StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

Our primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is to repurpose older servers with substantial disk capacity for use in a three-node vSphere cluster. This setup was for proof of concept (POC) environments for the first time and after to host production workloads.

It allows us to create scalable and cost-effective virtual storage solutions. The integration with vSphere ensures that we can efficiently manage and utilize these resources, enhancing our IT infrastructure while minimizing new hardware and licensing costs.

StarWind Virtual SAN has greatly benefited our organization by reducing hardware and licensing costs through repurposing older servers with significant disk capacity. It has enabled us to extend the lifespan of our existing hardware and align with sustainability goals, all while providing a cost-effective and scalable storage solution. Its seamless integration with vSphere has improved our storage management and operational efficiency in production environments.

It was our first two steps to a hyper-converged solution.

The most valuable features of StarWind Virtual SAN include its cost-effective repurposing of older hardware, seamless integration with vSphere, and high scalability. It enables us to extend the lifespan of existing servers, significantly cut down on licensing costs, and manage our storage environment efficiently. 

Additionally, its flexibility allows us to scale effortlessly by adding nodes (up to 32), which supports our growing storage needs and enhances the adaptability of our production environment.

Areas for improvement in StarWind Virtual SAN include simplifying the setup process, especially for users with limited vSphere expertise. Future releases could benefit from an enhanced configuration wizard to streamline deployment and more robust data migration. There is also a need to address the problem of CentOS's end of life. 

Additionally, incorporating a built-in backup solution would significantly enhance data protection. Improved features for managing and migrating data effectively would further strengthen the product.

I have been using the solution for three years now

The stability of StarWind Virtual SAN is robust. The solution performs reliably with minimal downtime, ensuring consistent operation in production environments. 

In case of the loss of a node, the reconstruction, depending on the amount of data to synchronize, is always made with no data or integrity loss.

However, the reliance on CentOS, introduces potential future stability risks. Despite this, the system has consistently delivered dependable performance and resilience, maintaining stability even under significant workloads.

The solution allows for easy expansion by adding nodes (up to 32), which supports growing storage demands and adapts well to increasing workloads. This flexibility ensures that as our storage needs evolve, we can scale the system efficiently without major reconfiguration or downtime. 

Overall, its scalability is a significant strength, making it a versatile choice for both current and future requirements.

I haven't experienced support since I used the free version. Anyway, I have found plenty of support from StarWind through their forum.

We did not previously use a different solution. 

It was complex to understand the mechanism of the hyperconverged solution put in place.

The ESXi consumes the virtual disk created by Starwind Vsan from the local disk.
The cabling was not that difficult since I didn't use any for data sync between nodes.

The most difficult part was the usage of PowerShell scripts to create the cluster because the free version doesn't provide a Gui.

The implementation was in-house, in a new data center.

The ROI was excellent because we reused old servers that already had capacity disks.

If you are comfortable with the solution and you feel that you don't need support, you can begin with the free licences for three nodes.

We did not evaluate other options.

Hyperconverged lab and testing environments fulfill several special requirements for use cases. We use it for demonstration environments and for virtualization and containerization. We have a rather smaller footprint, ranging from two to three nodes over the years. 

Mainly, we have an edge use case. Another use case is refurbishing and second lifecycle evaluation, specifically I/O and disaster recovery capabilities, which are important in these lab environments. 

Modernization could also be counted as a use case since modernizing data centers on small-scale or edge deployments is becoming increasingly important, even for smaller businesses.

For my organization, StarWind vSAN has been a first of firsts in hyper-converged storage and has been, first and foremost, a technology demonstrator that should disclose and present the advantages of modern data center constellations. 

Over the years, it has also functioned as a lab environment and customer demonstrator specifically for refurbishing old hardware and educational objects for our internal apprentices, effectively transforming our mindset towards modern data center infrastructure. It also served as a proof of concept for refurbishing and cost-reducing existing infrastructures.

I have found the overall ergonomy and manageability outstanding during normal functioning. Specifically, the console GUI's monitoring and configuring capabilities can be counted towards that. 

