StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We use the solution in order to share storage across multiple virtual server hosts. We are currently running VMWare ESXi with vCenter across two locations and with a total of 8 ESXi Hosts. 

We use a storage server with a 30 TB RAID10 Array which is being shared out across all servers. We are using a mixture of Dell R730XDs, and Dell VRTX with M620 Blades, all across a 10GB server backbone and a 1GB End user network. The two locations are 20 miles apart, linked by an MPLS provided by AT&T. 

We currently use Synology for our backup appliance.

Before implementing StarWind Virtual SAN, we would have to copy over every single virtual hard drive file before we could migrate and VM. With Virtual SAN, though, we can use a shared Storage volume and rarely have to move files. This has allowed us to expand our virtual server host threefold and allows us to have a more robust disaster recovery plan. I am now able to do Migrations during the work day which has saved me from having to do things like this overnight. I could not be happier with my shared storage solution.

I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN. Most other shared storage utilities either do not have a graphical user interface or a poorly laid-out one. Every single wizard I have used in Virtual SAN is easy to follow, has clear labeling, and just makes sense. There is also an overabundance of documentation every step of the way if you run into any questions about the lingo or what this checkbox does. I could not be happier with my purchase and decision to use Virtual SAN.

This is a tricky question since I do not have many issues with StarWind's Virtual SAN product. Every step along the way, if I ever had any questions, there was either documentation to answer a question, or customer service was able to help quickly. 

There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online by users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa. Customer Service can take care of the issue though without any issues. That's about the only issue I can think of.

I've used the solution for two years.

I had one issue with the product, however, reinstalling solved the issue, and it was nothing crazy.

The product is all about scalability. I have no concerns about future company growth and this solution.

The few times I reached out to technical support, my issues were solved in minuets, not hours.

Positive

I did not use a different soltion. 

The setup wizards are amazing!

I did the implementation myself.

We witnessed an ROI in six months.

I was intimidated at first about the setup, however, it is super easy.

I did evaluate VMware vSAN.

I'd advise new users to give the free version a try to see if the product is right for them. That's what I did, and I am so happy with the solution.

Our infrastructure uses VMware vSphere, and we use StarWind as our primary storage solution. We have three hosts and use a hyper-converged setup, so our computing and storage are spread across the same hosts. 

StarWind replicates the data between the hosts giving us 30 TB of usable redundant storage. StarWind allowed us to consolidate our hardware and grow without expanding our data center footprint. It also gave us more peace of mind since there is no single point of failure anywhere in the solution.

StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution.  

We were also able to avoid a data center expansion as we could combine our computing and storage without losing fault tolerance.  

We were also using another converged storage solution from HPE as well. That solution was strongly tied to ESXi and vCenter, which meant we could not apply WMware updates when they came out until the storage solution updated their product to match without risking compatibility problems.  

Since StarWind isn't tied to the hypervisor, we don't have to worry about how updates to one part of our infrastructure will affect the other.

StarWind support is really good. They help you with the initial setup and will support you down the road as well. The support staff really know their product.  StarWind isn't a black box, either. You can see exactly how the storage and replication are configured, so you know what is going on, and can quickly diagnose any problems.   

Many virtualized storage solutions are incredibly picky about what hardware you deploy them on - even down to the model of a hard drive. StarWind allows you to use any hardware, and they will support you on whatever infrastructure you want to deploy it on.

The management interface is missing some of the flashier features and hand-holding of other enterprise products.  It might be intimidating to someone without a lot of experience, yet StarWinds setup services are good for walking you through everything. The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting.  

The documentation on their website isn't bad, and yet it could use some better organization. There is also some feature disparity between the Windows-based solution and their virtual Linux-based solution. I'd love to see deduplication added to the virtual Linux appliance.  

I've used the solution for four years.

I only had one stability issue with StarWind. That said, that was down to me not following best practices and not reading their updated documentation. When configure properly, StarWind is very stable.

It's a great option for SMBs. If you start getting into double or triple-digit host count, the increased configuration time may not be worth it.

The StarWind support team is very knowledgeable. When you need support, you speak directly with someone who knows the product well. I was able to get on a Zoom call and have my issue resolved the same day I opened a ticket.

