StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-v for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution. Its works with all hypervisors on the market today.

My use case saw it removing SAN architecture in favor of hyper-converged storage directly attached to my hosts, in testing the speed of which is comparable to any other storage solutions available.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization footprint whilst reducing my overall physical server footprint.

It has removed the need for large shared storage that is not directly attached to the virtual hosts make it a deal to deal with, it also self heals in the event of any major incident or down time, along with the 24/7 support and the most knowledgably staff when needed.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization foot print whilst reducing my overall physical server foot print.

This solution has allowed me to remove other storage solutions reduce physical footprint of equipment as well as power usage.

The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great. 

The support staff knows the product inside out and any issues that were thrown up they knew how to resolve immediately.

The ongoing maintenance and monitoring are key to the product catalog and allow for smooth and seamless ongoing use. 

It is helping reduce out-of-hours calls and it also helps with identifying predicted failure patterns, to assist in the very most uptime of production servers 365 days a year and 24/7.

Not much can be improved, to be honest. The solution is clean, quick to install, and has had no issues since the day we started using it. The features are improving every version level, however, I cannot think of anything I would really require to change at this moment in time.

It also offers an exclusive version of StarWind Virtual SAN which can be installed on just a few nodes in a much bigger cluster. There’s absolutely no need to enable it and pay license fees for all of the nodes. 

Some vendors will currently ask you to pay for all nodes in a cluster. StarWind Virtual SAN does best breed of scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

I've used the solution for six months.

I have done vigorous testing prior to live install and the stability of the system is excellent.

The scalability is amazing as it allows for a scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

Every time I have called, I have gotten the person I need along with an answer to my questions.

Positive

I just used a SAN Storage solution. I switched for reduced physical servers and power consumption.

The initial setup was a breeze. StarWind support did it all for me.

The StarWind in-house team did it all for me and I would rate them ten out of ten.

Currently I do not have any ROI figures.

StarWind can help identify exactly what you need and help identify the best hardware for the best price.

We looked at Dell Equal Logic SAN Storage solutions.

We have a three-host clustered environment which is being used to host about 85 VMs. We have over 1TB of RAM and about 72TB of storage available. Since we are a cloud host provider, we needed a solution that would allow us to rapidly expand and support our ever-growing user base. It is extremely easy to spin up a server using StarWind Manager. It allows us to create a base image and quickly clone new VMs off that image. We have tons of storage space and we can easily add more resources to a VM on the fly. 

It improved our organization by providing us with more resources to allow us to grow our customer base. 

We were able to make a call and quickly get the assistance we needed and had a cluster built in no time. 

The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently. 

The best part is the ability to fail VMs over quickly and hassle-free. It is extremely easy to make any changes and modifications.

The best feature is the StarWind Manager. It allows us to easily duplicate VMs and manage the infrastructure. Hyper-V is a little clunky, so their software allows for a more friendly interface and easier to manage your servers. 

Another feature I like is the ability to quickly failover in the event of any issues with the three hosts in the cluster. We have had small instances where we need to either perform maintenance on one of the three hosts, or one of the hosts is having an issue. When that is the case, we can quickly drain the roles and force all VMs off that host. 

The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it. This can be frustrating at times when you want to quickly log in and make changes on the fly. I wish there was a way to make the server more stable so that we don't have to perform a reboot every time. 

Honestly, we do not have too many complaints. The best part about StarWind is the customer support. 

The guys on the team are great and have been willing to work with me at any time of the day as well as on the weekends. 

I've used the solution for two years.

The product is extremely stable. We have only had issues from external sources, for example, our Data Center losing power. Whenever you lose power to a SAN, you run the risk of data corruption. Once we got the power back on, the support team was ready to help get our environment back online. They were able to get all the shared storage synced and vm's started again. To no fault of theirs a couple of our vm's had data corruption on the OS level, however that is the extent of the damage. We were able to restore the vm's from backup and were right back to productivity. Meanwhile we noticed other people in different racks had terrible issues with their SAN's. Some people had complete and total data loss, while others were unable to get their environments to boot. Those people were at a total loss. This is why I was so happy to see how quickly we were able to get back online and get back to production. Between the durability of the cluster and the excellent support, we were back up and running in no time.

This is a great solution that offers robust scaling options.

Customer service goes above and beyond to help you. I've never dealt with a more capable team in my years of doing IT.

Positive

We used VMware and we switched in order to find another solution that was more cost-effective and just as robust.

It was straightforward to set up as the support team got us up and running very quickly.

We implemented it through an in-house team and their level of expertise is exceptional.

I advise users to trust the sales team as they will help point you in the right direction as far as your needs.

We only evaluated our history with VMware and decided to make the switch.

