StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We provide managed web hosting services, including dedicated servers in physical or virtual configurations, for various customers, including small, medium, and large companies. We started hosting operations in 1995 and operated our own hosting infrastructure in data centers in North Carolina and Virginia, USA.

Our infrastructure included physical and virtual hosting environments based on VMware, which is where our StarWind Virtual SANs were deployed.

With our growing needs and customer requirements and demand, we added virtualization to our infrastructure, based on VMware. Storage requirements for the virtualized infrastructure also grew rapidly. We explored all available options, from hyper-converged solutions to the large "big name" solutions. Our infrastructure was too big for hyper-converged solutions. However, we were not ready for the major investments that a full-sized storage infrastructure would need. StarWind's offerings were a perfect fit for us, and remain so until today, almost ten years later.

Prior to StarWind, we were using "local storage" with each hypervisor, and this had many drawbacks, including size limitations, performance, technical management, and redundancy. 

With StarWind Virtual SAN, we could easily deploy and manage the storage solutions, add additional storage servers when needed, implement automated redundancy and failover, and scale storage allocations as and when needed, including adding high-performance SSD solutions alongside traditional hard disk solutions.

The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well.

While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage, for example, when servers are rebooted. Bitlocker solutions require a physical presence in the data center to enter the encryption string on the server's physical console.

Built-in "Data at Rest" encryption would be an important need, especially for customers with sensitive compliance requirements e.g. Government customers, healthcare customers, eCommerce customers, and many other compliance-sensitive application areas.

We have been using the StarWind Virtual SAN product since 2014.

StarWind Virtual SAN is very scalable, simply by adding additional Windows servers and installing the StarWind Virtual SAN software on it.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Compared to similar solutions from NetApp etc., our savings were likely in the tens of thousands of dollars over the years, and we did not need to pay for features that we do not need.

We were very happy and impressed with StarWind's products and the technical support from StarWind's support team. If and when we needed assistance, StarWind's tech support has been very responsive, thorough, and very helpful.

We found the licensing costs and pricing to be very affordable and manageable.

We looked at big-name solutions such as NetApp, Cisco, and others.

Our storage infrastructure had been operating flawlessly with great performance and reliability.

I was hoping to implement a High Availability and redundant system without sacrificing performance or my budget. Looking at various HCI and vSAN solutions, the cost was a bit prohibitive.  

I really wanted my cake and to eat it to; however, VMware's vSAN offering and looking at a few HCI solutions (vXRails, Nutanix, etc.) just did not fit my budget. That is when I read a review on StarWind free vSAN, which got me interested, but I knew I wanted (and needed) support.

We set up a three-node cluster on new, identical servers with VMware's vSphere and added StarWind's vSAN product to expand our capabilities.

Our servers started out with 8 HDDs, and after production, we added 4 SSDs which StarWind assisted in getting online in the vSAN.

We have High Availability, failover, redundancy, and the ability to move workloads on the fly with no impact on the organization. It is great for patching and updates to the servers.

The ROI is great on this product.  We did have to upgrade our licensing to enterprise level as we surpassed the 8TB limit by adding additional storage.  Purchasing a three-year term helped bolster our ROI even further.

We did have a vCenter failure during an upgrade. StarWind support was able to get the systems back online and syncing with no data loss or impact on production (and even improve the installation by moving the critical StarWind components on the Boss Card).

I feel very confident in the support team's abilities.

First and foremost, StarWind has awesome support. You work with the same engineer throughout implementation or any issues.  

They explain the process of what and why they are doing whatever it is. You are not left high and dry when looking to implement the vSAN and can solve issues that may arise or even configure additional added storage.

The stability is great. The solution has been running with no issues due to vSAN itself. It is one of those "set it and forget it" types of systems. Perhaps this is a bad thing as you kind of do not think about it.

The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas. I would love to see more comprehensive walk-throughs or perhaps even videos. With this being such a critical piece of infrastructure, I do not like to take chances. Fortunately, support will be there to help hold your hand or even perform the process for you, ensuring everything is working.

It would be really nice to have a documented "Best Practices" list to ensure you are doing everything you can to ensure stability and performance. I have to be a bit nitpicky; overall, there is not much I can really add.

We demoed the product in early 2021. We have been using it in production for over a year now.

It is extremely stable thus far. We've been running well over a year without any issues due to StarWind itself.

It offers great performance and has the ability to add additional nodes to your cluster.

I would say StarWind has the best customer service and support. They are quick and aggressive in resolving any issues as quickly as possible. Not enough good things can be said about how they treat customers.

Positive

We used an MS 2008r2 Cluster many years ago. Prior to StarWind vSAN, were using static servers.