Positive

We previously used a traditional SAN from Nimble and the virtual storage solution, HPE Simplivity. Both other solutions were more expensive. HPE was strongly tied to both the underlying hardware and the hypervisor and didn't allow for any flexibility.

The initial setup was a little more complex than setting up a traditional SAN as additional networking was needed for the replication channels. Planning ahead and help setup help from Starwind makes this manageable.

We did our implementation in-house. We know our infrastructure better than an outside vendor and were confident in our ability to deploy it.

StarWind has the most straightforward licensing model of any storage solution we evaluated. Their pricing was also the best.

We had experience with HPE Simplivity and VMware vSAN.

In a VMware environment, StarWind works best if you can dedicate the RAID card or the HBA to the storage controller VM, so you should store the hypervisor on a separate RAID card or on an SD card. 

We originally had a three-node Nutanix cluster. However, we were asked to spend six figures on replacing it, as the Nutanix license was bound to the hardware. StarWind Virtual SAN could use this existing hardware without any special reconfiguration. 

We decided to go with their Linux appliance and quickly learned we could achieve the same resiliency with two nodes as we did with three nodes on Nutanix. 

They provided guides to help us set up the most efficient cluster, although we did have to use MD/RAID as there wasn't a guide available for ZFS.

Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier. The performance is much higher than we anticipated and outperforms the other solutions we've tried. 

They provide numerous guides and whitepapers to help set up your own environment, yet can also walk you through the setup, so you understand each component of it. Thanks to their extensive support community, we are no longer 100% dependent on support (or a support contract) for minor troubleshooting issues.

The most valuable feature to us is the basic setup, which makes it easy to understand what's happening under the hood. This, combined with the low price point, allowed us to rapidly implement the solution while giving us better performance than all other products we tested. 

All of the documentation is openly available and isn't hidden behind a support paywall like many other options. Since the setup was so simple, I opted to do the majority of setup myself, however, support was always available to answer any questions or to provide guidance.

A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one. All of the setup and configuration is done via a dedicated Windows application, so you'll have to install it on every machine that you want to manage the cluster with. 

Most of the documentation is heavily windows-based, so finding guides on their Linux VSA can be difficult, however, support can usually assist you in finding the documentation. 

An easy/native ZFS option would also be welcome, as we did end up having to use a mdadm setup, but none of these are deal-breakers.

I've used the solution for three months.

It's stable enough that I sometimes forget it's there. There are so few components in it that there's just less to go wrong.

We were able to have the same resiliency with two nodes as we did with three nodes under Nutanix. It also managed to outperform Nutanix by a fair amount.

Support has been phenomenal. They have always responded to emails in mere minutes, and everyone seems to know their stuff. I've never been transferred around, and they've always answered my question or resolved the issue in minutes.

Positive

We previously used Nutanix, which was extremely expensive and nearly ALL of the documentation was behind a support contract. Most of the components had cryptic names, and there were very few options for finding a solution yourself.

The initial setup is extremely simple, and support can walk you through it or give you guides if you are a do-it-yourself kind of person.

Most of the implementation was done in-house, but support was available at any time to answer questions or to provide suggestions. Everyone we worked with on support seemed to know what they were doing.

It came in 80% cheaper than all of the other solutions, and the yearly support contract was a third of the price as well.

If cost and performance are your goals, then definitely look at StarWind. It's a smaller company than almost all of the alternatives, yet they have very dedicated support staff and a great development team. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles as some others. However, if you're looking for a simple hyper-converged solution, this is your best bet.

We evaluated multiple options, including a software-only Nutanix solution and the VMware vSAN. These were both very expensive and had a very strict hardware compatibility list, which caused the project's budget to swell exponentially. We also looked at some open-source options such as ESOS and GlusterFS, however,  these required many hours of setup and there wasn't a real enterprise support option for either.

They have a great trial system with full support, they even extended mine due to my limited time to deploy and test everything.

We have two StarWind vSAN clusters (two nodes each) in two data centers on Dell PowerEdge servers. We're expanding to three-node clusters soon. Our IT footprint and budget are relatively small, so StarWind vSAN was an appealing alternative to VMware vSAN. At the initial time of purchase, and even to this day, for our use case, StarWind vSAN is a more mature product.

