StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished hardware! 

As part of our upgrade, we wanted to improve the speed and manageability of our virtual machines and storage. We also wanted to simplify our networking requirements. 

We also wanted to know that we had reliable support in place in case something went wrong. We wanted to keep things simple, making the infrastructure manageable by a small team of IT staff. 

It has improved the speed and resilience of our data centre by five times the previous. StarWind has enabled us to save energy too, as we reduce from six servers and two SANs to just the two StarWind hosts. Simplifying our data centre with StarWind has also helped support less senior members of our team in managing and working with our virtual machines, either just by using the standard Hyper-V management tools or with the StarWind command center. We have peace of mind that our environment is being monitored 24/7 by their pro-active support as well. 

The StarWind command centre is a very handy tool to have. It allows less skilled staff to have a view and manage our virtual machines. 

Now only having the two StarWind hosts, instead of the six we did have, allows us to keep the servers up to date quickly, rather than the frustrating process it was before. 

We haven't had to use it much. However, StarWind's proactive support is very responsive. One of our VMs wouldn't start, and before I had a chance to investigate, support was already in touch - you can't ask for better than that!

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. 

It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us. 

I've used the solution for a few months.

We've had no issues with stability so far.

We haven't needed to scale anything yet. That said, it looks very simple to do and is designed for exactly that.

All support is very helpful and friendly.

Positive

We used an aging Dell and Microsoft Hyper-V solution.

The initial setup is straightforward and run by StarWind remote support.

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

We did look into other vanilla HCA setups from Dell and Lenovo.

We are very pleased we chose StarWind.

My main use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is server failover. I use StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for server failover to ensure high availability for the server.

The best features StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers are easy and simple setup. Support did a lot of the work during the setup process, which made it easy for me. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has positively impacted my organization by giving us high availability. High availability has benefited my team and organization by providing redundancy for hardware failure.

I think nothing needs improvement in StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.

I have been using StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for one year.

Regarding StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's AI capabilities, I think it does not have any. I think it does not have any AI regarding its accuracy and reliability of output. My advice to others looking into using StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is to do it. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

My nonprofit organization purchased a pair of StarWind Hyperconverged appliances almost three years ago. 

We wanted to simplify our environment while also cutting costs on server equipment. We compared other vendors and settled on StarWind for the cost and excellent reviews. 

We replaced our old VMware hosts/SAN storage with the StarWind HCA and have since converted numerous physical servers to VMs and have been smoothly running about 50 VMs on our StarWind HCA ever since then, with no downtime.

We are a small nonprofit, and I am the sole sysadmin. As the sole sysadmin, I am stretched thin across many areas yet must maintain many different systems. 

StarWind's HCA has been very reliable and has allowed me to not worry about the platform that we run our VMs on and instead focus on the VMs themselves. 

StarWind's HCA has also been instrumental in helping us to simplify our server and network environment and provide the capacity and performance we need to virtualize more of our infrastructure.

StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature. Having another set of eyes on our most critical piece of infrastructure helps us rest easy. 

Support is fantastic and has been responsive and helpful, and it always seems like you're talking to someone who knows their stuff without having to go through a scripted Tier 1 support experience. 

Their onboarding was fantastic as well. They did a majority of the setup work and provided as much help and guidance as I needed, whether that was them doing the work or providing guidance on how to configure myself.

I honestly don't have anything to complain about. Nothing is perfect, though, over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part. 

Best of all, there was zero downtime to any of our VMs. The reliability of their product combined with the proactive support means we've basically had almost three years of smooth sailing and 100% uptime.

I've used the solution for almost three years.

We've had almost three years with no downtime for our VMs, so I would say it's quite stable.

The solution would scale easily and with only mild effort. The HCA we chose had plenty of extra slots for disk and RAM if we needed to expand in that way. Each of our nodes had two CPUs with no room for more. That said, adding another node would also be an easy option if we needed to do so.

Customer service and support have been fantastic. The support staff is very knowledgeable.

Positive

We previously ran a VMware cluster on a trio of Dell servers with a SAN for storage. When it came time to replace our cluster, we decided to go with HCA to simplify things.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, with tons of help and guidance from the support staff. I opted to do some of the configurations myself, however, the support staff would have done most of it for me if I needed that.

