWind is configured as a two-node cluster with a Windows environment. It is crucial for the Virtual Machines that give us the resiliency of Exchange, 4TB File Servers, Networking Services, Quickbooks Server, Terminal Servers, Virtualized Spam Protection, Active Directory Services, and a few others.

We needed something that allows for better resiliency than the old way of doing things.  We have seen other choices out there but this seemed to be the best one, given our budget and the hardware we wanted to use.

This StarWind solution has enabled us to be more resilient, once it was set up and tested.

Failover happens very smoothly. Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working.

Before StarWind, we were dealing with an archaic way of synchronizing Virtual machines and data between non-clustered physical hosts and it was very frustrating. Now, things are less hands-on and easier to manage and navigate the virtual environment, including maintenance while other users keep working.

We found that robust communications between clusters and synchronization were key and most valuable to us due to the amount of data we were synchronizing.

The expertise from their technicians is very helpful even in the middle of the night, with the right support plan of course. The technical documentation, the follow-up and the details noted on a per-call basis was amazing. We really appreciate that kind of commitment to our success and stability that the StarWind software brings to our business.

Built-in Notification would really help and as I understand, their new release has this now.  

A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful.

Also, it would be helpful if the software had a few more guides and links/videos on how-to's.

An "Update available" notification within the software would also be helpful and a guided wizard to do the upgrade properly would also be nice and efficient.

A better visual of the SAN storage/actual storage and how it is used would be good, especially when it comes to where the files are located on the disk. 

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for the last two years.

Stability seems great and we have not had any problems with the software.

Seems very scalable, although we chose to have a two-node cluster.

This area has been the best for us, especially being new to this technology. The support team was amazing with follow-up and they are super patient.

I have not used another solution for the same purpose. This was what I picked based on my research.

Initially, I didn't quite understand the framework and what exact hardware was needed so I had to do some learning. However, once all was in place it went pretty smoothly.

We did our deployment in-house, with help from StarWind.

Return on investment for us, I would say maybe breaking even. As I said, I wish the costs were better balanced.

The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive.

I have looked at Nutanix and VMware.

Mainly that the costs would be less expensive.

We use StarWind for storage on our Hyper-V cluster. We started with their free offering in a test environment and found the performance and stability so attractive that we built a three node cluster using Dell 720s and ten gigabit copper ethernet. It has now been running continuously for four years with essentially zero downtime. As it approaches end-of-life we will be migrating to their managed appliances.

We were originally in a legacy environment of stand-alone servers. StarWind has allowed us to virtualize our environment without the huge expense of a dedicated SAN (the typical choice in the past), putting cluster technology and its benefits within our reach. Server downtime was a constant threat to our operation before StarWind, but has never been a problem since.

Without question, the support. StarWind has been a valuable technology partner for us from the beginning. On the rare occasion when we have had a problem, or have simply needed to do an upgrade, they have provided first-rate support. Anyone who has dealt with common off-shore support understands the frustration in dealing with incompetent and difficult to communicate with support staff. This is not so with StarWind, as their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly. For highly technical products this is essential.  The best part about their tech support though, is that you probably won't need it much!

On the technical side, the performance has been excellent.  I have never found a reason to regret not going with a traditional SAN. The configuration is so much simpler, with fewer points of failure to worry about. Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest. Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair. It's the best!

Very few aspects of this solution need improvement. Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date, and it is always good to check with support to make sure that whatever you are looking at is current. The good news here is that this is very easy to accomplish. If we stay with the Virtual SAN instead of the managed appliances it would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows, which can be a bit confusing at first.

Zero. It runs like a rock.

The current non-managed solution is limited to 3 nodes.

Their customer service at every level, both in terms of our account and technical support is very good. Everything has always been timely and first-rate. I have learned many things about not just StarWind but also Microsoft clustering, iSCSI, and even Hyper-V from Starwind support staff. They are true geek pros!

Before StarWind we were still in a non-virtualized environment of standalone servers with disparate hardware.

These are complex products to set up by nature. StarWind's excellent support makes it easy, but we were able to get our test setup running in just a few hours by reading documents and their forum.

We implemented with our in-house team and StarWind support only. Their expertise not just with their own product but with Microsoft clustering and Hyper-V was amazing. We didn't need any other support to get the job done.

It has paid for itself many times over in reduced downtime and maintenance costs.

Make sure that you understand what all of the pieces do and don't make the assumption that you can drop support once setup is complete.

