StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

StarWind VSAN software was easily deployed on the commodity hardware and integrated into the existing IT infrastructure.

We have used in HyperConvergence and Citrix XenServer installations without any problem.

With our customized hardware, we have very good IOPS and throughput.

This solution has allowed the company to create an HA virtual server environment satisfying budget restrictions and reliability requirements. VM live migration was ensured by StarWind VSAN as well, thanks to building a failover cluster.

The price of StarWind VSAN was another tidbit.

On top of all of this, the StarWind Support Team did everything to ensure that the IT infrastructure was up and running as quickly as possible.

High Availability is the best feature of product. You have redundancy of storage systems at a competitive price. All other storage solutions are very expensive and without redundancy and if you have it the price is very high.

Additionally, the feature of asynchronous replication, both for on-site and off-site systems is very competitive. Also the support of LSFS file system is very good.

Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers.

I don't think there are features that this product doesn't have it. It has all of the things that a system engineer will want.

I have been using this solution for two years.

This solution has excellent stability.

The scalability is excellent.

In one problem that I with the performance, they gave me a solution very quickly using a remote session.

Before our StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, we had NetApp, IBM DS Series, and HP StorageWorks MSA1000 storage systems.

They have low performance and no replication (is very expensive).

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

We implemented this solution in-house.

The ROI for this solution is very good.

This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy.

We did not evaluate other options. We have only classic storage and filers.

I recommend this solution because it gives me flexibility and expandability.

It works like a charm without any problem or concern.

As traditional storage is too expensive, our clients are looking for a more affordable solution. If you compare StarWind to EqualLogic EMC or NetApp, it's a cheaper option.

Updating the software can be a bit tricky. You have to go down scripts to put it in maintenance mode, etc. It takes a while to update. From my experience, I think that's a thing that they need to improve on.

Every time I put it in maintenance mode, all of the replications stop. If they could fix this, it would be a great product.

We've been using StarWind Virtual SAN since June 2020.

Scalability-wise, it's hard to say because I haven't really added anything. 

Most of the information was quite clear on their website. The knowledge base is quite sufficient with all the info required. For this reason, I haven't had to contact technical support.

It's quite easy to install. Also, the configuration and documentation guide from their site was quite good.

We don't need maintenance. We do it ourselves. As I said, it's pretty straightforward —  standard, to install. It's not complex.

I think the cost of this solution is quite fair.

Make sure to consider the requirements of your environment. If you're in a high-performance-driven environment, I don't think this is the right solution. In this case, I would go with a traditional storage solution because you'll get better performance out of a physical one. For me, it's just a cheaper solution that doesn't require indigenous apps, etc.

I would not go for enterprise deployment. I'll go with the traditional one. Make sure your requirements fit with what you want to buy.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

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 private cloud environment to provide highly redundant CSVs to a Hyper-V Cluster. We are using a converged environment so we have two commodity grade servers setup as a highly available StarWind cluster, then we have numerous Hyper-V compute nodes which access CSVs from the StarWind cluster. 

We are able to use Veeam to backup and replicate the VM files from the CSV/cluster.

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

We were previously using Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, but that product was unreliable and practically unsupported by Microsoft. We were able to leverage our previous hardware capital investment and converted our infrastructure to use StarWind VSAN. The migration process was simple, and afterwards, we had a highly reliable SAN system. 

We've always wanted to deploy a software-defined storage system, as proprietary SANs do not meet our requirements. They are expensive and very inflexible. StarWind has been excellent.

The highly available feature between two nodes works without any issues. We have practiced DR scenarios and our CSV/cluster has always stayed online. The software has the ability to "elect" a master after a failure of one or two nodes, then it will resync after that without issue.

The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete.

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

A duplication feature inside of a CSV would be very useful. I'm sure there are a lot of duplicated blocks on a CSV that have 75 VMs of Windows Server.

StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct.

A web interface for management and StarWind SNMP MIBs would also be very useful.  

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 storage is as salable as your underlying storage. If you are using hardware RAID cards, then you are somewhat limited for expansion, etc. It is still much better than proprietary SANs. 

Support has been very good. I regularly schedule off hours support sessions and their team has never complained. 

We previously used Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct but had numerous reliability issues with the solution. It was definitely not ready for a production environment. 

Setup was somewhat complex, but StarWind works with you the entire way and handles nearly all of the setup. 

We worked directly with StarWind. The experience was excellent. 

Less than one year. 

The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment. 

We had thought about proprietary SANs, but those didn't fit our requirements for cost and flexibility. 

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.