StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that I needed a solution for a customer for a virtual SAN, and that was when StarWind solution came to fruition.

This customer scenario involved using StarWind Virtual SAN for a storage solution for a VDI setup, and he was looking into VMware vSAN, but that was way expensive. So, I saw StarWind and that was an opportunity for us.

Regarding my main use case and that specific project, StarWind Virtual SAN offered a great price to performance ratio. It had a great support team behind it that helped me configure the solution and also size it to the customer needs for them not to overpay for it and not get something that was not useful for them.

The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it.

My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful.

They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that.

StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that I have implemented and managed several instances of StarWind, but the common feature amongst all of them is that their environments are a single site.

The best feature that stands out the most in StarWind Virtual SAN is the storage virtualization, and also how it facilitates failover capabilities for Windows Failover Clustering. That is basically what is advertised for StarWind Virtual SAN, and it delivers on it with excellence.

StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.

Ease of administration is another big plus in my operations because we don't have to look for specialized skill sets to manage a StarWind VSAN environment, and their StarWind's technical support capabilities are very good. They're very responsive and very competent. So even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.

StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by saving money in skill set development, and certainly minimal downtime across all of our installations, where they maintain almost zero downtime in their 24/7 operations. This is true for the past 10 years.

We use StarWind Virtual SAN to create a failover cluster and high availability servers for our products.

The best features are the software's ease of setup and the excellent technical support. My company relies heavily on technical support from experts to maintain reliability, as our crew is not very IT savvy. StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.

First, I need to explain what motivated me to use VSAN. 

Some time ago, I developed a work environment with KVM Proxmox by creating a cluster made up of four servers: two HP and two Dell, along with two servers running Proxmox Backup Server, both interconnected to ensure redundancy for the backups of all virtual machines. 

Now that I’ve described a bit of my environment, the main use I have given to this tool is in the creation of HA (High Availability) servers to provide better performance to the services running on my Proxmox cluster.

Since I started using VSAN to create high availability servers in my Proxmox environment, even referring to the free version, the services we provide in the company have achieved a high percentage of effectiveness over the year, significantly reducing downtime due to hardware issues with any server in the cluster. 

This has led to a remarkable improvement in the services we offer, and since this is a company that provides security in various areas, the difference between before and after is huge. 

For this reason, I have submitted a request to the company management to acquire the Pro version of the product, as I have not found any negative comments about its use so far.

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that we're using it with older hardware to create a new SAN.

I have a number of virtual servers that run utilizing this service on top of StarWind Virtual SAN in my environment.

Our file server benefits most from StarWind Virtual SAN because of the speed and the ease of use.

StarWind Virtual SAN has impacted my organization positively by saving a lot of money over purchasing a new SAN.

By choosing StarWind Virtual SAN over buying a new SAN from a big vendor, I probably saved about $50,000.

The product is being utilized within an airgap lab environment, which means it is isolated from external networks and internet connectivity for security reasons. The virtual Storage Area Network (SAN) is integrated into the system alongside Hyper-V, a virtualization platform developed by Microsoft. 

This configuration allows for efficient storage management and virtualization capabilities within the isolated environment of the lab. The virtual SAN helps in providing centralized storage resources that can be dynamically allocated to virtual machines running on the Hyper-V infrastructure, enhancing the overall performance and flexibility of the system. 

By combining these technologies, users can optimize their lab environment for testing, development, or research purposes without compromising security or network integrity.

This innovative product has significantly enhanced speed, security, and organization. With its advanced features and capabilities, users can experience improved efficiency and productivity. 

The optimization of speed ensures rapid performance, allowing tasks to be completed more quickly and effectively. Additionally, the enhanced security measures provide peace of mind and safeguard sensitive information from potential threats. 

Furthermore, the organization features streamlined processes and ensures easy access to important data, ultimately contributing to a more seamless and structured workflow. 

This product has proven to be a valuable asset in enhancing overall operations and effectiveness.

We use the service to provide two-node hyper-converged storage to our application servers. 

We previously did not have any type of high-availability storage, and as you can guess, it was a mess. Getting high-availability storage was one of our first priorities when a new IT team was formed. 

Through talking with other customers, this is a great solution for us. In the more than six years of use now, we have not had any issues and support has always been great. They have helped us make config changes and do updates without any downtime.

Moving us to high availability storage has made our websites and applications more reliable. It also has allowed us to perform updates on storage and application servers without having downtime. Previously, to do any of those things was a pain as we would have to shut services down to perform any updates, whether security or features.

When compared to other providers, StarWind provided a great product at a reasonable price. Cost is also very important to a non-profit.

The StarWind vSAN product is not used directly by me. We use it in the organization via one of our clients. It is used as a shared storage solution for a Hyper-V converged project with two nodes. The project consists of a cluster with two Hyper-V nodes in which several virtual machines are running. 

The hardware is quite common. The disks used on the two virtual hosts are normal 7000 SATA disks. Only the synchronization interests are 10GB. Otherwise, there's nothing special; they are usual servers with Xeon processors from the 2018 generation.

StarWind Virtual SAN was the most optimal choice, both from a financial point of view and in terms of compatibility. It is an excellent choice for use together with Microsoft Hyper-V. Other options would have been the use of Microsoft Server Datacenter licenses on the two nodes and the use of Storage Replica and Storage Space Direct as a storage solution or VMware vSAN, both of which would have cost considerably more without bringing anything extra from the point of view of functionality or reliability, compared to Starwind Virtual SAN.