Yes, we looked at Nutanix and several traditional dedicated SANs.

Make sure that you understand your performance requirements clearly. Learn how to measure your performance needs in your existing environment BEFORE you shop, so that you can be sure that you are looking at the right solution. In all of the planning that goes into making the correct decision on these types of products, understanding performance (and not just making assumptions) is the most neglected part. There is no quicker way to over or under build your solution than to not have real performance numbers for planning.

I write this from a value-added reseller (VAR) point of view. 

StarWind Virtual SAN provides us with a number of benefits:

StarWind Virtual SAN is a cost-effective solution, as it does not require additional licensing costs. This can help VARs to offer competitive pricing to their customers.

StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. This allows VARs to offer a solution that can be tailored to the specific needs of their customers.

From my point of view, we offer this product and it is installed, tested, and configured on our client hardware, often located in the public and private sectors in the UK. 

StarWind is known for its good technical support and customer service. This helps us to offer a solution that is supported by a reliable vendor, which in turn improves customer satisfaction and ensures sticky and repeat business for future activities. 

StarWind Virtual SAN fills a gap for our clients who can't justify the expensive hardware from Nutanix, HPE etc. Virtual SAN offers an opportunity to repurpose hardware or use non-badged hardware for a very high-end storage solution. This directly benefits my company and me since we are able to cater to this gap in the market.   

StarWind Virtual SAN supports both block and file storage protocols, which provides me with more options to choose from when placing Virtual SAN for a given role and client based on my customers' specific use cases and requirements. 

Data compression, deduplication, and snapshots help optimize storage utilization and protect data. 

This helps me to offer a solution that can help our customers to improve storage utilization and protect data at an affordable price, cutting out expensive enterprise-grade hardware.

Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes. I would like a future release to explore the possibility of secure, reliable site replication. 

Disaster recovery site mirroring would provide several benefits, including business continuity. A disaster recovery site can be used to restore critical systems and operations in the event of a disaster, ensuring that the business can continue functioning.

The deduplication feature could also be more robust. That said, I am comparing it to the features of an HPE Nimble, which is a really unfair comparison given the cost difference.

I've used the solution for two to three years.

The software is very stable, and I have personally never witnessed downtime if the hardware use exceeds the minimum requirements.

The solution is not too scalable to geo-site redundancy. This could be a future feature.

Support is timely, knowledgeable, and has good availability with lots of different contact options including phone, email, web, etc.

Positive

We used to use VMware vSAN.

The guides and support are very detailed. There is a large community that also runs this in their home labs. They are giving lots of community feedback, ideas, and solutions to problems you may encounter.

I am speaking from a vendor point of view.

I would advise users to contact StarWind directly since we have always found they support pre and post-sales and are amazingly knowledgeable.  

We looked into various hardware and software offerings from Nutanix, NetApp, and HPE. StarWind fills the void when the budget does not allow for the expensive hardware, and we have older systems we can repurpose.

I purchased a StarWind Hyper-Converged Appliance from StarWind in order to fulfill a multitude of needs for my end client. Chief among them was that the system would be a rather small installation. 

Compared to a traditional configuration using three Servers and a SAN, the StarWind HCA allowed me to provide the user with two Server boxes that could handle their redundancy requirements in a fraction of the space and with a significant cost reduction. 

The installation called for using a VMware vSphere that would house about a dozen VMs with redundancy for every component involved in the system. The reduced size of this installation also made it possible to install the HCA alongside the existing servers so that they could be removed at the client's leisure when they were comfortable with the new installation.

StarWind Virtual SAN, and specifically its implementation in their StarWind Hyper-Converged Appliance, gave us a competitive advantage in the bidding process. This is specifically true for smaller installations where the economies of scale of having a centralized SAN and compute-only boxes don't have a chance to kick in. 

In addition to the StarWind solution allowing you to save on the hardware by only requiring two boxes containing all components, it allows us to avoid the unfortunately expensive solution provided by VMware for their own virtual SAN solution.

The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem. A split brain occurs when two machines in a redundancy scenario have lost their connection to each other yet have maintained connection to the clients. This causes both devices to think they are running as the master, and their configurations will drift apart from each other, making reintegration all but impossible. Instead of using a third client as a witness, they have solved this problem by creating a secondary heartbeat signal to be carried on an independent hardware NIC, thus solving the problem.

The only current drawback that I see for the configuration as it stands is that it can be a little complicated to configure compared to other, more traditional solutions. 