For a three-node cluster, the setup seemed complex. However, upon purchasing a license, StarWind's excellent support took over and created a PoC install for us.

We worked with the vendor team. They were great to work with. Over multiple days, you work with the same engineer, which is a great way to work versus getting transferred from tech to tech.

While you can add nodes later on, I would suggest really putting thought into how many nodes you want to start with, as networking can get challenging if you omit a good 10+GB switch.

I looked at a few HCI (Dell, vxRail, and Nutanix) and the VMware vSAN solution.  It was cost-prohibitive for me

I cannot say enough good things about the support this company gives; more companies need to model this.

StarWind vSAN is set up on our two host VMware ESXi systems. Each system is running a Linux VM for the vSAN storage and a Windows Server 2022 VM that runs the StarWind vSAN management software. 

The two hosts are connected on a dedicated 25GB backbone with a 1GB management network and a 1GB heartbeat network. ISCSI is run on a separate 25GB connection between the two hosts.

There have been zero issues with stability or downtime in the past three months. One of the servers experienced a random system crash and the vSAN was not affected and there was no downtime with the VMs running on the vSAN storage solution.

It was relatively easy to set up and the support was great. After purchasing the license, it was relatively simple to follow the StarWind documentation on their website.

It has allowed us to set up vSAN with ESXi without spending extra on an ESXi license or needing to buy a third host. This saved us thousands on initial setup costs and hundreds in licensing yearly.

An issue with one of the hosts caused the server to crash, however, our services and VMs running on the vSAN storage were not impacted. The storage implementation experienced zero downtime and behaved exactly how we wanted it to. 

vSAN implementation is straightforward and easy to setup. 

The support has been amazing and quick to reply. They also reached out and made sure that everything was setup correctly. Support quickly answered any questions we had and setup a screen share meeting to validate our install and give optimization tips. 

After the initial meeting, they reached out a few weeks afterward to double-check that their recommendations were implemented properly.

Their support did not try and upset anything and were very helpful and knowledgeable about their product.

Documentation could be a little more clear on what the most recent version of the documentation is. 

I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN. However, it was easy to follow and set up once I did locate the correct documentation.

It would also be helpful to provide the software download links with the documentation. I had to find the vSAN Linux VM and the vSAN management software in separate locations and with separate download links. It wasn't initially clear that the Linux VMs and vSAN management software needed to be installed. 

I've used the solution for three months.

It seems to work fine on our two host systems. It seems like it would easily be able to expand to a larger system. 

Customer service and support replied quickly and ensured everything was implemented correctly. They checked in and ensured we implemented all their recommendations so that we would have the best experience. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

It was easy to set up once we found the documentation.

We deployed it ourselves in-house.

The solution allowed us to have a high availability system without having to purchase additional hardware or support licensing.

If you email StarWind, they might give a discount on the licensing compared to what they list online. 

We looked at VMware vSAN.

When support reaches out, they're not trying to sell anything. They just want to ensure everything is set up correctly and you have a good experience! 

The product is for clients who require high availability of their servers, from file servers and domain controllers, through to line of business applications.

I've done installations of two-node HA clusters running Windows Server Hyper-V. With the HA cluster we then ran virtual machines, both Windows Desktop, Windows Server, CentOS and Ubuntu. We have installed on pysical servers with both DELL PowerEdge and HP Proliant server hardware (Windows clustering requires exact server hardware to be matched - so two-node DELL, and two-node HP).

As an MSP, stability is important for our clients. StarWind's virtual SAN solution has allowed us to have an always-on architecture allowing survivability of hardware failure. We install it for all clients who need high availability of their virtual servers on-premise.

Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses.

We have multiple sites running StarWindws Virtual SAN, which have been running for years without any issue.

The thing that impressed me the most about the product is the technical support from the vendor. Everyone knows the benefit of high-availability clusters, but setting one up and reading the documentation is an enormous task in itself.

With StarWind Virtual SAN and the installation support, we have high-availability clusters running within a couple of hours. This has been repeated over and over on many customer sites, so they have their process perfected in this regard.

The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation, although I will make two comments on this.

The high availability of virtual SAN is by its very nature not a simple drop-in thing, so the documentation will understandably be complex.

Secondly, the installation process is completely guided and done remotely by StarWind certified installation engineers, who handle all aspects.

Given the above, the only thing I can really say needs improvement is that I am not keen on the pricing per storage tier model, however, understand this is a common model charged.

I've done multiple client installations over five years.

No, there was no other solution that we have tried.

Consider how much space you will need as pricing is per node and data.

