StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

Our remote office-branch office locations are using StarWind Virtual SAN.

I use the vSAN product and it provides the shared solution I need for my VMware hypervisors to be able to use HA and other redundancy solutions. It provides the necessary fault tolerance and continuance of business processes.

The HCAs across all sites house more than 200 VMs over multiple networks. StarWind allowed us to create a HA Clustered environment without an expensive SAN while providing hyper-converged capabilities.

The units fit us well.

The StarWind infrastructure provided a preconfigured package of software and hardware in a single system for simplified management. With StarWind converged infrastructure, the compute, storage, and networking components were easy to modify to fit our needs at all the locations.

It was a lower-cost solution that enabled us to replace our existing end-of-life infrastructure while taking advantage of new technologies like hyper-converged infrastructure.

This product also enabled us to standardize our server hardware. 

The support has been impressive. 

The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit. This reduces the complexity of the system as a whole and drives down the cost.

StarWind hardware is also easy to manage and monitor, saving time for my engineers. The most valuable thing about StarWind is the all-in-one solutions that they provide. 

We did have some issues with shipping the product to one our sites. The company shipping the servers lost one of the nodes in transit. But StarWind was quick to order, configure, and ship out a new node so we could meet our install deadline. 

We have been using the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for more than a year.

It is a stable product so far. 

It is easy to scale.

Their support is top-notch. 

StarWind support is very proactive and easy to work with. Their support engineers know the product inside out and save us time in the long run if a system is down.

Previously, we used the traditional SAN and Host configuration. We needed to find a redundant storage solution.  

Since its an all in one solution, setup was easy with their support. 

We used the vendor team for the first deployment and they were helpful. We did the rest on our own. 

It's an all in one package, making it very easy. 

We evaluated other options including VMware vSAN and HPE. 

For improvements, there aren't many that stick out like a sore thumb. StarWind fits our remote office branch office needs across the company. The compute, storage, and networking flexibilities when buying the product helped us right-size the solution for every site.

Their support is proactive and professional.

Overall, StarWind provides a solid product and addresses our remote office branch office needs.

We were able to consolidate four of our Hypervisors (with no redundancy) into two HCA servers with High Availability. We now have replication across both servers and fewer servers in the rack to power and we are all-flash now.

We also implemented the 10G ports on the StarWind Servers, beginning our step into a 10G backbone. This allowed our rack to become significantly less crowded with cable management.

Our HVAC is having to run less and I am sure there are some cost savings associated with that as well.  

It has brought us to another level in redundancy. We have two replicated copies of our data on-site in HA, which we then backup locally and then offload a copy to the cloud.

We also went with the all-flash solution, so our IOPS jumped exponentially.

In addition to that, we have started to implement a 10G backbone with the StarWind HCA being the first in it.

The most valuable feature they have is their support. We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself. I had decided to move cables around and when they saw it, they and reached out to me to get it corrected.

On top of that, during our initial configuration and migration, they were able to work through any issues that may have come up, mostly due to the specific legacy equipment that we were trying to migrate to the new servers.

The command center is a nice piece of software that lets us view our entire setup.

They have a pre-install questionnaire and it asks about network addresses and such. I made the mistake of thinking they were asking about my current setup. They received that information and applied it to the new servers. When they arrived, I noticed it before we patched them in, which would have caused several IP conflicts.

I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous. I could have asked for clarification but I just filled it out and sent it. It would be nice if they were just very clear on what they were asking for.

We are new to StarWind HCA and have been using it for about four months.

Stability-wise, we have had no issues as of yet, whatsoever.

This solution is very scalable. We bought it with plenty of room for expansion as well, so we don't have to worry about outgrowing it anytime soon, but if we do, it is a simple no-downtime, procedure.

Technical support is their best feature!

The initial setup was both straightforward and complex, but their support handled everything.

Implementation was through StarWind and was a great experience.

I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan. That works for our situation, it may be different for yours.

We evaluated Nutanix and Dell HCI.

The StarWind HCA solution provided our company with a turnkey hyper-converged platform that strengthened our processing and storage capabilities by greatly expanding our RAM, processors, and flash-based storage.