Even when not administrated via GUI, the comprehensive Powershell automation module remains, which comes with templates prepopulated for the most common automation tasks. 

Furthermore, the solution provides great performance for the price it is listed with and can even run properly without proper hardware, however, it is even more efficient and performs better when procuring proper hardware is possible.

My impression has been mostly positive. However, there have been some pitfalls. For example, it runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear. This consequently follows a long learning curve and can take some time until this can be done efficiently. 

The feature log-structured file system has been removed. While I have not used it, I know some colleagues who have reported some performance benefits under certain circumstances. 

Additionally, vSAN does not offer extended SAN features like inline deduplication, compression, or S3-compatible access, which is part of most modern SAN feature sets, also in hyper-converged scenarios.

I have been using several editions of the solution for more than five years.

The stability of this solution is vastly dependent on the hardware procured beforehand. Network hardware is especially important, and bad or glitchy hardware (like the Intel X700 or X800 series) can quickly break things. It runs—until it does not. Be sure to learn or consult about the disaster recovery process, especially if you decide on a witness strategy hosted in vSAN.

The software can be pretty scalable; however, after reaching more and more nodes, one may look at StarWind's hyperconverged appliance instead of going through the hassle of administrating separate systems.

They have only friendly and positive experiences, always a helping hand. Also, they are offering proactive support, which, from the experience of some of my colleagues, is an outstanding experience unusual to many professional service providers.

Neutral

We did not use a different solution beforehand.

The initial setup was very straightforward and easy, although one could deep dive into the specific protocol configuration options. Also, I would have liked it if some features or procedures would have been better documented at the time.

We implemented it through our in-house R&D team.

I will not publish accurate numbers. However, the modernization aspect in terms of lab infrastructure and testing/demonstration environments has an educational benefit, strengthening our consultancy, demonstrating capabilities and our mindset towards data center innovation.

I would highly advise new users to consult the StarWind technical team beforehand. 

Also, consider the paid version if you want the ease of management through the console GUI and not just use it for monitoring. 

You can also apply for a testing or NFR license if you want to test it. StarWind vSAN is, by list price, vastly more competitive than some comparable solutions. The setup may be straightforward, fast, and easy; however, it can break things down if not done properly. Before setup, be sure to procure proper hardware components that are not known to cause instabilities.

Due to budget constraints, Ceph has been evaluated as an alternative. We also took a look at Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and VMware vSAN.

Consider StarWind's proactive support. It improves the software's already high value and defuses the long learning curve of some processes! When clustering resources, deeply consider your witness strategy! Especially when you can not guarantee 100% stable hardware (e.g., through firmware issues), this can break things very quickly if you have a witness device in the same vSAN.

We successfully virtualized our entire company's data infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN. This implementation allowed us to consolidate and optimize our storage environment, improving overall efficiency and reducing operational costs associated with managing and maintaining a traditional SAN.

StarWind Virtual SAN seamlessly integrates with our existing hypervisors, providing us with a fault-tolerant and high-performance storage pool for our virtualized environments. 

The most valuable feature we found was the ease of use. This aspect greatly simplified the setup and management of our storage environment, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. While the solution has been instrumental in enhancing our storage infrastructure, we believe there is room for improvement in certain areas. Improvements in documentation and support resources could further enhance the user experience. Integration with containerization platforms to support modern application development practices would also be beneficial. 

More advanced configuration options would cater to our specific needs. Looking ahead, we believe that future releases of Virtual SAN could benefit from additional features such as enhanced monitoring and reporting capabilities, integration with cloud storage providers, and support for automated data tiering. 

Overall, StarWind Virtual SAN has significantly improved the efficiency and reliability of our storage infrastructure, and we anticipate further enhancements in future releases.

We utilize StarWind Virtual SAN for managing the storage area network (SAN) in our data centers. The solution enables us to ensure a fault-tolerant and high-performance storage pool to support the needs of our virtualized environments. Its seamless integration with our existing hypervisors allows us to efficiently and reliably manage the storage resources required for our virtualized applications and workloads. 

