StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

Our primary use case is hyper-convergence and storage virtualization.

Our configuration has eleven servers installed. Three of these are SQL servers, five are installed as application servers, and on the remaining servers, various small services are hosted. These include web servers, RDP servers, and so on.

StarWind vSAN for Hyper-V consolidated the last three servers into a failover cluster for load balancing and increased availability. This made it possible to transfer the specified services to virtual machines.

Initially, it was not planned to use virtualization, but at some point, I realized that it was necessary. I had no opportunity to install any shared storage and in this case, the StarWind Virtual SAN solution was perfect.

I did not have any type of failover cluster. StarWind vSAN for Hyper-V solves the problem without any kind of hardware lock-in and with its low impact, easy to configure vSAN solution. This made it possible to create a failover cluster with high performance without significant costs.

The most important features for us are:

• StarWind vSAN requires two nodes, which can be completely switchless, and it doesn’t require any additional equipment to get started.
• StarWind works on the iSCSI layer.
• StarWind requires at least two 1 GbE networks.
• StarWind works either on top of a hardware RAID or a software RAID.
• There are only three servers in our installation and it was great that I didn't need to buy any additional network hardware.
• The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure.
• The requirement for two-gigabit adapters also avoided additional costs.
• In particular, it was important to me that the implementation of the StarWind vSAN solution did not require reinstalling the operating system or reconfiguring the RAID.
  

It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers.

I think that using equal partitions would improve performance by eliminating the additional file system necessary to host the container

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for approximately six months.

I did not face any critical issue for our main purposes.

Very positive. As far as I understand, it will be very easy to scale.

Technical support is very competent in matters not only of the product but also of the features of the hypervisor and the operating system on which the installation was performed.

I have not used other solutions before.

The initial setup was not difficult. I received help with the first installation from technical support.

The vendor team helped with the initial setup and I rate their level as very high.

I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most.

As an alternative to StarWind vSAN for Hyper-V, I considered Microsoft S2D, but I had to abandon it due to the fact that it does not support hardware RAID.

I have not been using the product for long enough to objectively name the features that should be added in the next release or would not suit me in the current release. The functions that I needed to work on do not cause any complaints from me.

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.