No, we found the price point compelling, which led to immediately trying StarWinds versus traditional SAN costs from DELL and HP, etc.

Overall it has been a great product and company to work with for the past five years and many more to come.

We have a two-node hyper-converged system set up. Our main electronic medical record system runs on top of this system. We can fail over to one host, which lets the virtual machines run on the other. We can perform maintenance and move the virtual machines back. As a medical facility, it's important for our products to be up and available. This system allows us to do that. We have plans to purchase an additional host this fall, which I hope to be able to add to the VSAN. I believe there's an additional purchase to do so, however, I'll look into that when we get closer. 

StarWind allows us to move virtual machines from one physical host to another, which greatly reduces the downtime required for maintenance. I've been with the organization for about four months now and came in not knowing anything about StarWind. To become better acquainted, I asked if StarWind would give us a 'demo' of our current system. They showed us how our configuration was set up and helped us make a couple of suggested changes. We have since restarted one of the hosts without any trouble on the StarWind side at all. 

It's very stable and is easy to use. The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry. Support has been amazing. I wasn't at my position last year, but we had a hard disk in a host machine fail last year. Through a series of unfortunate events, a VM failed. StarWind support helped the technician pull the system back up and even assisted with restoring the VM, something he didn't have to do. I've since read other accounts of service like this. The community and KB articles are also very valuable. In any event, I know I can get help with this system.

I'm actually really satisfied with Starwind. Their product and support have been top-notch. They even have a version that is free, though it is a command-line only. 

As for additional features, perhaps some integration in with systems like IT Glue.  A way to push the configuration into IT Glue in the event of an outage or just for documentation purposes would be nice.  

Overall, however, the product does what it is supposed to do. Adding features for the sake of adding something may not be terribly appropriate in this case. The system just plain works.

My organization has been using StarWind for several years now. I'm new to my company and have been learning how the product works.

We've had no stability issues with the product.

Currently, we have this running on two nodes, however, I believe it can be scaled up significantly. For our limited purposes, I have no concern about scalability.

Amazing! They've gone above and beyond with helping us when we had hardware issues last year and again this year when I asked for a demo of how things are set up.

Positive

We did not use a different solution.

While I wasn't around for the initial setup, I performed a handful of test installations to become more familiar. StarWind has a wonderful KB article that covers the process, step-by-step.

It's my understanding that it was all done in-house. The configurations are exactly as the KB article mentioned above has it spelled out.

We can keep our electronic medical record system running while we do maintenance. We've used Starwind for several years, so the investment has covered itself.

Pricing is simple. You can buy a support package that gives you access to updates to the software or you can buy premium support, which expands the time in which you can get help from the company.

I was not around when the decision to use StarWind came about. I don't know if there are other 3rd party vendors like StarWind. 

We were looking for physical tape backups to protect against DR situations but were concerned about the fact that it would require the manual intervention of changing the tapes and sending them offsite as we could easily forget. 

Luckily, I came across  Starwind VTL which is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes. 

The whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc. It's been six months and it has been working well without any issue with the jobs completed within 24 hours which meets our RTO. 

In regards to the cost, we ended up saving a few thousand dollars as well due to the high cost of the physical tape library.

With Starwind VTL, it eliminates the need to manually change and remove tapes and schedule them for offline pickup which users would not have the time to do.  It is also cost-effective as having a physical tape library would cost thousands of dollars. 

In addition, the virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection.  

Furthermore, having virtual tapes locally and on the cloud provides an additional layer of protection in addition to our normal backups that are performed. 

The cloud replication feature is most valuable as it copies the local virtual tapes from our on-prem storage to object storage where we can set object locking and governance.  This is a great feature in case something happens to our on-prem storage. 

Also, since it's virtual tapes, there is no manual intervention of changing tapes and scheduling them to take them offsite which is another additional cost. The support team is also good as they were able to resolve the majority of issues during the initial implementation.

There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA.  

Also, there is no date/time column so you don't know which is the latest tape that has been uploaded to object storage.  

You also cannot search by tape name so you have to scroll through the tape list if you ever need to cross-reference.  

Another shortcoming is that the tapes do not remove from the list once they've been deleted via the retention policy so you would have to manually remove them.  

I've requested all of these in a feature request with their R&D so hopefully, they will be included in future releases.

We've been using this solution for over two years now.

We did not have a previous solution. This was an add-on solution to our existing backup solution.

The pricing is very reasonable compared to a physical tape library.  

We evaluated the physical tape library, however, it was too costly.

The initial setup will take time, however, their implementation team will assist all the way through.

