StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

I'm running StarWind VSAN in an Hypercoverged virtualization cluster. The capability of running the software on top of a general windows os gives me the ability to create a fully redundant SAN solution on almost every virtualization platform. I'm using the software to provide core infrastructure services like AD, DNS, DHCP to my users. Every service is automatically fully redudant thanks to VSAN and in the event one host goes down VMs will be automatically restarted on a second node with a little downtime.

The product improves my company's data redundancy by avoiding storage vendor locking and improves the performance and availability of our Customer's Services. We don't need at all of the expensive storage appliances like EMC or HP by using standard x86 servers to provide the same level of data security. We could then lower the prices of hardware support contracts by simply using StarWind VSAN on top servers like Dell PowerEdge or HP ProLiant. The ability to sync data on two servers gives users a perfect disaster recovery plan at almost no cost.

• The ability to run the software virtually on every virtualization platform and the ability to eliminate all storage vendor locking are the most valuable features. 
• The capability of creating a hot copy of my data on another piece of hardware and continually sync it. 
• The ability to increase the performance of reads and writes thanks to data caching and load balancing on the two hardware nodes. 
• The capability to implement an asynchronous replication on the third node outside my main data center in order to create a disaster recovery solution.

Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition).

I've been using the product for two years.

We are using VSAN in our cloud environment to provide CSVs to the Hyper-V Group. We are using a converged environment, so we have two commodity class servers configured as a high availability StarWind cluster and then we have many Hyper-V compute nodes that access the CSVs from the StarWind cluster.

We can use Veeam to back up and replicate the virtual machine files from the CSV/cluster.

We use SPF + 10 GbE modules off the shelf and 10 GbE switches off the shelf. We were able to create a redundant network infrastructure to support our SAN network.

Creating a high availability cluster required the configuration of the cluster on our hardware and the shared space to access the files has improved my organization.

Using the StarWind VSAN solution allowed us to reduce costs by using equipment that we already owned.

StarWind has allowed us to virtualize our environment without the huge expense of a dedicated SAN, 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.

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.

The ability to use off the shelf hardware (servers, RAID cards, SSDs, etc.) is also invaluable in terms of cost and flexibility.

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

The product can be improved:

• There is no good way to see how all networks are distributed on the console. Besides, once they are created and highlighted, everything seems to be going well.
• If we stay with Virtual SAN instead of managed devices, it would be nice to have more automated tools to manage iSCSI connections in Windows, which can be a bit confusing at first.
  
• We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support.
  

We are using VSAN in our company for about one year.

The solution is very stable. We have tested storage network outages with failure of one or two nodes. The solution is able to stay online or repair itself with ease

The scalability of this solution is impressive. We're very happy to use it.

The experience of work with clients/technical support is very positive. Everything is fast and available.

The initial setup wasn't difficult.

We have implemented through a group of suppliers. Their level of experience is quite high.

Will soon pay off by reducing 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.

We immediately chose Starwind because our system administrator had experience with this product in the past.

This product is definitely worth the investment.

We needed a SAN to support our environment comprised at the time of two Hyper-V 2012 Clusters. We're now migrating to Hyper-V 2019 and we had no issues with the migration from the storage. We use SATA NL and SSD to give our VMs different performance tiers.

Update: We finished the migration and moved all storage iSCSI comms to Mellanox. We have had 0 issues with Starwind. 

StarWind allowed us to deploy SSD storage with very high availabilty at a good price at a time where all other vendors were pushing huge premiums on SSDs. We were also able to deploy different storage tiers with no issues, which was very important to our solution.

Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs.

The high availability made sure we never had downtime from it.

Having twin nodes has made maintenance and upgrades easy.

Support has always been great with issues and planning.

Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved.

The virtualization layers and not having the storage on the same node as compute take a lot of the IOPS we could have on an HCI scenario, but we grew out of it.

We have been using this solution since 2015.

The solution itself is simple and having two separate hosts gives it great availability. There is no single point of failure apart from the software itself and while we had some issues we never lost both nodes.

We only came close when Microsoft introduced a bug that crashed our hosts if they had pending iSCSI connections, and you have those if a node is not synced.

No issues.

They solved our problems, validated our configurations and roadmap, and suggested improvements.

