StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

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.

We found StarWind when trying to look for a hybrid storage space that could handle various physical hardware as well as virtual operating systems.

Upon first contacting the company, the sales and technical demo were superb compared to other products and they clearly explained and showed us a live demo of our potential environment.

The whole purchase process was swift and followed up by calls and emails from their team.

Compared to other products that we looked at, the cost-saving was so great that choosing StarWind was a no-brainer.

When I need something urgently and very technical, I get the answer back that I want. I don't have to battle through with a first liner that tells me to "turn it off and on again".

The solution has improved our organization by:

1. The variety of services offered

2. The financial viability compared to the services offered

3. Product functionality and performance is suitable for our organization

4. The strong consultation accessibility for customers that wish to discuss the product first with their experts and start the process how they like it, not how the company wants it to

5. The support team has the expertise of a strong service in the products that their customers have purchased

6. StarWinds, in general, has a strong user community that offers help on forums and other sites

7. The company has a firm customer focus keeping in touch with us at all times, even after purchasing the initial product after two years

The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful. However, now that we have a handle on it, it saves a great ton of time on management and caring about the hardware part of it as all it is is a software-based solution. I love managing the cluster that we have set up via the Virtual Storage Attached Network device, with the Web Management being so simple yet packed with all the features that I require. The management of the traffic and the speeds are awesome as well.

Some users have commented on online forums and others that the documentation and KB articles could be clearer or better written. However, I found this to be the case a couple of years ago. Now, in 2022, this has been rectified and you can usually find the information that you are looking for.

Another problem that we have come across is that when you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind.

I've been using the product for around two years now.

We previously used the standard SAN hardware solution from a big IT company - we switched to basically save on hardware costs and maintenance.

The initial setup cost will be great, especially with the new hardware. The StarWind pricing isn't that expensive compared to others, however, there are yearly maintenance costs to be aware of.

Yes, we had a look at Lenovo XClarity as well as Nutanix AOS and VMWare vSAN.

I'd advise new users to not hesitate and just go ahead with it.

After deploying a HA SQL Failover Cluster, we started to notice performance issues due to our storage, which was an off-the-shelf NAS.

I had already heard about StarWind and its VSAN software from previous blogs.

A VSAN solution seems like an ideal solution as we already had the hardware, minus the disks required. We already had two Dell R540's with six available bays in each server.

After reviewing their documentation, the setup process was simple enough to follow and so I decided to run a little test environment.

I was pleasantly surprised by the performance gains even on spinning disks and the overall setup being fairly painless.

I decided to go ahead with this solution, got the cost signed off, and implemented it in production.

We had some initial issues, however, their support was extremely helpful in resolving these and was very patient as we deployed this to a secure environment with no internet access. Yet they still offered support and worked closely with a single point of contact.

I then later moved to a different company and implement a similar solution in the Oracle Cloud using their free offering, again this was simple to set up using their collection of PowerShell scripts.

Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete.

In addition, their support contact was fantastic. They spent several hours troubleshooting an issue with me and due to the complexity of our environment this only made it more challenging, yet they were persistent and helped resolved any issues

Additionally, their white papers were a great starting point to get started.

The forums can lead to lots of topics with no resolutions.

The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent. However, when they do occur, it makes it very challenging to figure out what the cause is.

A feature that would be helpful, is a way to update the software automatically on all the hosts. Instead, you must find the download link, which in itself can be challenging, and then manually upgrade each server one by one. This process can take a while depending on the time to resync your VDISKS. 

For about 3 years, in which I deployed it in 2 companies.

Previously we were using a Synology NAS

Try the free version and see if it meets your requirements. 

I did look at purchasing EqualLogic, however, the cost of that hardware would be far greater than StarWind's

We needed a redundant solution that would be able to switch automatically to the backup side if necessary. 

Once StarWind was installed and configured the failover becomes automatic. 

However, it is also easy to do it on the fly manually (even during production hours). This allows you to almost completely eliminate maintenance windows as you can put all of the VMs on one appliance and run maintenance on the remaining appliance. This saves time and money not having to have someone come in off-hours to do said tasks.

It is so easy now to create VMs that have failover if one of the StarWind appliances fails. This nearly 100% uptime has allowed our organization to pretty much eliminate downtime during production hours. In fact, since we deployed StarWind we have had zero downtime during production hours. This peace of mind is priceless.  

We now have automatic failover thanks to StarWind Virtual SAN, on-prem backups, and cloud backups. This has also improved our DR strategy allowing us to recover more easily.

The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down. 

The ease of adding SSDs or memory is a valuable feature too.  