It also enabled us to take advantage of VMware vMotion technology. This allows us to transfer a virtual machine from one host to the other without interrupting production, which is critical in our manufacturing plant.

I haven't had to make any software related changes since the solution was implemented.

By having multiple servers, we are able to perform maintenance on one server while the other is still operating. The speed of the flash drives helped with performance, and the support that StarWind offers is very professional and accommodating.

We had to engage with support several times during the migration as we made licensing changes, and moved virtual servers from the old host to the new ones. The response time was quick and although there was a bit of an accent, I had no trouble understanding as the work was being completed.

The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment. When we looked at the costs for a storage array, they were somewhat higher than the solution from StarWind.

Knowing that the virtual machines will continue running in the event of one of the servers failing provides peace of mind. Also, having support readily available in the event of a problem helps as well.

We were impressed by all of the redundancy built into the solution to protect it from failures.

My only concern was with the terms and conditions of the proactive support. Our legal department didn't accept them, so we weren't able to take advantage of it. Having the heartbeat monitor working would save some time, by getting issues resolved by support as soon as, or possibly even prior to them happening.

I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement.

We have been using the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for six months.

There have been no issues with stability since the solution was implemented.

It seemed that we would be able to increase the scale as needed.

The support at StarWind was very knowledgeable and was able to resolve any issues on the current call.

Our previous solution was a single server and it was out of support.

Its initial setup was complex, but that is why we had support from StarWind look after it.

It was implemented mostly by StarWind in coordination with our in house team.

The setup cost was included in the support.

We considered solutions from Dell and Nutanix.

We are an SMB that hosts our ERP on-site. Our infrastructure is shared with a group of inter-related companies, so uptime is critical since several entities rely on our core services. StarWind HCA is the core of our network and hosts all of our critical VMs. We needed a cost-effective HA solution that was easy to manage, as we have a very small IT department that is concentrated mostly on business process improvements. The last thing we need is complex systems to manage taking our focus away from that.

We went from a vSphere compute cluster with an external SAN made by a company that is in perpetual financial trouble and have shifted business focus several times. Not only was our traditional SAN expensive, but we also had no confidence in the vendor. StarWind HCA is commodity hardware, so we eliminated the proprietary hardware issue. 

We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network.

Proactive support has been great, you will receive an email from StarWind soon after their telemetry service sees anything out of the ordinary with either the StarWind services or any critical issue related to your cluster of VMs. The appliance support goes beyond my expectations by helping with some Hyper-V issues that may not be directly related to the StarWind services.

The most valuable feature is its simplicity. It really isn't any more difficult to manage than a standard Hyper-V cluster.

Communication could have been improved during the implementation process. I've also been looking forward to further development of their management console which has been slow to materialize. StarWind is promising full cluster management and backup integration in a single-pain-of-glass console.

Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process.

We've been running our StarWind HCA for about two years.

Technical support has been willing to help and train even on simple questions.

We previously had a vSphere cluster with a standalone SAN. We wanted a less complex solution.

The initial setup is really easy. StarWind handles it.

In-house with StarWind help.

The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing.

We evaluated Cisco and DataCore.

We primarily use the solution to provide a safe and secure home for VMs. We are currently only using the computer power, but I like the ability to add GPUs to the device if it is ever needed. We run a bunch of SQL, web services, and remote app servers. The hardware has always been solid, and the 24-hour monitoring is a great safety net. VMs being able to live migrate near-instantly has made updating the hypervisors much easier. The hardware comes from known vendors, so replacement parts are plentiful if ever needed.

We upgraded from older servers, and the Starwind HCA is much faster and more reliable. All of the old VMs can do the same job they always did but with less waiting. With 24-hour monitoring, we can worry less about hardware and software failures. Every time the system has detected an issue Starwind has emailed us before anything went sideways. Migrating VMs is much easier now that the Starwind team has configured the HCA boxes. All this has been done without the need for a separate storage device.

The ease of use is great.

The solution is comprised of high-end hardware components.

The 24-hour monitoring is great.

The sales process is easy.

It is extremely reliable, has very very few issues, and has next to no downtime.

The deployment was very fast, and VMs were migrated without any downtime.

SSD Storage is very fast, and everything I want to do is very very speedy.