I handled the setup in-house. I am the sole sysadmin and did the entire implementation.

We also looked at Scale and decided on StarWind for the cost and glowing reviews.

These are our core virtual servers for an equestrian center/resort. We host our domain controllers, print servers, Quickbooks, remote desktop servers, lock servers, PRTG, horse show management, and several other items on these servers. 

These servers support our daily operations and connections to users for the horse show staff, restaurants, marketing departments, administrative staff, and accounting department. We maintain our printer connects and many small clients that connect to our horse show database to help manage our show.

Having the HA ability to switch over in real-time is extremely important when running a horse show and restaurants. We can feel confident that if any issue arises with one server, we are instantly online with the next server and have not lost any data. With our horse show software, if any data was not copied over before the failure of the other device, we would have corrupted databases which would be extremely problematic during the horse show. Servers are sized appropriately with plenty of resources. 

Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We have had multiple servers to manage in the past, and any major updates would have to be after hours. This configuration makes it quick and easy to do Windows and software updates without any user being kicked out of applications or having to log back in. We don't have to schedule updates any longer for most products. We are super happy with the virtual environment and the support.

We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed. That being said, even though there are some steps to the process, each upgrade has gone well without any issues. It just takes some notes and processes to get comfortable with moving things around.

I've used the solution for two years.

The solution is very stable.

The product is very scalable.

Technical support has been top-shelf!

Positive

We used VMware on multiple servers previously. Our servers were aging and needed an HA situation in case of any failures.

The initial setup was super easy.

We implemented the solution both using their support and members of our team.

The ROI we receive is peace of mind.

The pricing was not the cheapest nor the most expensive. The pricing model is great for the product that you get.

We looked at a couple of options before selecting StarWind. The price point was in the middle of the road, and it was clear speaking with sales reps that this company had its ducks in a row.

It's a great solution and offers easy implementation.

We are running a small Windows server farm with VMware, and we have chosen StarWind as our solution. It is a hyper-converged cluster connected with 25 GB. The servers themselves are located in different locations to increase security in case of failure. Also, the servers are connected to a server switch cluster to create additional protection. Only the standard servers were set up, such as the domain controller, file server, and app server. The backup strategy was implemented with Veeam and amounts to a synthetic full backup procedure located locally and performed on tape drives.

We had an old server infrastructure from two major vendors that ran without flaws yet were no longer state of the art and thus reached its limits in terms of memory and processor for large projects. 

In addition, the support for the servers was expiring, and we wanted a solution that would allow a live migration in real-time. After extensive research, we decided on StarWind. It has the advantages of a storage solution yet is priced much more attractively than the competition (when considering hardware in the premium range). 

We were looking for a solution that would allow live migration, however, we didn't want to spend a lot of money. We wanted an attractively priced system that offered all the advantages of a storage solution and not the disadvantages of having a highly available environment 365 days a year that would not allow any downtime. That's why we chose StarWind. It offered us a hyper-converged independent cluster with a complete package. A VM can be migrated directly in real-time in the event of a failure, and if a complete failure is imminent, a switch is made to the backup with 25 GB. 

There is not much that could be improved. StarWind was affected by the delivery problems typical for the market and could not be improved by different partners. 

What would have to be done urgently, however, is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration. We could only decide on a model that was in the upper premium segment, although we only needed standard specifications. Therefore, we have a solution that is a bit too performant concerning our requirements. That said, this also allows us to try something out. The price was excellent, so we accepted it. 

We've used the solution since April 2022 as part of a project. 

The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests.

Regarding the hardware, there are still delivery problems, however, the software can be attached to any backup or cloud solution.

I haven't had a chance to contact support yet; the consultation process through to implementation is great.

Positive

We switched due to the fact that our old infrastructure was in dire need of improvement and it was old.

The setup was done with the help of StarWind. There were a few things that needed to be considered and unfortunately were not communicated by StarWind.

The connection was made by StarWind and a partner of StarWind integrated the solution very well and very quickly.

StarWind is a good and cheap provider that sells high-quality products. That said,  you shouldn't always look for the cheapest price or the cheapest hardware. Sometimes you get a bargain in the higher segment.

We looked at other providers of a pure storage solution and purchased them with StarWind. We couldn't get anywhere close to StarWind in terms of price.