However, the most valuable part of this whole process has been the support.  They are available 24/7. If they notice something wrong, I will get an email, even if it is in the middle of the night or on a weekend or holiday.  

The SLA is about four hours, however, I can't remember a time when it took longer than 30 minutes to get a response. Scheduling them for maintenance or configuration issues is also a breeze.

Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs.  

When planning to purchase and deploy a StarWind system they monitor your resources for a week and build your StarWind appliance accordingly. It would be smart for the end user to really take into account the anticipated company growth and add on more computing initially. That would be a more streamlined approach.

We have had StarWind for a little over two years now.

The solution is incredibly stable.

The compute part of it should be more easily scalable.  

Customer service and support is the strongest part of this company. I have zero issues with them and wish other vendors would use them as a model.

Positive

We did not use any other solution. StarWind was our first.

The initial setup was fairly complex, however, StarWind support walked us through every step and made it a breeze.

We used StarWind support for setup with one IT person in-house. 

Since installing StarWind, we have not had any downtime. The ROI from not having even one downtime event is immeasurable. 

StarWind is by far going to be your best value for money.

We evaluated Dell and Nutanix.

Our organization purchased a hyper-converged platform from StarWind, which significantly increased our RAM, processors, and flash-based storage, strengthening our processing and storage capacities with a Virtual SAN.

It also made it possible for us to use VMware vMotion. This is essential in our manufacturing plant since it enables us to move a virtual machine across hosts without halting operations.

Since the solution was put in place, I haven't had to make any software-related changes, and a few power outages we've had have not caused any hiccups.

We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running. Performance was aided by the flash drives' speed, and StarWind's support staff is friendly and competent.

As we made licensing adjustments and transferred virtual servers from the old host to the new ones throughout the migration on the Virtual SAN, we had to interact with technical support a number of times. The response time was quick, and I had no issue following along as we did a screen share to complete the tasks.

The Virtual SAN prevented the business from having to buy a separate storage array and associated network hardware. We found that the price of a storage array was higher than what StarWind offered as a solution so made it a somewhat each choice to proceed with.

Peace of mind comes from knowing that the virtual machines will keep running even if one of the servers fails. It also helps to have support close at hand in case of difficulty.

The solution's extensive use of redundancy to guard against failures impressed us.

The terms and conditions of the proactive support were the only things that I had an issue with. We were unable to benefit from it due to the fact that our legal department didn't accept them. The heartbeat monitor would help you save time by alerting support to problems as soon as they arise and ideally even before they occurred in our environment.

To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security.

We have been using this for three and a half years so far.

It has lasted us over three years so far with no issues.

We don't intend to scale beyond two servers, however, we like that it's possible.

We have no issues working with StarWind's customer service department.

Positive

We previously had a single server that was out of support.

The setup was complicated and we needed technical support from StarWind.

StarWind provided the support that was needed and was quick and efficient.

We have met ROI expectations already.

The support package included the setup cost.

We looked at Dell and Nutanix.

We use StarWind to synchronize storage between nodes of our hyper-converged Hyper-V cluster. We then publish the storage to each cluster member via iSCSI.

We run the cluster on a 10GB network (though when we first implemented
it in our testing environment, we were on 1GB and it still worked fine),
with two physical servers. 

The synchronization between nodes is fully synchronous, meaning that if the mirror NICs aren't at least as fast as the front-end NICs (and preferably much faster), it could cause access bottlenecks. We haven't faced that problem though.

We needed to implement a cluster so we could offer VM hosting as a service to our customers. We have implemented clusters for some of our clients and used much more expensive vSAN options there. We were leery about using such a lower-cost alternative, but the other SAN options proved far too expensive for our very modest budget.

We tested with a free version of StarWind (which allows no GUI administration but otherwise is fully-featured), and it was stable enough for our use for about a year for testing and for the client that wanted to be a guinea pig (for an important but not mission-critical system; suitable for testing with). But when we were ready to roll the program out more broadly, we decided that in case of a problem, dealing with the lack of GUI would be an issue. Upgrading to the full GUI-capable version was only a matter of a few clicks, and it did fit into our budget.

We use StarWind as a basic SAN with multi-node synchronization and push the storage out to the cluster nodes via iSCSI. For those basic uses, it's simple to set up and manage, and it seems to do a fine job.

When we were using the free version, adjustments to the storage volumes were difficult and finicky, because we had to use Powershell commands which are unfortunately not documented nearly as well as they should be. However, the GUI administration is easy, at least for the basic administration needs we've had so far.

StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used, which has spoiled us.