Everyone on the support team and all of their efforts has been great. I know that some of the workers are from Ukraine and my heart goes out to them. I am praying for them and their families. 

We mainly use this as failover and to not have the expense for additional or separate storage. 

Our environment is pretty small and with less than 50 users. We only have two servers in the failover cluster that are part of Starwind Storage. 

Prior to Starwind, we always had to schedule maintenance windows and have all of our services down. Compared to before, our downtimes have decreased substantially and maintenance windows have almost been eliminated. Not to mention, I no longer have to come in on weekends.  

Prior to Starwind, we always had to schedule maintenance windows and have all of our services down. Compared to before, our downtimes have decreased substantially and maintenance windows have almost been eliminated. 

It's also been really great that we can schedule maintenance on the servers themselves during on-hours. Since we are able to migrate our VMs from one node to another, this makes it really simple. 

Of course, there is also the fact that if a node goes down, we have one to back it up and continue with our day without management worrying.

The software itself is actually really simple. There isn't much to it at all. 

GUI navigation is simple and intuitive. UI Options are simple and easy to find. 

From one single interface, I am able to connect and or disconnect to any of our servers and see their current status. 

The UI itself lets you add targets, devices, etc. You can view recent events, performance, etc. 

A nice feature that was recently added was the StarWind Command Center. It allows you to manage all of your clusters from a single point. 

There really isn't much to the software itself. It's not something I use on a daily basis and mostly only when needed. I'd have to say I am usually tinkering with the software maybe on a monthly basis, if that. 

The only area that the product could improve would be user training. I've had to learn most of the ins and outs by myself or by asking questions when I have to get tech support involved and that's pretty rare.

I've used the solution for five years.

Support is top quality and their response is exceptional. It's probably one of the best supports I've dealt with. 

Positive

No, we did not use a different solution previously.

It was straightforward and not complex at all to set up. It did take a little bit of time for the setup, however, we never ran into any issues. 

Implementation was done through a vendor.

The cost wasn't a huge issue for us as it was purchased as a bundle. 

Yes, we looked at other options, however, we needed something ASAP and this was the best solution overall.

We were running a Hyper-v failover cluster across five servers and six SAN nodes, however, this was becoming dated and we were looking for new hardware to replace this. 

We looked into a few hyper-converged solutions and Starwind ticked all the boxes and seemed excellent value for money. 

We are a retail company and were running various workloads including domain controllers, file servers, SQL Server, and app servers.

The main workload was MS Dynamics AX 2012 which ran across 13 VMs running various different components. This drastically improved performance.

We condensed an entire rack of servers/switches and SAN storage nodes down to 4U for two Dell R730xd's, we had more storage, and it was much faster all around. It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy.

Our ERP system performance improved for all users. Lengthy overnight batch jobs were suddenly completed much earlier and enabled us to re-shuffle a lot of tasks into a smaller time window.

We are also finding it easier to maintain two host servers rather than the previous five.

The stability of the system has been the most valuable part. I never have to do anything, it just runs and runs and runs.

We haven't had any problems with Starwind, but some of our VMs have had issues and the proactive support from Starwind meant they knew about the issues before I knew and they were on it straight away. 

When we needed to make some upgrades to the server I contacted Starwind to discuss the changes and they were very helpful and easy to contact. The support is probably better than I have used compared to any supplier.

I cannot think of any way to improve it. They recently added a web-based interface that runs on a small footprint VM. This has massively improved the visibility of system metrics and made interacting with the product much easier.

I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product. My main interaction is with the Microsoft Hyper-V failover cluster running on the Starwind kit and the VMs themselves, which never need any attention from me.

I've used the solution for four and a half years.

The solution is very stable and never has any issues.

The solution is easily scalable. We purchase new nodes or expand the existing nodes if you can, which we have done.

Customer service and support is the best I have experienced with any supplier.

Positive

We use HP servers and an HP Lefthand SAN, however, this was too slow to run our SQL workloads.

The solution was very straightforward and we felt fully supported by the Starwind team.

This product is well priced with very good value for money and the support team is great so the setup is no problem.

We looked at Dell EMC, Nutanix, Scale, and Nimble.

We needed a high availability solution for our mission-critical infrastructure. We wanted to minimize any potential downtime and make sure we had a redundant system in place. 

We are currently running three nodes that maintain our fleet of virtual machines. We are able to run the entire infrastructure off of two nodes so it makes patching very easy and we don't have to schedule downtime. The failover clustering works flawlessly and we can move virtual machines between all the nodes extremely quickly. 

The machines perform much better than what we were previously using; they are workhorses. We have had zero issues with them over the years we've been using the solution. Support is extremely helpful and the application is easy to set up and configure. 