We used Starwind to provide HA ISCSI storage to a Hyper-V Cluster for VM Storage. This was mounted through MPIO on Windows for both nodes, using data locality for high levels of speed and performance. 

The devices are connected via fiber over a 10-mile line, over an isolated subnet. This has been great, as we've been able to shut down an entire site and have the machines not notice any difference. This was done over our existing network, using an isolated VLAN to have traffic be in its own area with no other issues.  

Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost. We were unable to find a solid replacement for our aging HP Lefthand solution, and Starwind stepped into that fantastically. 

Prior to this, based on a design issue, traffic for storage replication was served on the same network as ISCSI traffic. This had the expected issues you'd think, leading to bad performance. Starwind doesn't allow this by default, and as such forced our architect to realize the mistake and worked to get it set up better, with Starwind support. 

The support has been top-notch. The engineers you get are knowledgeable and are able to solve issues right out the gate, which is huge for us. We don't get finger-pointing between vendors with them either, as they own issues and take care of them from the beginning. The installation and setup were done with a dedicated engineer, who went through the system step by step and made sure our techs understood the process while getting a great setup out the gate. This was all handled via Zoom, which was a nice thing to not worry about it. 

It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings. However, we normally don't have to. 

I do see a lot of info about them now offering a VSAN-like software that is a Linux VM base for VMware. I'd like to see this same option available for Hyper-V, or at least make it more apparent the differences between the two. 

I would like to see more US-based resellers. Working directly with the company was fine, but we prefer to have local resellers available as needed. 

I've used the solution for two years.

It is as stable as the Windows OS it runs on. Take that as you will. 

It appears to scale horizontally well, as you're able to keep data locality present and it will allow you to pick which data is replicated or not. 

Support is easy to get a hold of, and usually first-call resolution. 

Positive

We used HP Lefthand/StorVirtual, which was end-of-life. 

IT was straightforward, as it was vendor-led and handheld through. They helped us every step of the way. 

The implementation was vendor-led, and they were highly available. 

The ROI we witnessed was within 7 months, due to hosting on our system. 

The cost isn't too good to be true. If you're able to use commodity hardware, it's worth a look. 

We looked at Truenas. 

Give it a shot. They may not be the biggest, however, they're able to play in the field. 

We purchased this product to manage storage between our two-node Hyper-V cluster. We're running a pair of Dell R740's with 16 core CPUs and RAID 6 storage arrays, all solid-state.  

We wanted this product to facilitate a hyper-converged environment while still maintaining two host redundancy. We're running about 25 virtual machines on this cluster, none of which are particularly storage IO intensive, yet we've still not seen any issues with performance when it comes to Starwind vSAN. We ended up on this option as it seemed to be simple, robust, and affordable.

This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime.  

Keeping things running is an obvious benefit, and we opted to purchase their higher-tier support (for a very minor price increase). Knowing we've got them to fall back on if we can't fix something ourselves is good for peace of mind. The notifications built into the software mean we aren't constantly checking for issues as this is a very critical piece of our infrastructure.

Starwind support was extremely helpful throughout the entire process, from the trial period to the actual production implementation. They responded to my emails quickly and did a walkthrough to validate the final production configuration to ensure there were no issues.  

The engineer that assisted me with the walkthrough was very knowledgeable, and not just on Starwind software. He had several recommendations about our Hyper-V cluster configuration, and he always made sure to explain why he was making those recommendations. 

Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items. This wasn't a huge issue as the technician that walked me through the install was very knowledgeable and gave me a clear list of steps to take.

The only major issue we had was with the NIC drivers we were using on the link between the two hosts. For reference, we're using a direct connection between a 40 gig QSFP+ NIC in each of our hosts. The issue was that the iSCSI connection between the two hosts would drop after about ten minutes during a full sync of the two storage arrays. The support tech was able to quickly identify the drivers as the issue to get it resolved quickly and prior to our production deadline.

We've used the solution for two months.

It's been very stable for our usage. We've had no issues since implementation two months ago.

I hear it scales well, however, we've not used it beyond our own small scale.

Technical support was very good.

Positive

Previously, we were using Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct across a three-node environment. We switched due to the fact that we sold a portion of our company and downsized to two nodes. Storage Spaces Direct doesn't seem ideal for a two-node system.

The initial setup was a bit confusing based on the documentation, however, support was very knowledgeable and able to assist with any issues and questions I had.

I implemented it myself with assistance from Starwind support. It's not a complex process.

Pricing is very simple and a setup walkthrough is included in the price of the software. It's a perpetual license and you only pay to renew support, which was a reasonable price.

We considered storage spaces direct, however, didn't ever implement it on our new two-node cluster.

I really can't overstate how responsive their support was.