The management console is very simple -- reflecting the limited feature set that StarWind provides. I'm concerned that if sync breaks or we face another kind of major issue and have to fix something, it might be hard to track down the source of the problem. I would very much like to see greater granularity in reporting of active iSCSI channels, for example.

That said, we haven't had any problems yet; that says something in itself.

I've used the solution for just under two years.

We've used other solutions with some of our clients, and while we like them better, they're also an order of magnitude more expensive and didn't fit our budget.

If you know your way around a cluster, setup is easy. Pricing is straightforward, which made this choice a no-brainer.

We did not evaluate other options as the other options were prohibitively expensive.

I am doing a change from physical to virtual servers and my goal is to change all the servers. There are a total of nine, and at this moment I have three servers that I have migrated. They now work better than the physical ones.

I am also doing backup copies of these virtual servers in case I have problems with any server, since in this area, we have problems with electricity and I already lost a physical server from that. That’s why I decided to make a new network of virtual servers with copies and clones of these servers and so far, it has worked very well.

StarWind Virtual SAN has been a great solution for this organization. In this area, we have electricity problems and the physical servers can be damaged - something that has already happened once. 

I made the decision to migrate the servers to virtual ones due to the fact that, if a virtual server is damaged, I just have to take the backup that I have already made of that server and replace it without any problem. The end user of the company does not notice the change. 

My intention is to have all the physical servers become virtual

StarWind Virtual SAN is a great solution when it comes to making virtual servers. I like this tool as it is simple and easy to use, robust, and 100% working so far. It’s also compatible with Windows Server 2019.

I was able to easily clone virtual machines. I save both physical and virtual space. You can also run Linux virtual machines and make it easy to manage replication between nodes within the cluster when needed. iSCSI support is also included and very good support from the technical staff during the installation phase.

I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page. Better documentation would have saved me time in the beginning. The documentation is hard for new users to understand.

I have been using this tool for six months.

It is a very stable software; in these six months, I have not had problems with any virtual machine.

They are very good and the product is scalable. It is excellent that it adapts to the needs of each company.

The technical support can be a bit complicated by language barriers, however, the objectives have been achieved. 

Positive

I previously used VMware and switched to StarWind Virtual SAN for the cost savings.

The initial setup is a little slow at first, however, after researching and installing the software, it was easy to finish the installation.

We handled the setup internally.

The ROI is very good since the system has offered me a solution to change physical equipment for virtual ones and in the future the expenses will be reflected in that I do not have to buy equipment or hardware.

The price seems good to me compared to other tools that offer the same thing. That said, it's still worth seeing for yourself and looking at other tools before making a decision.

I used VMware and HyperV before, however, a colleague used StarWind Virtual SAN and he taught me how to use it and I liked the tool.

My overall experience with StarWind has been very positive. It is a very simple solution. It is not tied to any hypervisor or hardware configuration. Their support people are excellent and offer assistance in setting up the solution in your environment. While there is a bit more setup than some other products, all you really need is a basic understanding of storage and networking.

We were looking to migrate to hyper-converged architecture with an affordable, scalable solution.

StarWind is a fantastic hyper-converged solution for SMBs. The price point and pricing options allow for SMB deployment of a plug-and-play, scalable solution that won't break the bank.

Compared to other options in the HCA space, StarWind stands out. Their monitoring and support are built into the solution and allow for a production-ready environment that doesn't take many resources to manage or deploy.

If you run a Hyper-V environment, their single-pane monitoring command platform will greatly assist the management of the environment.

StarWind allows organizations with a small budget to deploy a modern, robust HCA solution.

Organizations that have a need for remote office deployments can find a resilient solution with Starwind HCA as well.

The ability to scale by simply adding additional nodes to the stack provides a unique opportunity.

A vendor agnostic solutions provide the organization with more purchasing power with other vendors utilizing the hardware.

Migrating from one vendor to another within the HCA opens the possibility to shuttle between costly solutions with market volatility.

The following aspects of the product are very useful:

• The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions.
• TCO is lower versus traditional compute, storage, and network architecture.
• Ability to scale with the organization's needs created flexibility.
• Scalability, resilience, and affordability.
• Fantastic hyper-converged solution for SMB. The price point and pricing options allow for SMB deployment of a plug-and-play, scalable solution.
• Without vendor lock, organizations have the ability to migrate as needed based on both needs and costs.

This solution is necessary in today's volatile market.

StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V. I was disappointed to find there was no disclosure of VMware incompatibility so the single-pane management system was not available in a VMware environment.

Understand your hardware lifecycle and align it with the available options StarWind offers for their HCA. There are options available that could be expanded on regarding hardware. Further options from a hardware perspective would add value to the company and allow for a broader audience.

I've used the product for two years.