It has also helped us to schedule less downtime as we're able to run all of our machines off of two nodes while we patch. Being able to live-migrate virtual machines from one box to another goes extremely quickly and is never noticed from the end-user side.

Having high availability is a must in our environment and works flawlessly. Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly. 

We have a massive amount of storage for future expandability. 

Being a small team the service that we receive from them gives us peace and mind and knowing that if something were to go wrong they would be able to step in and support us in getting the application back up and running as soon as possible.

We don't find ourselves using the StarWind Console it would be nice to have some extra features built into it. 

There doesn't seem to be anything upfront inside of it that would warrant us to monitor it or use its feature set. 

It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance - such as displaying critical events, storage space used/available, the health of the disks, etc. Other than that, in our time with the system, we haven't had any complaints or issues in our environment.

We have been using this solution for the last three years.

The nodes have been extremely stable. We have had no issues over the last few years when using them.

The machines work great and with the amount of storage we originally had purchased. We are in no danger of running out anytime soon.

Customer service has been kind and professional and on top of their game. We're notified very quickly if they notice a node going down on their end.

Positive

We were previously using VMware. The cost was extremely high so we wanted to move to something else. 

Initial setup was very straightforward with the engineers providing great support to get it implemented.

We used our in-house team to install and then the vendor's engineers configured the application for us.

The setup cost and pricing were very competitive, even including service. That's why we went with StarWind.

We considered HyperV as an alternative and found StarWind.

We use the solution as a virtual file server and Active Directory domain controller for the corporate office and virtual development and technical support environments for our developers and technical support staff for the timesheet software we develop in-house at our corporate office. 

We have an office space of about 30 employees, a mix of corporate and company employees. We currently have two HCAs in a rack cabinet in our server room, and, with the HCAs, there are no network switches required to support the SAN.

The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation. Previously, we had the traditional SAN environment of 2-3 virtual hosts, 2 SAN switches for iSCSI, and then one storage array/server (all Dell hardware). The problem was the single point of failure (SPoF) at the bottom, which was the one storage server. Due to the cost, we could only afford one storage server, however, this meant we had a completely fully redundant SAN solution at half the cost and rack space footprint.

The redundancy, lower rack space footprint (no switches are needed for the SAN), and ease of management are the most valuable aspects of the product. At the same time, the technical support staff has been one of the most knowledgeable that I have ever seen. I purchased the support package where StarWind Support will support every aspect of the HCA - the virtual hosts/hardware, StarWind Software, and VMware vSphere/ESXi server software. The ease of installation was a plus and it was very easy to understand the concepts of the HCAs and the StarWind software.

For our use case, I seriously can't think of anything missing. For us, it's a set it and forget it kind of use. For us it improves our redundancy issues and the maintenance of the HyperConverged Appliances is next to nothing. 

The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives. Next time around, we will purchase all SSD drives which will resolve the issue.

I've been using the solution for two and a half years.

In the 2.5 years we have had our HCAs, I have had not one issue with stability and it primarily just works right out of the box.

You can scale the HCAs by adding more CPUs, memory, network ports, and when needed, adding another node.

Customer service/support is outstanding. All the guys that I have spoken with were highly professional, friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. With the Support level I signed up for, I only have to contact StarWind support for any issues I have with the virtual host hardware, the StarWind software, or the VMware hypervisor.

Positive

We used the Dell Compellent and EqualLogics which are highly expensive, so much so that we could only afford just one storage server in each environment which made them single points of failure, with no redundancy of the storage systems.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward right out of the box with little help needed from StarWind Support. We were able to get it all up and running in two to five hours.

The implementation was handled in-house with just me, one person, with a little guidance from StarWind Support.

There is a cost-saving in regards to the hardware and implementation itself. The time saved in having to manage the software itself also provides an ROI.

The setup cost is minimum (and very easy) and the price is usually half the cost of traditional SAN implementations. Licensing only pertains to the hypervisor and server OS that the StarWind SAN software will reside on.

We looked at Nutanix, Dell Compellent, EqualLogic, VMware ReadyNodes, and Scale Computing.

For us, the StarWind HCAs almost works right out of the box and help me sleep at night knowing that we have a fully redundant SAN implementation.

We had to replace our infrastructure consisting of about eight aging servers. I began looking for a good, redundant system and ran across the HCAs. 

Having never used one before I began researching the different providers as well as looking at going the traditional route. I lucked out by finding StarWinds through a colleague of mine and was greatly impressed. The Dell Enterprise servers not only replaced what we had but also gave me the piece of mind I haven't had in years.

The StarWind system also made managing the units easy and not too time consuming. For a very small IT department, that was key.

The solution has improved our ability to prepare for future needs by easily being able to add servers, storage, backup devices, and more. 