Absolutely compare the infrastructure. It should be modernized.

The StarWind HCA solution is used for our VMware virtualization environment in a two-host high-availability cluster to support critical business operations running 23 virtual machines/servers. 

I needed to have a setup that provides the highest level of performance due to a few critical virtualized servers and the highest level of redundancy in the situation where we will need to recover from any given incident affecting business operations. 

The solution provided by StarWind allows me to eventually migrate all my physical servers to the virtual environment, which is something I couldn't do with our older virtualized setup.

StarWind HCA has provided a much-needed upgrade to our aging VMware environment and infrastructure in terms of hardware, cost, and performance. 

All of our virtual machines, across the board, are snappy and running at peak performance. 

Due to the hardware, performance, and redundancy improvements provided by the StarWind two-node setup, we can take advantage of the setup and migrate critical physical servers to our virtual environment. 

Much to my surprise, while moving one of our critical systems from a physical server to a virtual server, users have commented that they have noticed a significant increase in performance on their end when using specific software. 

Also, the high-availability setup provides peace of mind in knowing that there is inherent redundancy provided in our configuration. 

The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost. Granted, the solution was cost-effective and reasonable compared to other "brand-name" solutions out there. 

24/7 support has also been extremely valuable. We are located in Florida and since we migrated to the StarWind setup only a couple of months ago, I've already had to reach out to them outside of business hours to walk me through the shutdown of our systems thanks to two hurricanes. I needed assistance due to my unfamiliarity with the hardware and software, and they were happy to oblige. It was a smooth experience, and I appreciated their help.

The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use. I had configured my setup thinking I would have that much memory available to use to provision additional virtual machines.

I've used the solution for two months.

My experience so far is that it is very stable. Even after having to shut down and start up our entire facility twice due to hurricanes here in Florida, we haven't had any issues.

It looks like we have the option to scale up our solution to three, four, five, or however many nodes we would like. We may be going from a two-node to a three-node solution, so it's good to have these options.

Working with the support team has been great. Connecting with somebody during and after business hours has been smooth, and they have always been responsive and professional.

Positive

I did have a different solution. I switched mainly due to the performance, scalability, and costs associated with either maintaining or upgrading our setup.

The initial setup was very straightforward. Some areas were complex and involved StarWind support coming in and making sure everything was configured correctly. This service is included in the implementation of their solution.

The vendor team was great to work with and are experts in their field and on the StarWind solution. It was a pleasure working with them.

Keep in mind that StarWind VMs for the vSAN will take up 24GB of memory per host. If you do decide to go with StarWind, adjust your hardware configuration appropriately if you need those memory resources.

I evaluated Nutanix, HP, and Dell solutions.

I highly recommend the StarWind solution (high-performance tier). Making a decision after weeks of research, I have been pleasantly surprised and satisfied with my choice.

We have two Supermicro servers in a failover cluster, connected via a 25GB card for faster replication and virtual nic runs through 10GB interface. The disks are hybrid standard HDD and SSD for better performance. The Starwind solution auto replicated the servers and monitors if there are any issues. 

Both are running Hyper-V on Windows Server Datacentre 2019. Each server runs about 13 virtual servers and can run all virtual servers with room to spare. 

We also have an older Dell Starwind setup running Windows Server 2016. These just run standard HDD so are much slower than the Supermicro servers. 

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has made the servers redundant, reducing downtime from just having a single standalone server with a much lower hardware cost than having an extra storage device which then reduces the redundancy unless purchasing much more hardware that increases the cost significantly. 

The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers. 

Also, the servers' support reduces downtime when things go wrong. The support team has always ensured we are back up and running in a short amount of time.

It offers a simple setup. The servers come pre-configured and only require a small amount of setup. The support team is on hand to complete your installation and ensure everything is running smoothly.  

Remote support ensures someone is watching the servers, letting you know if a VM has lost connection or either host has had any issues so you can check the servers and work with StarWind to get the servers back up and running again smoothly. 

Easily expandable CSVs take only a few minutes to get increased.

The control center needs email notifications so any self-monitoring is easier. The control center looks really good and looks like it could be very valuable. However, at the moment, not having email notifications makes it less worth it.

