StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We have two StarWind VSAN nodes installed in a small company. We're mirroring these nodes where all services are installed.

StarWind Virtual SAN has made it easy to work with backups and save server data by mirroring two servers.

We found the most valuable features to be: 

• Easy installation,
• Easy to work with,
• Very good support.

• We would like the price to be lower. 
• In the next releases, we would like a new improved interface. 

We use StarWind for multiple 2-node hyperconverged Hyper-V Windows clusters in our datacenter environment.

It gave us a new template for upgrading aging infrastructure sans expensive enterprise storage hardware.

Ease of installation, configuration, and management. It literally took us less than two hours to have a fully functional 2-node cluster.

There is a limit on HA storage for standard and professional versions which is too low to be very useful for any but the smallest of SMBs or startups. Most SMBs we work with have more than 50TB of data, so the 4TB and 8TB limits are nothing more than a sales gimmick. The enterprise-level supports unlimited HA storage but starts competing with Windows Server (S2D) at the price point. The hardware requirement for S2D, however, puts the Windows HCI out of reach for most SMBs.

We needed to consolidate our physical servers, so we went with the StarWind cluster to virtualize our servers.

We went down from eight discrete servers to two, so it's saving us money and electricity in cooling.

It's definitely saving us a bunch of time as far as server maintenance is concerned, because it's all virtualized. I would guess it saves us a good 20 to 30 hours a year, just in maintenance. 

We've also seen some performance gains over accessing the discrete servers, approximately five to ten percent faster access times to data. It has helped to maintain high-performance and data high-availability on minimalistic resources by doing load-balancing and resource-sharing seamlessly. The user never sees any downtime, any performance issues. It's just all done very well behind the scenes.

There's also a peace of mind aspect, knowing that we have failover now. Before, if a server went down, it could take days to get things back up and running, whereas now, if a VM fails, it's just minutes to get it back up and running.

One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us.

The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works.

It's a very stable platform. The only way you can really break it is if you do something that you shouldn't, like shut a server, shut one of the nodes down without moving your VMs to the other node first.

As far as scalability goes, especially with adding storage, it's dirt-simple. It's so easy to do. I'm very impressed with that aspect of it.

StarWind Proactive Support is fairly responsive. They definitely go above and beyond to address the issues, when there are issues. We had a minor crisis a few months back, and they spent hours on the phone with me over a weekend to get our servers back up and running. The quality of service is really good.

If I were to say anything - not so much critical - there is a language barrier to overcome, but that's a minor issue. It doesn't affect their knowledge, ability, or willingness to help. It's just sometimes a little difficult to communicate adequately.

We did not have a previous solution. We went with it for virtualization, and we chose StarWind because it was a software-only solution and we could use off-the-shelf hardware. Everybody else that I looked at was basically selling appliances. They were just outside of our budget.

The initial setup was a little complex, just to get the cluster configured, the iSCSI, etc. That was a little bit confusing because I had conflicting documentation.

Overall, our deployment took about three weeks. Our implementation strategy was to get the StarWind cluster built, working, and tested before virtualizing our servers, and then migrating them a couple at a time.

We set it up ourselves.

Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward.

We looked into Nutanix, as well as Red Hat's solution, but StarWind seemed to be the best setup for us, the best fit for our environment.

Definitely get a trial license. I'm pretty sure they still have a free version that you can download. Set it up in a sandbox and see if it makes sense for your environment. The great thing about it is it is all Microsoft-based, so if you're familiar with Hyper-V, then it's really pretty simple.

In terms of our users, it's pretty much just me managing it. It's running our production environment. Ideally, I'd like to add our third node this year so that I have extra available overhead so that we can be more proactive with maintenance, etc.

I would rate StarWind at eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement.

The primary use case is to provide a virtual storage for our data and virtual machines. Not having a budget for a physical SAN, we use what we have to get the best of what we have, this is primary reason for using this VSAN.