Since we began using the product, we have tripled the number of VMs (RHEL, Ubuntu Server, & Windows Server) and added significant storage. Growth has been easy. The vSAN runs as stable as you would hope, where it is generally never a factor when troubleshooting an outage or planning for growth.

StarWind vSAN allowed the retirement of an aging SAN, and availability expanded while keeping costs low. We're VMware customers, but we began using StarWind vSAN before VMware vSAN was very well established. It works just as well, yet at a more affordable price. I'm not sure if VMware has an option for a two-node cluster now; however, I know three nodes were the minimum in the past, which was a large difference for our relatively meager IT budget.

I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch. I found it much more responsive than VMware support.

Support for only two-node clusters is amazing. Without this feature, we wouldn't have been able to modernize our Corporate MDF due to cost. To my knowledge, StarWind vSAN was a mature product already by the time VMware vSAN came to the market. Each additional node would require us to purchase another physical server, storage, and licensing for ESXi, Veeam, Windows data center, monitoring tool licenses, etc. These things quickly add up for a relatively small back-end infrastructure budget.

I don't have many ideas for improvement as the product "just works." I suppose if I had to pick something to say concerning improvement, I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit.

Another thing that isn't very important yet would be nice is an update to the OS of the Linux appliances. They're running CentOS 7, so I understand why they haven't been updated to something newer, due to Red Hat pulling the plug on CentOS 8 in favor of CentOS Stream.

I've used the solution for more than five years.

The stability is rock solid.

We will be adding a new node next year, and it seems highly scalable.

Customer support has gone above and beyond for me in the past, even though I'd forgotten to renew our support contract at one point.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

the setup was straightforward, however, we utilized support to ensure we had a proper build.

We used a vendor and would rate their services ten out of ten.

The cost is honestly negligible for us.

We looked at VMware vSAN.

Do not hesitate to use their technical support - even if it is just to review your configuration for their best practices.

We are using the product for a three-node stretched cluster spanning three buildings based on VMWare and StarWind vSAN technology.

We use this to host all the company servers (as VMs), which are a mix of Windows and Linux systems, providing various services such as domain controllers, file servers, print servers, application servers, license servers, etc.      

This setup allows us to quickly migrate servers between buildings for service or in case of a network outage.

The product allowed us to deploy the three-node stretched cluster, which has, in turn, allowed us to fully virtualize our infrastructure with all the resilience, performance and ease of management that comes with it.

The biggest improvements have been:

1. Resilience. The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service. It also enables vSphere high availability, so when there is a problem, service can be maintained

2. Management. Having everything virtualized has made it much easier to manage.

The solution's best aspects include:

Rock-solid performance. Since it has been in production (three years), we have had 100% uptime. This means that services have only needed to be briefly interrupted for maintenance and has created a great user experience for our end-users.

Easy management. The interfaces are intuitive and all IT staff can quickly be brought up to speed on how to use

Superb support. The support really is second to none. You can always quickly get through to a technician, and it's usually the same one you are used to dealing with.

The documentation could be better. It's not bad, however, it is quite often out of date. That said, this is mitigated by the fact that the support is so good that you rarely need the documentation.                                        

If I am really searching for a fault. To be honest, the licensing model is a bit confusing. They could definitely make that a bit more intuitive. However this is a minor gripe as it is such good value, and you only have to deal with it very occasionally anyway.                   

I've been using the solution for three years.

This was our first move to a vSAN solution.

This solution is of excellent value.

We looked at VMware vSAN.

I highly recommended the product. It has transformed our IT infrastructure.

StarWind is used as our primary physical server with nine VMs. This serves different locations around the US. 

One application is shared using RDS where as before it was being shared using individual pcs for each remote user. This caused major issues with data integrity.

Also with the two-node environment, not only are we benefitting from the redundancy, we are able to load balance between the servers. This allowed us to bring our hosted ERP environment in house. 

The price was right. It is very hard to beat this system! 

We had a very dated infrastructure. One that had been a hodge-podge over many years with no clear direction or future needs planning. 