Easier CSV creation would be ideal so there are fewer steps and a check so that if you have created one, it can check all settings within the StarWind software and the ISCSI are set up. 

We'd like an easier setup for Windows updates on the Hyper-V servers so you don't have to use a script to ensure auto-updating is done. 

I've used the solution for three years.

So far, we have had no problems with stability.

The scalability is good.

Support is always very helpful and willing to help.

Positive

The setup is fairly straightforward and issues were sorted quickly.

We implemented the solution in-house.

If you have a preferred hardware vendor, then wait for it to become available if out of stock. 

We did not evaluate other solutions.

We currently have it set up with VMware. We use StarWind as a two-node cluster and VMware to host all the servers. All the servers are Windows-based.  

We use two Lenovo servers with SSDs. We were able to move from three physical servers down to two with the StarWind setup. Also, we wanted a new setup with an easy way to expand.  

StarWind will allow us to expand with very little setup after our initial configuration. We also set up our servers with multiple 10GB NICs bonded together and were able to separate our traffic easily with the software.

Before StarWind, we used HP Lefthand.  

While HP lefthand did work, the price difference was a major. Once we started to use StarWind, we found it to be very reliable and fast.  

We are very happy with moving from HP Lefthand to StarWind. During the conversion of Lefthand to StarWind, we used the support and found it very helpful. They were very knowledgeable and easy to work with.  

We needed three servers for our setup when we were using HP lefthand.  With StarWind, we were able to downsize to only two.

One of the best features is how it just works. We had issues with our hardware on our servers; however, once we have the hardware issue fixed, the StarWind services would sync right up.

The documentation is also a plus. We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times.  When we needed help, support responded and followed up, verifying our setup was working correctly. We also used their knowledge base and found it very helpful also.

Not having to purchase specific hardware is a plus!

The user interface needs an update for the Windows client. I would prefer it if it was all web-based. This way, you do not have to manage an installation program on a server. If it was web-based, it would work on any platform.

With the new interface, maybe some more reporting features would be nice.  Also, some notifications would be helpful for issues coming about with the system.

We would like to be able to shrink volumes. We know we can increase volumes when we need it, however, shrinking would be helpful.

I've used the solution for five years.

Support is amazing. They are very friendly and helpful.

Positive

We used HP Lefthand. We moved to StarWind due to the price and found it had excellent support.

The solution is mostly straightforward, however, we had to have help a few times.  

We received assistance with the setup from the vendor team. They were very knowledgeable and took care of all issues.

Be ready to use support to get through a few steps; however, after the initial configuration, it should work great!

We did not evaluate any other solutions.

It's an amazing product.

We purchased two of these appliances to replace a three-node Hyper-V cluster on Dell blade servers/MXL blade switches with a VNXe3200 as storage. We were able to replace our entire M1000e enclosure and greatly simplified our (admittedly humble) infrastructure. Change from iSCSI over 1GB to local storage was also welcome. These two appliances now house 100% of our VMs and are a breeze to maintain. On-boarding was well supported. We were able to rack, configure, and start migrating Hyper-V VMs in less than a week. 

These appliances have been great for our Failover Cluster, combining storage, network, and compute resources in a single package. StarWind's Virtual SAN software replicates storage in the background, letting each node in the cluster use its own local storage instead of having to create an actual storage network. The ease between setting up the HCA appliances and my previous setup is significant, as is ongoing maintenance.

StarWind also offers ProActive Support that remotely monitors the appliances and automatically opens a ticket and initiates contact when a problem is discovered. As the only IT employee here, it's been pretty great.

It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on. End users are also pleased with the noticeable performance increase from switching to local storage from 1GB ethernet.

Surprisingly, it's the support that's been most helpful. I'm a one-person IT department. I have monitoring in place, however, I need to sleep sometimes. There were issues with our backup software early on that resulted in VMs failing. I'm not going into detail as the issue was with the backup software, not the HCAs. 

I woke up to detailed emails that let me know what had happened, along with event logs and explanations about why it happened. Even though the issue was with the backup software, they were still invaluable in solving the issue.

CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local. It imparts a small performance hit that's easily overshadowed by the performance increase from getting off 1GB ethernet.