StarWind offers a free version, allowing users to test the product without any initial investments. This version runs on top of existing hypervisors and hardware, making it ideal for test and development processes in the pre-production stage. Users can easily upgrade to a commercial version later, ensuring a seamless transition without disruptions.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include:

Simplified setup and management: StarWind Virtual SAN offers ease of use, simplifying the setup and management of storage environments. 

Seamless integration: It seamlessly integrates with existing hypervisors, providing fault-tolerant storage for virtualized environments. 

Cost savings: Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs. We successfully virtualized our entire company's data infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN. This implementation allowed us to consolidate and optimize our storage environment, improving overall efficiency and reducing operational costs associated with managing and maintaining a traditional SAN.

The solution could improve:

Documentation and support: Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience. 

Advanced configuration options: More advanced configuration options may be needed to cater to specific needs. 

Feature expansion: This could include:

• Integration with containerization platforms for modern application development practices could be beneficial. 
• Enhanced monitoring and reporting capabilities to provide more insights into the performance and health of the storage environment. 
• Integration with cloud storage providers to enable hybrid cloud deployments and data tiering capabilities. 
• Support for automated data tiering to optimize storage utilization and performance based on usage patterns. 
• Advanced data protection features such as encryption at rest and in transit to ensure data security and compliance. 
• Integration with containerization platforms to support modern application development practices.

I've used the solution for six months.

We built a two-server Hyper-V failover cluster. We build typical servers like we normally would with NVME drives and plenty of storage. This software works hand in hand with Microsoft hyper-v failover manager for a seamless setup that has not given us any issues since implementation. 

Live failovers are tested every week, and the customer does not even notice when the failovers are tested. The performance was exceptional, and everything worked as expected. We went ahead and got the three-year 24/7 support contract since it's a critical customer. While the price is a bit steep, this process and product have given us a lot of peace of mind that the servers will continue running even if one of the physical hosts goes down.

It's a very easy Implementation with the help of support. We received quick responses from support for any questions we had throughout the entire process. StarWind is a stable product that allowed us to build the cluster exactly like we wanted hardware-wise. This product has allowed us to build a two-node failover cluster without a SAN. 

We also did not need the datacenter edition of server OS. We were very worried about the implementation process. However, they helped us with the entire implementation, leaving no stone unturned and all questions answered.

Overall, it was a great experience dealing with the various StarWind team members from the pre-sales all the way through to implementation. This was our first experience with a hyper-converged failover cluster, and the team at StarWind made it easy for us. 

Before making the choice, we were weighing out all the cluster options, and everything kept coming back to StarWind. I'm glad it did, as we definitely feel we made the right choice. We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected.

Pricing is a bit high. That said, the support is worth it. It's really hard to point out any other negatives. The licensing and support pricing structure could have been laid out a little simpler, and then pricing could have been less, of course. However, the truth is the support really does make up for the cost, in our opinion. We did decide to go with three-year 24/7 support due to implementation in a critical communications center. We feel like we won't need to use them for much at all since the products just work. Due to this, the pricing could have been better, especially with us purchasing all three years at once.

I've used the solution for one year. 

We needed redundancy in our "dark" environment. A failover cluster was the best solution for us. We have a complicated infrastructure consisting of various v-hosts and over 40 VMs in all kinds of operating systems. 

For continuity, it was necessary to update our VMs without any downtime. It's installed on two v-hosts with the most important machines. This way, we can continue operations without hick-ups. We chose StarWind as it's independent of the hardware used in our v-hosts. We did look at other solutions; however, in the end, StarWind VSAN was the best choice for us.

We needed a redundant solution for our environment, and it was sufficient to have a two-node cluster. 

The implementation went flawlessly with the help of StarWind support. However, technical knowledge is mandatory. Nevertheless, we had a quick installation. Since we had lots of different types of storage available, we were able to assign different types of storage depending on the type of usage for the virtual machines. 