Prior to this solution, we used HPE MSA. We wanted easier tiering, better performance, and not to have everything on one "box".

The initial setup was simple. We chose our HW, validated with support, and had them help configure them.

It's easy to understand and to deploy.

We evaluated solutions by HPE, EMC, and NetApp.

We're satisfied with the features available.

We needed to deploy the new infrastructure in our new data center as soon as possible. As a reliable, fault-tolerant storage, we chose StarWind solution. I took two old Supermicro servers and installed them in RAID controllers and SSD drives, then installed Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role. Then, I made StarWind the two-node iSCSI target. The servers were connected to the VMware cluster via the iSCSI 10 GbE interfaces. The storage showed very good speed results with SQL databases, file servers, and MS Exchange, which completely satisfied us.

This solution made it possible to deploy a new infrastructure in the shortest amount of time, at a low cost without purchasing expensive hardware storage, and use unused servers. As a result, we got a reliable fault-tolerant storage with good performance and placed virtual machines that are important for business on it. This solution has been working for several months without a single failure. 

It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization. 

StarWind installs on the Windows Server host where I can monitor RAID using various software already installed in my organization. 

• Easy to install and configure.  
• A lot of documentation, video instructions, and excellent technical support. 
• The ability to install on almost any type of equipment, including legacy. 
• Fast delivery compared to hardware storage facilities, which have a delivery time of four to six weeks.
  

I would like to see all the network adapters in the console with their assigned roles as sync, Heartbeat, and iSCSI, then their link speeds and real-time loading.

In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient.

Three months.

For three months, there has not been a single failure. Testing was performed and restarting one server did not affect the performance of the storage and important virtual machines.

I didn't have that task.

They are very friendly and have quick support.

No, I haven't used such solutions before.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I installed everything myself. Later, the technical support connected with me and to the servers to inspect the installation.

This is the best priced solution for an SMB.

This is a very good solution for small businesses.

We also considered the option of VMware vSAN, but it is very expensive.

Everything works. I am completely satisfied with the reliability and speed.

We have a fault-tolerant infrastructure, consisting of two storage nodes hosting the VM's storage and two Hyper-V nodes.

It has given the company an almost zero possibility of downtime.

The most valuable features are:

1. Easy implementation
   
2. Great Support
3. It doesn’t break the bank

New versions of this solution should be tested more thoroughly before the release, as we had a few problems with one version due to a bug.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for four years.

Our company, an IT integrator in Ukraine, conducted a pilot deployment of five two-node Hyper-V failover clusters with CSV build with VSAN for Microsoft Hyper-V. Each cluster consisted of only two hardware nodes with redundant 10Gb/s direct DAC links (no switch) and 1Gb/s uplinks. After four months of testing, we have no doubt in using this exact solution in our customer’s production environment.

We are going to deploy three similar installations this year. Also, we are planning to test the new VSAN for VMware vSphere.

Being able to create reliable virtual environments with less hardware and no need to pay for expensive enterprise or datacenter grade software. This expends our portfolio with a solution for those customers with low budgets and a lack of highly qualified administrators.  

The most valuable features are:

• Clear licensing model;
  
• Rich PowerShell integration for scripting and testing;
  
• No need for RAID controller-level mirroring and BBU. Thus we significantly increase effective storage space and speed;
• Great synchronous replication speed in addition to RAM volume cache;
• Reliable failover solution with MPIO which requires just two servers running Windows Server 2019, Standard edition.

If we could get more within its price, it would be useful to:

• Be able to collect operational logs with external dedicated syslog or SNMP servers;
• Be able to encrypt separate LUNs/iSCSI targets with a key stored on external KMS/KMIP servers;
• Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for four months.

Previously, we had to use Storage Spaces Direct or VMware vSAN for similar projects. Those two are worth mentioning, but they are more expensive and have a larger administrative footprint.  

Fast and simple installation using GUI with all required manuals, video guides, and a great support team explaining every step of a process. There is no need for highly qualified professionals.

The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions.

StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios.

You should be totally sure to avoid "split brain" in a two-node clustering with a redundant heartbeat, but without any external witness/arbitrator it is not against the solution`s concept.