If it were up to me, I would focus on streamlining a vSphere appliance for configuring the virtual storage machines. 

I would also like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure. Currently, it requires you to jump in and out of virtual environments placing storage components on or offline, and all steps must be done in their proper order, or you can create an issue. It seems to me that this could be integrated into an add-on for vSphere that could handle the details of the startup/shutdown procedure more gracefully and with less manual intervention.

We've used the solution for about two years.

I did not experience any stability issues

This solution has the ability to scale into very large systems. However, it really shines in the small to mid-size range.

Customer service gets back to you promptly and is highly knowledgeable.

Positive

In most instances, I have used a regular vSphere running a SAN and multiple compute hosts. I haven't precisely switched. I'd say that you need to provide the right solution for the end client, and in smaller installs, specifically, the efficiency gains in space and cost of the StarWind Virtual SAN can be hard to beat.

The initial setup for the StarWind Hyper-Converged Architecture I purchased was largely done either by StarWind or with their assistance. If I had to do the whole thing myself, it would have taken me quite some time based on the complexity. They do have good documentation and videos, so it would not have been an insurmountable task.

We mainly did an in-house implementation.

I didn't calculate ROI. I can only state that it was about 30% cheaper for the end client than the alternative.

Do your comparison shopping, and if you are working on a small system trying to ensure redundancy, that will almost certainly bring you back to StarWind.

For the application, I compared it to a regular vSphere SAN. However, I did not compare it to other Hyper-Converged solutions. At the time, it was pretty clear that they had a long track record and a good reputation which aided in deciding on them as a solution.

Before you deliver this to an end client, make absolutely sure that you provide adequate documentation about how to start up and shut down the system. That part can be a little bit tricky and requires you to do things in the proper order.

We were looking to replace three to four physical hosts running 10-12 virtual servers with one solution requiring less maintenance and full high availability. 

We could have developed our own stack. That said, this was so turnkey and useful that it made the most sense. We now have two physical hosts with more power and high availability than all the previous servers combined. 

Support has an incredibly fast response to requests such as size increase of the SAN and installation software updates whenever we need them. 

This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business. It allowed us to take advantage of all the Hyper-V features and live migrations without the expense of dedicated SANs. 

We can perform maintenance on either host during the day, and the users don't even notice a difference in performance. 

We survived a couple of facility power outages. However, due to the redundancy of the entire host, the HCA failed over quickly and accurately with no downtime. Support also helps us improve our infrastructure with the best practices of other organizations. 

There is immediate redundancy and HA without a huge amount of configuration - which is ideal. Their support was even better - with proactive monitoring and efficient setup and configuration changes. 

We recently upgraded the physical hosts and maxed out the memory and hard drive space, and their support team walked us through the upgrade every step of the way. There were no issues. Even with an older HCA we have plenty of room for future growth. 

We also can install security patches with no problems during the day instead of after-hours. 

Some of the new hyper-converged tools seem basic as a single pane of glass dashboard. However, they are constantly looking at improvements and updates. 

The actual interface is somewhat cryptic, so we wouldn't know what configuration changes to make. That is kind of the point. We have their full support, and we don't have to staff a Level 5 engineer to make large configuration changes. 

I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions. That said, they continue to release updates, so I'm sure that's on the roadmap. 

I've used the solution for three to five years.

Our company's needs are simple, and I like redundancy, so I was looking for the least expensive way to achieve as close to full hardware redundancy as possible without breaking the bank. 

I learned about vSAN technology, and it made sense to me to just get two hosts with identical hardware, and configure their storage as shared, providing full hardware redundancy (on top of the already partially redundant aspects of the hosts themselves), then just get a decent SAN for off-site DR backup storage (we settled on Synology's Flashstation for that), and I'm really glad we did.

StarWind's solution provided me the peace of mind knowing I had full hardware redundancy with my new servers and local storage, and it was less expensive than the VMware native license/solution would have been. 

It has been rock solid from day one. I've engaged with their expert support multiple times for maintenance sessions, to upgrade their software, and once to migrate from their Windows Server-based appliance to their Linux version once it was ready. We have only ever had one issue during an upgrade that was quickly resolved by their engineer.

By far, the best features are the cost, implementation, and support. The VMWare equivalent license upgrade would have been quite a bit more than the StarWind solution, and the only additional hardware requirements were the dual 25GB fiber NICs needed for the storage Sync functionality. 