We already had an unexpected outage of one of the nodes due to a memory problem, and thanks to StarWind vSAN, our operations continued as expected. It's an easy way to keep your failover cluster monitored.

StarWind vSAN is easy to use and has a very clear GUI. The most valuable in StarWind vSAN is the way it works seamlessly with the Microsoft fail-over cluster. 

We are working with a two-node setup that suits our needs perfectly. It just works without any technical know-how needed. 

The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items. 

It's also easy to add an extra node if necessary or connect if you've rebooted one of the nodes. Also, the speed of support is very valuable to us. If you have a problem or question, you'll get almost an immediate answer.

The product is as good as it promises. 

StarWind vSAN is updated on a regular basis, probably to keep up with Microsoft Windows or other operating systems. As far as I'm concerned, there should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed. 

In our dark environment, this is impossible as we don't have any mail server available in our infrastructure, which consists of a few v-hosts, redundant storage, and quite a few virtual machines, all running on Microsoft OS.

I've used the solution for three years.

In my company, we employ a sophisticated infrastructure comprised of three distinct hypervisors and a dedicated storage server featuring vSAN technology. This intricate setup serves as the backbone for delivering a diverse range of services to our clients, encompassing web hosting plans, secure and efficient file sharing, compute power, and bespoke storage solutions. 

Leveraging the flexibility of multiple hypervisors allows us to scale our services to meet the unique requirements of our clients, ensuring optimal performance and resource allocation. 

It also acts as the centralized storage for my home environment as well. Within my home setup, this robust virtualized storage solution plays a role in supporting various functionalities, including the storage and retrieval of data from surveillance cameras. 

It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration.

Hypervisor offers agnosticism for flexibility. My company could seamlessly transition workloads on VMware without worrying about storage compatibility issues.

It has dynamic workload management. As business requirements change, my company might need to migrate virtual machines (VMs) between two or three (or more) hypervisors based on performance, licensing, or other considerations. With Virtual SAN, I can easily move VMs without the need for complex storage transformations and involving other solutions.

The customizability and reliability of Virtual SAN setup in our infrastructure stand out as the key pillars supporting the seamless delivery of services to my clients. 

The ability to provide my virtualization environment to meet specific client needs ensures that we can meet diverse requirements, from web hosting plans to file sharing and storage solutions. This degree of customization not only enhances the client experience but also allows us to optimize resource utilization and calculate future improvements.

Moreover, the reliability of Virtual SAN plays a critical role in maintaining the stability and availability of my services. The redundant and fault-tolerant features in the Virtual SAN architecture provide a resilient infrastructure that minimizes downtime and ensures a consistent and reliable service for my clients.

Embarking on a 14-day GUI trial is a good approach for enabling an exploration of Virtual SAN's capabilities. This period can facilitate a better understanding of real-world performance, interface, and overall system suitability. 

By affording users the opportunity to dive deeply into the product's features, this trial can ensure a comprehensive evaluation, regarding the adoption of Virtual SAN.

An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration.

I've only used the solution for one year.

HCI was set up to host our ERP web apps, domain controller, and phone system.  We are using this in production, staging, and development with around 40 virtual machines. We are using Linux and Windows with VMware as the ESXi host. 

Our main use of StarWind HCI is creating a super-smooth virtualized server setup. It blends tech magic, merging storage, networking, and more into one. We were always running into the issues of needing to add more storage and having to pull down our servers, notify customers of the downtime, etc., however, not anymore.

The solution offers failover protection and the ability to expand storage and nodes with no downtime.  Our customers who use our web apps benefit from nearly zero downtime due to hardware failure, hardware replacement, or upgrades. 

Now we are looking at replicating a similar cluster setup for our firewall, switches, and ISP so we can get nearly 0.00% downtime which I know is not possible, however, with the new HCI setup, it is possible to at least almost get there. 

Their support is by far the best enterprise-level support I have come across.

The failover protection and the ability to expand storage and nodes with no downtime are by far the best physical features we have benefited from. Once we requested help from sales, it was a very easy decision compared to VMware where you get lost among the mess of products and low-trained phone techs.