We have set up a dual StarWind SAN with a fault-tolerant volume for our critical virtual servers in addition to some non-fault-tolerant volumes for less critical virtual servers in both our corporate HQ and one of our large divisions. The corporate site is using Hyper-V and the other division using VMware ESX. Between the two sites we have 15+ physical servers with over 150 VMs running.

Our corporate site uses Dell servers w/SAS drives for the two StarWind nodes and the division site built two white box type servers using NAS-specific SATA drives. Both solutions have been outstanding.

The StarWind SAN solution has provided numerous benefits to our organization. First of all, the fault-tolerant volume has saved us twice from hardware failures maintaining the volume without any loss of service or data. In addition, having a centralized SAN has provided outstanding flexibility to our virtual infrastructure. Setup and management of the system are very easy and customer support has always been very responsive and thorough. Management of the StarWind system is mostly non-existent because once it is set up, it just runs.

The fault-tolerant volume has been wonderful and provides peace of mind. We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime. I really appreciate how easy it is to use the software and set up a fault-tolerant volume.

If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs. 

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

Stability has been rock solid. The only failures we have experienced have been in hardware, and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected.

Scalability is great.

Customer service has always been excellent. 

We previously used Openfiler then moved to Open-E, and finally Starwind. I would highly recommend StarWind and have in many cases, including for our corporate HQ when we were acquired.

Setup was easy and support is always helpful with any questions or even to walk you through the setup if you are a novice. 

We implemented using our in-house IT.

Before we purchased StarWind, we evaluated several software solutions and a couple of hardware solutions. In the case of the software solutions, StarWind was the clear winner in performance and ease of use. In comparison to the hardware solutions, it was a lot more economical.

We fully evaluated Open-E and StarWind. StarWind was both easier to set up and manage, and it also outperformed Open-E.

StarWind has been an excellent solution for our virtual storage needs. There are features like remote replication that we don't currently use but could provide excellent disaster recovery for a remote site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most valuable features are:

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

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

The areas where this solution should be improved are:

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

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

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

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

Scaling by including new nodes-requires timing for synchronization.

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

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

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

Implementation was within the company.

The solution is cost-effective.

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

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

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

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

I started using this product when I had challenges with failover as one of the requirements for my client. I had to deploy the failover environment but the challenge was mirroring of the servers.

Now that I have implemented StarWind, everything is running perfectly.

The product I had bought for the client mirrors from one server to another. This means that an application installed on server A can still be accessed on server B. In my case, I had an access control system installed in one server but mirrored on the other server.

The most valuable features are easy installation, the appearance of the dashboard, the software runs as a native hypervisor component or in VM, and it does not require any deep storage and network administration or UNIX management skills.

A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations.

This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for three months

The system is very stable.

Performance is uncompromised by the minimalistic hardware footprint, as well as the reduced deployment and management costs. StarWind VSAN brings to the table server-side flash and memory caches, log-structuring, and an absolutely minimalistic I/O path. The resulting performance is unmatched by either typical virtual appliances or physical shared storage.

I did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was easy and step-by-step, following the manuals.

Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective.

I was directly recommended by the manufacturer.

For now, StarWind has satisfied my needs, as my requirement was to create a failover environment for the servers, also allowing the system to run with less administration. 

This solution provides us with high availability and failover with fault tolerance across two nodes. Implementing a highly available environment made way more sense to our company using StarWind’s Virtual SAN than other SAN or virtual SAN solutions we looked into over the past few months.

It allows me to configure high availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget.

Doing failover testing, things have worked pretty flawlessly.

The support for two-node implementation was great.

I would like to see some additional, and possibly clearer, implementation videos with some slower and possibly more detailed descriptions of what the various steps of implementation are for someone who is unfamiliar with high availability and failover clustering in Windows.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for two months.

This is a very stable solution.

Scalability is excellent.

The technical support team is very knowledgeable.

I did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I was able to implement this configuration following a couple of online guides from StarWind and a couple of third-party articles. I also had the StarWind support team available to me if/when I had any issues.

We implement this solution in-house.

Within days, maybe weeks. How much is uptime worth?

There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost.

I did not evaluate other products before choosing this one.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to give it a try.

Implementing a UPS along with it is a good idea.