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StarWind Virtual SAN pros and cons

Vendor: StarWind
4.8 out of 5
Badge Ranked 1
618 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

StarWind Virtual SAN provides seamless integration with Microsoft clustering, maximizing MS server licensing investments.
Support staff are true experts, providing extensive and clear assistance, going above and beyond for integrations.
It offers high availability with active-active configurations, ensuring redundancy and uninterrupted operations.
Deploys highly available shared storage efficiently, making it cost-effective for small to mid-sized businesses.
Flexibility and scalability allow using existing hardware and scaling storage infrastructure without downtime.

CONS

Documentation on the StarWind website can become outdated, requiring more up-to-date resources.
Users find it challenging to manage iSCSI connections, indicating a need for improved automation tools.
The setup process can be cumbersome, suggesting the need for simplification, especially for new users.
Updates are reportedly lacking, leading to delays in issue resolution and synchronization problems.
There is a request for StarWind Virtual SAN to provide more comprehensive documentation, especially to help beginners.
 

StarWind Virtual SAN Pros review quotes

BS
Jan 24, 2019
The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN.
MH
Jan 23, 2019
It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters.
RO
Jan 23, 2019
The ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call.
Learn what your peers think about StarWind Virtual SAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
MIT - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 14, 2022
The install itself is easy as pie.
reviewer1667487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2021
The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment.
JC
May 15, 2025
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.
Eren Cakmak - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2024
With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability.
SN
Nov 21, 2022
The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase.
MH
Feb 12, 2019
We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown.
reviewer189641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2023
You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage.
 

StarWind Virtual SAN Cons review quotes

BS
Jan 24, 2019
For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there.
MH
Jan 23, 2019
If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online.
RO
Jan 23, 2019
With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs.
Learn what your peers think about StarWind Virtual SAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
MIT - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 14, 2022
Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline.
reviewer1667487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2021
The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation.
JC
May 15, 2025
That limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
Eren Cakmak - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2024
While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell.
SN
Nov 21, 2022
We don't really have any issues with this product.
MH
Feb 12, 2019
It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support.
reviewer189641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2023
There is a general lack of documentation, especially up-to-date documentation to get started.