Their web UI is very basic and that is how it should be. The magic is what their HCI setup does behind the scenes for redundancy and the ability to expand storage without ever having to go offline since another node picks up the storage.

Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported. They used to have it and was removed. Hopefully, both of these features will be coming in upcoming releases.  

A built-in DR that can be stretched with high latency would be very helpful as well. We were able to purchase VMware 8 for our hosts. It would be nice if they developed their own ESXi OS to compete with VMware as the other options out there are not great. VMware does what it needs, however, their support is not great.

I've been using the solution for one week.

We've had no downtime so far.

You can scale as much as your company will need.

Technical support is good. Somebody is always available 24/7.

Positive

I did not use a different solution.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We used StarWind in-house support as they do most of the setup before they send it to you.

We've witnessed downtime within two years.

I'd advise new users to have sales walk them through all the options and also ask them about purchasing the hardware for you.

I previously evaluated VMware.

Our client had very little IT infrastructure in play relating to servers. They had a single Windows 10 low-end workstation that was acting as the controller for their food production assembly line. They were tackling a huge expansion and needed a more robust controller as their current one would go down often. 

StarWind vSAN gave us a cost-effective option to leverage three Dell servers, with two in HA and a third acting as a replica in a separate building on their site. This way, it can tolerate two full server failures and still allow the assembly line controller to run.

The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment. This allowed our client to have their food assembly line controller always available, as it costs them a lot of money if it goes down for any more than a few minutes. 

With Hyper-V and StarWind, they can have a quick turnaround in case a server goes down. It also gave us an insight into StarWinds as an alternative for future clients of ours if their server capability requirements ever increase. It's a great tool to have knowledge of and to offer as an option if needed.

The core feature of the entire product is the most valuable aspect. There aren't any features that stand out that provide a lot of value. We just like the ability to have HA storage replicated in real time between two nodes - which is enough for us to be more than satisfied. We do not interface with this product very often, so I can't speak to any feature in particular that stands out as being exceptional and valuable. The value of the product is the services given at a great price which is what drew us to the StarWind Virtual SAN to begin with.

It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster. We had to reach out to support to confirm the process to power cycle a single node, and even then, we had to go back and forth a few times with support to get a clear and concise answer to the question we had. It would be nice to have the option to put a single node in maintenance mode so we know we can safely perform updates and power down the server if required.

We've had the solution for six months in production.

The product is very stable.

I get the impression that this is better geared towards a smaller scale, for example, ad two or four-node cluster. Anything bigger, and it would make more sense to go with the big-name competitor. 

Technical support is Exceptional. They have very helpful and prompt responses.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

The setup is straightforward with the help of the support engineers to fine-tune our deployment.

We had setup help from the vendor team. They were quite knowledgeable. That said, I do recall them doing a few things in a different way than described by their setup guide.

I have not researched ROI.

The cost and licensing are very competitive.

We did not evaluate other options.

StarWind Virtual SAN is a good solution. It helps our organization to fulfill the need for backup and restoration. 

Our organization was implementing a business continuity plan in which there was a need for regulatory compliance. We wanted to implement a solution to do scheduled backup and its restoration when needed. The process of implementing the solution was pretty simple, and it is readily available for use as well. 

As compared to other solutions, we found that it was easily integrated with our current solutions and could easily be deployed. 

We use the solution to improve compliance and risk management for our infrastructure. We also wanted to use it to create internal/operational efficiencies. 

We compared it with other solutions and have found we are able to drive revenue growth from this solution. It is keeping up with our needs and requirements. We found this solution offers good cost management. We also get the desired results of our RPO and RTO. During different operational issues, the backup restoration time of solutions is good. It's easy to use and is feasible in our virtualization environment. 

The performance of StarWind Virtual SAN is fast and effective. Reporting templates and customization have a very intense impact on senior management. 

The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy. It pulls out maximum IOPS from your existing raw storage with no crazy expensive hardware required. 

Licensing is flexible and transparent without any pitfalls or feature paywalls. 