The Virtual SAN setup also requires more actual storage than a traditional SAN. My two-node cluster means I need double the amount of physical storage before any RAID is taken into account. A two-node cluster with RAID 1 means one-quarter of the storage you purchase is available.

Even though the support was great, getting the same email three to four mornings a week with the same issue got a little disheartening. 

I've used the solution for just shy of one year.

I've had zero issues with the appliances with anything other than our backup software.

Edit: I've been asked to clarify this. I had an issue with our backup software that was 100% on them. The errors involved VSS and a CBT driver that needed reinstalling. It was a little annoying getting emails every morning from ProActive Support while I got it straightened out, but the issue was between Windows and my backup/DR solution. 

We're small and will likely not have to worry about any serious upscaling in the near future, however, it would be very simple to throw more appliances into the cluster should we need to.

They've always been knowledgeable and friendly.

Positive

We used Dell blade servers/switches with a VNXe3200 SAN. They worked fine, however, the few times something went wrong it made tracking down the issue more difficult. There were also no single administration tools that handled all three hardware systems.

On-boarding was heavily guided. Once racked, powered on, and joined to the domain, they helped with the rest.

We had the help of a vendor team, and they were very efficient. I was up and running quickly.

I have no idea. I'm here to work with technology, not accounting.

We provided our own Windows Server Datacenter licenses. We have a state contract and get them at a reduced rate. I'm sure our reseller would have been happy to include them on the quote as well, though. The software does have ongoing costs for maintenance/support.

We did not look at other options, really. These fit my needs perfectly and were affordable. Had I more time/resources at my disposal, I probably would have sought out other options. In this case, these appliances fit my needs. 

These appliances are probably the best hardware decision I've made in my decade employed here.

We are using the product primarily as the base and storage for our failover cluster on a Hyper-V Environment (Server 2012r2 - 2019). 

All 3 of the HCA are all flash variants and have a 10GB uplink to our network, sync between the nodes is 25/40GB. We have Microsoft SQL Servers, Active Directory, and file servers running across all 3 systems without any major issues so far. 

We have a VMWare ESXI with VCenter 6.7 on one of the HCA. In this scenario, the storage is inside a virtual machine and works without any performance issues. 

It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime. Before we used manual failover methods and systems by other vendors, that required switching master and slave roles which could result in a longer downtime. 

If a storage error occurred outside of our office hours, it could result in critical downtime and production needing to stop. Besides the business continuity, our performance levels have risen from the all-flash setup and active-active sync scenarios.

The straightforward management GUI and the compatibility catalog are great. You can add every StarWind system into one management GUI and have a complete overview of every system.

You can remotly manage new storage volumes and use the maintenance mode for moving your systems physically to other locations. 

You can practically add any NIC or RAM you want. The compatibility catalog is huge. We have a system with an Nvidia Tesla M60 and DDA which works great in combination with StarWind HCA. Also, we are mixing NICs from Intel, Mellanox, and Broadcom without any issues.

It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind. Further, it would be nice if you expand the storage of one target, the corresponding CSV would rise the capacity as well. This would lead to lesser missed or wrong configuration steps in the loopback configuration. They could program some checkups for the ISCSI configuration that the management GUI would do and could show you possible misconfiguration that someone evidently has done.

We've used the solution since 2016.

In all the years we've used the product, we have not had any major problems or issues with any StarWind systems. This reality speaks for itself.

You can scale the system very well. You always have the possibility to add another host to your HCA complex if you need more processing power.

We always used customer support on any new HCA setup. They do checkups and look over the configuration to make sure that everything runs flawlessly. We've used the support on two minor cases that were handled very, very well - even on holidays.

Positive

We did use something else beforehand. The previous solution could only do a master/slave switch if a failure occured and there was significant downtime. The architecture of this storage was active-passive, which resulted in some performance degradation by writing always to the second member.

If you are an experienced administrator, the setup is straightforward. Even if you have some difficulties in some parts, they have many guides and services that will support you.

We have implemented the software-only solution by ourselves. The HCA was implemented together with the StarWind support team.

Users should plan the needed space before ordering the whole system. It isn't impossible to expand the physical storage space later, however, it is a time and cost-intensive process.

We tested and used the software-only version of StarWind. We wanted to test the software and its behavior.

They offer a custom trial license for free. Everyone who is interested in storage systems should try the software out.