They also worked with our preferred reseller (PCM at the time) and had our two brand new Dell hosts shipped to them first for pre-configuration, which they then turned around and shipped to us pre-configured and ready to go.

Implementation, maintenance, and support were and have been virtually painless, however, I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things. 

I would really like to be able to see a lot more of what is going on under the hood metrics-wise. It would be great to be able to see at least a little bit more. Specifically, things like performance, bandwidth utilization of the synchronization connection, and how it impacts the overall performance of the hosts.

I've used the solution for three years.

It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it. There hasn't been one operational hiccup and only one issue which happened during a support session performing an upgrade, which was quickly resolved by the engineer.

Our needs are simple. Therefore, we only have ever used or needed two hosts. That said, it is nice to know that it can scale to clusters if we ever need to go that route, as unlikely as that seems right now. 

The few times I've ever engaged with technical support were for upgrades, and it was always pretty painless, with the one exception I mentioned before, where we had a problem with a host that ultimately required a hard reset. We're still not sure what happened to cause it to lock up, however, once it was back up everything was fine.

Positive

I had looked at other vSAN technology in the past, however, the cost was beyond our budget, especially after factoring in the cost of the support needed, since I am not a storage engineer.

The initial setup was easy. We simply had to unbox the servers, rack them, connect the cables, and turn them on. It was that simple.

The initial setup was handled in-house - meaning, yours truly. All I had to do after firing them up was add the hosts to my existing vCenter server, migrate all of the VMs over to the new Hosts/Storage, and, once done, shut down and remove the old hosts from vCenter.

ROI is hard to quantify since we've never used anything else. That said, at least without it there would have been many thousands of dollars just for the licensing costs and appropriate support would have been even more than that. StarWind provides comprehensive support on everything, as long as you buy the hardware through them too.

I'd advise users to do their due diligence, however, StarWind's technology works as advertised, at a much lower cost than the native VMware solution. Their licensing is simple and affordable, and their support is impeccable.

We considered VMware's native vSAN technology and may have gone with it if I hadn't found StarWind while searching for alternatives.

If you are looking at a simple, affordable vSAN technology, you can't go wrong with StarWind.

We use the StarWind Virtual SAN in a HA stack. We then use readily available HPE servers (DL380DL - 26 disk) to be the hardware. This allows us to have reliable hardware with reliable software and no downtime. It also drives costs down to almost nothing compared to hardware-based SAN devices. 

Year after year costs are also down with not needing to keep hardware warranties up, due to parts being available easily. Overall, we have saved many thousands of dollars by going this way. We see no difference in IOPS or any other performance metrics. 

We have also tested the high availability a few times (once on purpose and a few not). It seems to work flawlessly.

We are able to scale our storage much easier and cheaper than we would with traditional SAN or NAS systems. 

The cost justification is very easy since the overall cost is literally support for the software. We do not keep any sort of hardware support since we can just buy hardware as needed from anywhere. This means that you have to have some knowledge of hardware if you are picking it out - or their support is more than willing to help. I like this as it allows me to pick out how resilient I want my system to be and how much I want it to cost.

The ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space is great. For example, we use Gen 9 DL380 servers with 26 bays. This allows us to migrate to newer hardware at any time without having to buy new shelves or head units of expensive SAN solutions (or even worse, have multiple SAN support contracts going at once in order to swing data between them). This also makes it so we can easily keep older data without immense cost to our organization. 

Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn.

We just need more integration with Veeam. Overall, I like the fire and forget model, so really there isn't an immense amount of things that I would request. 

Possibly some reporting via SMTP of some metrics would be nice to have. That said, quite honestly I get that from enough systems already and end up ignoring most of them. 

If this was something I was logged into every day then maybe I would request more features. Then again, I would be more concerned with its quality (we shouldn't need to log in daily). I'm not really sure what more to ask for.

We have been using the solution for around six years.

Been using the solution for six years and have not had it fail.

I have scaled quite large. It scales well.

Technical support seems responsive. We've only used them a few times.

Positive

We had three different systems (Dell PowerVault, HPE Lefthand, Lenovo NAS) and they were expensive to keep and more expensive to expand.

The setup takes about five minutes.

I implemented the solution myself. 

The ROI is almost immediate.

I'd advise new users to just do some homework on what they need. Pick out hardware that can support it and get a license. The setup would be about 5 minutes.

Yes, we looked at Dell PowerVault, HPE Lefthand, and Lenovo NAS.

The solution offers great ROI.