Its HA deployment model is very easy with zero fault tolerance; we can operate HCI clusters through a unified StarWind web UI.

The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex. Most team members in our organization are new or have less experience with these kinds of complex solutions. It would be better to have a more user-friendly Web UI so that users with even the bare minimum amount of knowledge can also handle the product. 

In my country, it does not have a strong local support partner. If we have any issues or require support, we mostly contact the principal. It would be ideal if Starwind had a strong local partner with solid technical skills. That way, it would be very easy for us to handle any operational issues. 

I've used the solution for two years.

I'd rate stability eight out of ten. 

I'd rate scalability eight out of ten.

I did not use any other solution.

It was easy to set up and not that difficult. I'd rate the solution six out of ten. 

We implemented the solution in-house with the help of a vendor. I'd rate the setup process, and vendor support six out of ten. 

In terms of ROI, we have achieved our RTO and RPO.

I'd advise others to perform a POC before purchase and check whether it meets a company's needs or not.

I was not a part of the evaluation team.

We had several aging servers that needed to be replaced, including a server from 2008 and one that was an old Microsoft Small Business Server from 2011. 

When we ended up needing to replace everything when they had all reached end of life, we had some hard choices to make. We could have replaced all of those old bulky servers with a new pile of power-hungry and massive machines, or replace them all and virtualize everything and put them on two single-unit rack-mounted servers. We ended up going with StarWind Virtual SAN, and have never looked back.

Want to talk about speed, performance, and reliability? We literally went from having four or five very large and powerful boxes to the two sister servers that were provided by StarWind, and we set them up to have much better performance. Even more importantly, we found support that is world-class. I have never worked with such an impressive and well-balanced crew as the techs that I have had the pleasure of working with over these years. They are absolutely mind-blowing in every aspect that I've had them help me out with, from preinstallation to rollout to maintenance. 

We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer. 

The most valuable feature has been their support and willingness to help me with issues that, frankly, were not their responsibility. Every time I've called or emailed them, they have jumped in anyway and helped me find success in figuring out the issues I was having. They even kept the ticket open until I asked them to close it, which is nice.

Every solution has plusses and minuses, and for someone like me, who has very little experience spending my time in CLI, I appreciate a good GUI. This is the one place I would love to see the experience of StarWind improved. I wish there were more of an explanation or set of instructions that could point me in the right direction when I wanted to increase the size of one of our VMs. I did end up being able to shut the machine down and increase the size of its virtual HDD, however, in the end, I missed the mark and allocated too much space - and in a production environment, that space comes at a premium. I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI. 

We have had our StarWind Virtual SAN for almost five years now.

Our StarWind Servers have only ever "gone down" when I have been applying an update to the server's software. They have been rock solid and have better than six nines on their stability.

So far, we've been able to add storage and new servers year after year and have never run into an issue.  

Their customer service and support have been world-class. There is no other company I've ever worked with that had the level of support and dedication that I've been able to experience with StarWind.

Positive

We did not have a "solution" like this before. We previously had a hodgepodge of parts, servers, and service providers, which is nothing compared to what we have now.

The setup was amazing. The hardware arrived, we plugged it in, and StarWind connected to them and was off to the races getting our servers converted and up and running within a week. I've never seen anything similar since then.

We used a combination of in-house IT/IS and StarWind support to get these set up and running. In the end, we were all happy with the speed and technical expertise that went into our setup and the dedicated technicians who stuck with us throughout the entire setup and implementation.

The ROI is impossible to know. That said, in terms of reliability and performance, it has paid for itself within the first two years of ownership in electrical costs. They have, in the five years we've had them, paid for themselves in that aspect of cost alone. There is not even a comparison in terms of cost per watt and performance that we have observed.

The solution has given us the best results that I have ever seen in any environment.

We did eliminate several other solutions. That said, it has been too long to remember which ones. I remember worrying that StarWind's performance was going to be one of those too-good-to-be-true situations. It wasn't. The hype lived up to the performance and reliability.

If you are on the fence about them, jump off and land on their side where you never have to look back.