I don't have to stay late at night. Prior to using this VSAN, if anything happened to a server, everything went down. We couldn't do anything, and that was a nightmare. There was even a time where all the data on the server got wiped. People were unable to work for half a day.

We did have a backup. We had to go to a third party to get a hard drive, have it shipped, and upload the data back into the server, then foster continuum. It happened like that twice before they said, “Enough is enough, what are our options?” 

We had the option of a physical server, but the cost would have been $25,000 or $30,000. So, we had two servers that were underutilized, and they were good servers, old but well-maintained. Therefore, we sat with the IT company, where I'm employed, and they said, "You can either go with a physical server or a VSAN, Virtual SAN." We were like, “Okay, tell us about the VSAN.”

They mentioned, “You have two servers, buy more hard drive, RAM, and CPU." Those are things we could easily do. “Then, you will have the VSAN mirror one to the other, and whatever you have in one will other copy to the other.” For instance, if we lose a physical server, CPU, etc., it provides peace of mind, is cost effective, and we are able to use our existing infrastructure. 

The most attractive feature is, as a Virtual SAN, the data on one is copied to the data on the second. We have two in tandem. So, the data on one is the same as the data on the second one. If we need to do maintenance on the server, it doesn't necessarily have to be after hours, or recommended after hours. If I need to do something in an emergency, I can stop the sync and know that one server has all the information, do what I need to do, and sync them back.

Once we resolve the syncing issues, a first sync of about 4TB of data was done in under 30 minutes. The ability to have the office run and do emergency backup repairs without the company being down was a feature that I liked about this VSAN.

Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible. It would take about 13 hours. However, they have since then improved on it. It also depends on the pipe. We had a small pipe back then. So, we would do things at around 8:00 AM, then by 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning (the next day), everything would be back on. Once we upgraded the pipe between them, within half an hour, it was synced.

StarWind made us understand that we had a small pipe and our drives were not SSD, but SATA. All these things contributed because they have tons of clients. Thus, if we were the only ones having this issue, then we had the issue.

Once we made the changes, we saw amazing improvement on the way it synced. Instead of 13 hours, it took five to ten minutes for it to complete. For improvement, there should be simpler, user-friendly training about how the system works. I have dabbled in it, but if I need to do anything I'd rather pick up the phone, call them, and say, "This is what I need to do," and they're more than happy to help. While they do have help documentation, there is a relatively steep learning curve.

You need to take into consideration the amount of data that you are syncing as it will come into play: The amount of data that needs to sync between the two devices and the amount of data that the pipe has to read right. 

With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs. If data is corrupt, how does it determine that I'm not going to sync something because it's corrupt? How does any software determine that the data is bad. Then, how does it fix it? Because if we get corrupted on one server, we don't want to transfer it to the other server.

The product is stable. If we receive error messages, it is usually regarding the underlying technology since we are using servers which are 11-years-old.

If I am concerned about upgrading on my older system, I can schedule time with the support team and they will do the upgrade for me.

The solution is really scalable. They have various models. We told them the maximum data that we have and found the right one for us. We can grow, as it expands. It is not a one size fits all.

We have 41 people who can access data which resides on the VSAN.

I like the ProActive support. All the guys that I have spoken or dealt with are professionals. I find this very important. There hasn't been anything like, “Hold on, let me check with my colleague.” They know exactly what they were doing and are consistent. If guy A connects to my computer, he does step one, two, three, and four. There hasn't been any poking around where they shouldn't. 

Being able to call someone who is knowledgeable about the situation and circumstance is important. They also followed up to say, “Have you resolved the issue? Is everything okay?”

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. It feels like they are assigned to me until the end of whatever we are doing, which is important to me.

Since the beginning that is how the support has been. That is why we stayed with them. It's not that expensive. I have nothing but good things to say about them. All their work is documented. I receive an email afterwards documenting all the steps that they did.

We did not have a solution before StarWind. A consultant recommended this solution. We were also looking into physical solutions, not virtual.

I didn't build the system for us; I manage it. We had someone else do the build. If you spoke to him, he would tell you the build was easy. Give him the instructions, then he just created it. 