It is very configurable, with lots of different options.

I can't think of anything that is missing. Everything has been top-notch from start to finish. Every interaction we have had has been 100% positive. If you are hard of hearing some of their team has strong accents, but I have never had an issue understanding them, nor has any of my team that had a bad interaction with them. 

Most meetings are done via Zoom, and I'm sure you could switch to a text based conversation if needed as they seem like a very accommodating team. It's not something I would worry about if you are a potential client.

I've been using the solution for about a year.

Support exceeds expectations every time we work together. I have always been able to work with the same engineer, and he knows our network.

We used a SAN with storage spaces. We switched due to buying new hardware and Starwind offering a one-stop-shop.

The solution is cost-effective.

Yes, we looked at HPE and Lenovo.

We use the StarWind HCA primarily and in its entirety to serve as our primary hyper-converged infrastructure in order to serve all of our virtual servers. In this environment, we have an RDSH server farm utilizing GPU cards. We also utilize backup software that connects directly to this environment. Being able to have our entire environment run on a single platform by a single vendor both hardware and software is huge for us. We don't have the time or resources to go to many vendors or have them point to other vendors as issues.

This solution improved our environment from an increased user experience and administrative experience. We have had much better uptime and product speed since switching to the HCA platform by StarWind. Our organization has required less 3rd party resources and software to provide speed and flexibility to both our IT staff and our end users. The solution specifically allows us to focus more of our time on software development and process changes utilizing the hardware, as opposed to supporting the hardware itself.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility of Hypervisor and there is no vendor lock-in including the hardware the system runs on. I find it powerful and I am able to use the StarWind GUI or the Microsoft back-end Hyper-V. Everything works hand in hand and neither side forces me to do something in a specific way. Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great.  These all seem like minor things but have had major impact on our productivity.

I have not had any issues or roadblocks as of yet that require any improvement. Everything that I have needed has been available in the product. 

The only issues are when Hyper V itself has limitations and I'd love to see support or enhancement in the area of direct-attached GPU cards. It would be great to see even more detailed analytics and scheduling reports of such to keep a focus on when and if we need to upgrade the environment.  

It would also be cool to see support in the GUI for more 3rd party add-ons.

I've used the solution for almost one year.

We used Scale Computing. We switched due to the fact that we were too restricted with Scale Computing.

We have found StarWind to be well over 50% more cost effective.

We also looked into Nutanix and Scale.

We are a small to mid-sized Eye Clinic that in 2015, had to upgrade our Patient Management & Billing system. Deciding to stick with our current vendor, we migrated to their “cloud” product, which is a hosted RDS Farm solution.

Our two-year experience on their “cloud” was coupled with numerous outages and continual slowness issues on a weekly basis. In 2017, we decided to bring the system back on-premises and so we began looking for a solution to run it along with our other virtual machines.

Fault-tolerance was the primary requirement in our search and having worked with VMware vSAN in the past, we knew that it would be a viable solution, albeit one that would exceed the budget. That's when we discovered the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance, a two-node highly available solution that fell within the allotted budget.

We purchased the StarWind solution and it ran flawlessly for two years, then in late 2019, the unthinkable happened. Our clinic caught fire and the building and all of its contents were destroyed. Knowing we had offsite backups, we just needed the hardware to restore our servers.

In contacting our StarWind account rep, they completely understood the circumstance we were in. They accelerated the order, build, and shipment of the new two-node appliance. As management worked on obtaining an alternate building to restore the service of treating our patients, the servers were delivered to my home so that the restoration process could begin.

The StarWind engineering and support staff were a tremendous help as they assisted in the restoration process. Knowing that StarWind will drop and do what’s needed to help a customer in dire straights has won us over as a faithful customer for life.

Thank you, StarWind!!!

Having a two-node, fully redundant host appliance solution that has been 100% reliable makes it easier to sleep at night.

In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature.

When we purchased the StarWind HyperConverged Appliances, they shipped with the Windows-based vSAN solution. Since then, they have released vSAN for vSphere, which is based on a Linux VM and would save us money as we would be able to get rid of the two Windows Server Licenses.

In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups.

We have been using the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance solution for four years.