I was brought on board to correct this and give us some growing room in the future. As the business continues to grow at this time, redundancy/DR planning became a significant focus as well.

StarWind, with a low-cost two-node HCA system, was truly turnkey.

With the redundancy and efficiency of the software and servers, we are running better than ever, with room to grow.

The ease of use of the system overall. If you don't understand something or need any help at all, support is there. I cannot speak highly enough to the value the support team offers. They are very knowledgeable and willing to help. They work on your time, not theirs. I agree with some other reviews that they can be hard to understand at times, however, they are more than willing to make sure you understand. 

The redundancy is a big factor. As a very small IT department, that gives us the peace of mind needed as well as knowing that support is there to help me through any glitches.

Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so. Though truthfully, it's not bad.

I have had to call support to help me through some of the updates, so I know they are done right.

A missed SSD update caused a few headaches. That said, thanks to support, no data loss occurred, and considering the issue, we had minimal downtime.

Overall, I find StarWind above par and am excited to see what they think of next.

I've used the solution for 1.5 years.

Support is nothing but stellar. The support staff is very knowledgeable and willing to help.

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward.

We implemented it through a vendor team. The experience was extremely positive!

The initial cost included setup, and it was genuinely turnkey. It would be hard to find a lower-cost solution that offers what Starwind offers.

The primary purpose of the storage area network is to provide an active-active replicated SAN for Virtual infrastructure and file storage. This has replaced an active-passive infrastructure that relied on a competitive storage solution but was too old and inflexible to meet the company's growing needs. The active-active nature of the plan needed a reliable storage solution that could deliver over a large distance as such additional infrastructure was also needed. The outstanding support helped us achieve this goal. 

We went from an active-passive model. This has resulted in us being in a much better position. It has allowed us to meet business continuity needs; half of the infrastructure can go out of operation without impacting the business, or we can use this to perform planned updates and maintenance. 

StarWind SANs, along with their amazing support, really helped us achieve these improvements. When implementing this solution, we experienced firsthand how good the solution was; we applied some massive configuration updates without business downtime.

StarWind SANs provide fast and reliable storage. Migration from the old system has meant the storage is much faster now. In turn, this has improved our virtual infrastructure's reliability and access times.

StarWind SANs come with outstanding support. We decided halfway through to change the implementation in a major way, contacted their support, and found that they understood what we were trying to achieve and offered the best help and guides. Not only did they help us, however, they also provided remote assistance where necessary.

This currently relies on a virtual machine. This may be migrated to a container approach or integrated into the solution in the future. However, this isn't really a large area of concern. 

A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is.  

You need to know what you are doing to get this set up. It could have a wizard-like setup for basic scenarios. This would need to be able to be skipped, however for advanced setups.  

I've used the solution for a few months.

We used to use Netapp and switched due to the cost and reliability.

We did look into a Netapp upgrade.

I'd advise others to use their support; it really is great.

We are using StarWind as a two-node Hyper-V Cluster in order to have a highly available virtual environment. The two servers are interconnected with 25GB network cards. 

We then have our VMs installed on Hyper-V using the shared storage. Virtual machines will then instantly fail over to the other node in the event of a server hardware failure. StarWind keeps both of the disks mirrored to ensure no data loss. This has worked with no issues over the last year on many clusters that we have set up using StarWind. 

StarWind has been straightforward to configure. As a company, we have been able to install many StarWind clusters with no extra hardware required, meaning less hardware to maintain. The software is also cost-effective vs purchasing dedicated hardware SANS. 

We now have a defined config that is easy to replicate and works well with no downtime or maintenance required. 

StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software.

Shared storage between two devices is great. It was done seamlessly. StarWind has been straightforward to configure and installs StarWind organize a time and configures the software using their best practices. As a company, we have been able to install many StarWind clusters with no extra hardware required, meaning less hardware to maintain. The software is also cost-effective vs purchasing dedicated hardware SANS.

StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software.

A central management console may be nice to see all nodes.

I've used the solution for more than one year.

This has been very stable over the last 12 months.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Licensing used to be good. However, the pricing may have gone up in recent months. 

We did look at other hardware solutions.