The deployment took two and a half to four hours. We did the deployment in the evening, and it was fully operational before we left. The deployment was done by a single person who did the connectivity and configurations, though there were some things that I had to do to build the virtual machine.

I am the only person needed to maintain, though I occasionally contact StarWind ProActive support, when needed. It is a low maintenance solution. It is as good as your infrastructure. Like every road, the foundation of the road determines the asphalt you put on it. If you have a good foundation (SSD drives), then it works well. The issues that we had were based on server error messages, because sometimes when people were downloading stuff, they'd say, "It is too slow." However, once we built a bigger pipe, we could see the change.

In hindsight, the Virtual SAN was meant to be a stop-gap solution. Make sure what happened before, if a server dies, we have business continuity. That was the goal. It so happened that the business continuity and stop-gap became a lasting solution which we continue to use because it works well.

There was a third-party consultant, who fine tuned it, but our guy created it after downloading the software. He has done it multiple times. If you were to ask him, he would tell you, "It's a walk in the park."

Our experience with the third-party consultant was excellent. The guy who I dealt with is a system admin. He is the one who informed us about the solution. He had deployed it for another client and thought it was just the right size for us, so he recommended it. 

There was an implementation strategy. We had all the data in a hard drive. After a crash, we had all the data in a backup drive. Once it was restored, we configured it on one server, then we transferred the data from that server to the VSAN occupied part of the hard drive array. After that, we built the other one on the other server, then the sync started. It was a phased in implementation.

You need to ensure that you have the right technical resource to implement the solution. Our guy was knowledgeable and a teacher. He imparted knowledge telling you why he was doing what he was doing and consulted you before doing it. He had a plan and submitted a proposal, which we looked at it. It showed what he needed and how it was going to take to get done. Therefore, the technical resource is very important.

This solution has helped us maintain high performance and data high availability on minimalistic resources. We have saved about 80 percent (versus purchasing a physical SAN) and peace of mind, which is important.

The pricing is fine for the work that it does. I have had no issues. When we bought it three to four years ago for what we needed, it was literally cheaper than the alternative which was ten times the amount and took up physical space. 

The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running.

We are not using the Log-structured Write Cache feature nor are we using NVMe.

We have not integrated this solution with server OS native management tools. We are just interested in business continuity. If the server blows up, we will still be in business. It does what we want, and we are happy with it.

As of now, since it does exactly what we want it to do, so I do not see where we would need to use features that we are currently not using. We were sold on the fact that we could use our existing infrastructure, and it syncs data if we lose one server. 

StarWind Virtual SAN might not be for everybody. We had the underlining technology, so it worked for us. Give it a try. You can't go wrong, because one of the things they told us is that if you no longer use it, StarWind would credit us a certain amount against a different solution that they had. It was a win-win for us.

The primary use case is backup storage for our VM servers. 

Our day-to-day servers are all on StarWind and our backups went from nightly to every minute. That improves disaster recovery time from hours to minutes.

In addition, it has helped us to maintain high performance and data high availability on minimalistic resources. We haven't bought any hardware, it was all stuff we already had. We just reconfigured it and got new features. In terms of costs, it has reduced what we would have had to pay. We have saved approximately 80 percent. We would have had to buy a $100,000 server. Instead, we ended up with a $20,000 server and a little bit of software.

I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have.

In addition, we have it integrated with vCenter which makes the failover automatic. It's basically set-it-and-forget-it.

I'm sure it needs bug fixes, and there are new features coming down the pipe, but it works great.

It's been completely stable for us. There were some bugs initially which slowed us down, but those were related to VMware and not StarWind.

You can resize things on the fly as needed, add more storage as needed. Since it's all on Windows, you can expand the disk as much as needed and as quickly as possible.

Their support has been excellent. They will walk you through every step of the way and help you with anything you need. They're great.

We were using direct-attached for the primary servers and FreeNAS for the backups. We switched for the real-time replication and the failover.