With their highly knowledgeable sales and support team, we are not anxious about upgrading our equipment or suffering long downtimes. We were hosting our ERP environment outside the organization which limited some of the functionality. 

With the HCA appliance we are comfortable with it being in-house and finally get to take advantage of some advanced features we have been missing out on.

The ability to balance servers across the appliance effortlessly and knowing that if we do experience a hardware failure we can keep on trucking is the most valuable aspect.

I cannot say enough about their support team. They are the greatest and extremely knowledgeable. Proactive support is a lifesaver.

The setup was simple and very fast. Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running.

Monitoring the servers is a breeze and is possible all on one screen. This makes managing the environment super easy - even for a novice.

Updates need improvement. We do not receive critical update notices from Dell. This would be extremely helpful since my primary focus every day is software and DB development and not server updates. A notification when critical updates are available would make management of the systems even easier than it already is. 

The StarWind Command console stopped working for us and we managed the system manually. There is an update that we will be taking advantage of within the next week that I am sure will correct this issue.

I've used the solution for 14 months.

The solution has been very stable with a single exception. We missed a critical update to the firmware of our Samsung SSDs that took us offline. I wish there had been a way to have had a notification of the missing critical update prior to getting to the failure point.

Even with this,  StarWinds support worked with us and the hardware provider to get us back up quickly with no data loss.

The solution is very scalable.

I have nothing bad to say. They are very quick to respond and with the proactive support, they generally know of issues before I do. They are very knowledgeable.

Positive

We just used standalone servers previously.

The setup is straightforward with handholding from support every step of the way.

We used the vendor team. They were very highly experienced.

Our ROI was almost immediate since we stopped using a hosting company for our ERP environment.

It is a very affordable solution and extremely easy to set up.

We also evaluated Nutanix.

If this is your first HCA or your next, you will not go wrong with StarWind.

We were looking to replace a large amount of older physical servers and move to a smaller footprint with a lot more virtualized systems. We also wanted to be able to increase the uptime of our server by being able to failover between nodes. 

We had all our eggs in one basket - a single powerful Hyper-V server running VMs which ran our business systems and customer systems. If that machine had died our business would've died. We implemented HCA and were then able to load balance and have resiliency for all of our systems across the infrastructure estate. 

We initially ran with a demo system, a couple of older servers with some high-speed network cards configured using the Starwind software - which was provided as a demonstration even with some technical support for a number of months, so that we could try the system out. 

We had some very niche bespoke software that we provided to the recruitment industry, which in turn used some bespoke indexing and categorizing software that was very picky on how it runs. Starwind amazed us by being able to host this bespoke software on the HCA and failover between nodes with Live Migrate without any issues whatsoever.

Starwind HCA allowed us to provide customers with a much higher service level. We could guarantee 99.999% uptime. Previously, we were not confident enough to offer this. 

We were able to reduce the footprint of our physical servers in the datacentre, by virtualizing most of them and running them as VMs on the HCA. We were therefore able to reduce costs in the datacentre.

We also had peace of mind in that we were able to retire a lot of older hardware and consolidate on to brand new powerful hardware. 

It also looked fantastic in the data center.

Live migration between nodes was quick and simple. The management interface was clean and intuitive. The system ran with no issues whatsoever, it never had any problems.

It was able to run all of our VMs without struggling one bit.

We were able to run Hyper-v and Failover Cluster Manager. Therefore we already knew how to use these, being Microsoft certified engineers. These fit easily on top of Starwind, in fact, the Starwind software is pretty much invisible in the background, running cleanly underneath the Hyper-V and Failover Cluster Manager.

Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow. It is a little fiddly and easy to make mistakes. I remember that I had to follow the instructions very carefully during the initial setup.

Also what is slightly disappointing, although understandable, is that the demo/free version of Starwind vSAN reverts to "command line only" and limits access to the GUI when the trial license runs out. Perhaps this license time limit could be extended to allow further evaluation time.

We have used the solution for four years.

The solution's stability is absolutely faultless.

From what I understand, it can be scaled up and out as required - although we never needed to do this. Scale up by adding more RAM, more CPU and more disks. Scale out by adding more HCA nodes. If we had more budget we would've added more RAM to the nodes, or added an additional node when we initially bought the system.

Technical support is absolutely fantastic, always eager to help, and technical support was fast and concise.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward, although it is a little fiddly and tricky to follow. It's best to implement this when you can't be interrupted.

We handled the implementation in-house.

We saved a lot of money by reducing the data center footprint by half.

This is the best value HCA available. 

We also looked at Nutanix and HPE Simplivity.

If you are looking for an HCA solution and other vendors are proving excessively expensive, I would advise companies then take a look at Starwind instead.