The initial setup was straightforward but it was also complex. There were a bunch of steps, but it was all very well documented and very well laid out. You follow steps and you end up with a working system at the end.

It took me a couple weeks, but that was because I had other things going on and a rather complex system. But if you just wanted the basics, you could probably get it set up in a couple of hours.

As part of my implementation strategy, I first set it up on three-way replication servers and after that was done, put it into production.

The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go.

We didn't evaluate any other vendors. In our price range, this was the only vendor.

The pricing is based on the amount of storage, so you should evaluate how much storage you're going to need for your license. I believe there's an unlimited tier which is also very reasonable.

In our organization, it's the backing data-store for the entire company, which is about 85 users. Programmers and management people make up our studio. For deployment and maintenance, it's just me with the support team at StarWind.

We don't have plans to increase usage. We're a small studio and we're not going to get bigger.

I give StarWind a ten out of ten. They have great support, a great product, it's simple and easy to use, and has a great price.

StarWind is the highly redundant storage solution for our company-wide hardware agnostic Hyper-V environment.

StarWind VSAN allowed our small business to build a fault-tolerant storage architecture using SSDs and off-the-shelf chassis that is high-performing, high-functional, fault-tolerant, highly available, reliable, and easy to use. Best of all, we achieved all of this for a fraction of the cost of other solutions. For eight years now, StarWind has been extremely reliable and easy to use.

• Very simple to use
• Hardware agnostic
• Extremely reliable
• Feature rich
• Cost-effective!
• StarWind also has excellent support in the rare case you need them.

Encryption: I would love to see "at rest" data encryption as a new feature for organizations like mine looking for ways to simplify this mandated compliance issue.

We have not had a single major issue in eight years of using StarWind. Every release upgrade has been seamless and required no downtime. It has saved us from multiple hardware failures with no downtime. A truly redundant, reliable solution!

Very easy to scale. I am not aware of any limitations.

In eight years we have never needed support for an issue with the software. I have called a handful of times to have them confirm my understanding and review my configuration.  They have always been very helpful and thorough. A+.

No.

Very simple to use. Most of the UI is self-explanatory but StarWind's website has easy-to-follow documentation and recommendations, and their support staff is one of the most thorough and patient I have had the honor to work with in this industry. A+.

In-house with minimal StarWind support.

I have not seen any other storage solution that delivers the features that StarWind does for anywhere near the price. Licensing and support costs are very simple and straightforward.  

Dell EMC, Nimble, 3PAR.

Make the switch to StarWind! Your life will be much easier, and you will have extra budget to spend elsewhere!

We had decentralized storage, inefficient storage and computer utilization, non-utilization of VMware vSphere advanced features like HA, FT, vMotion which require shared storage like StarWind.

StarWind VSAN provided us an efficient performance with HA. We tried other solutions as well and found StarWind’s VSAN easy to install and manage. The unlimited capacity license is also a very good feature.

• StarWind’s VSAN applications for VMware
• Easy to install and manage
• The unlimited capacity license is also a very good feature.

• A detailed performance monitoring of the storage system.
• A tool/wizard which analyzes the installed system and its configuration and gives a recommendation for improvement.

• I've used StarWind VSAN for replicating vSphere datastores and in Microsoft SQL and file systems clusters. 

• I used one in mission-critical systems like a call center, SQL, SharePoint, etc.

My company data is essential to us, and we never lost data, so building the HA storage was our absolute priority. 

For the last six years, StarWind VSAN protected our transactions of more than 100 billions of dollars.

• Stability
• Performance
• Security
• Easy to solve problems
• Vendor support always is ready to help :) 

• Linux version for vSphere could incorporate deduplication. 
• Also, the documentation for configuring alerts in vSphere is not simple.

It's stable as a rock.

Performance is very good but the bottleneck is the network. It is good to have 10gb links. 

Very good. I've got standard support but the reaction time is always 1-2 hours. 

I used StarWind and VMware vSAN, but StarWind is 10x cheaper and gives us a solution independent from the hypervisor. This is more secure.

The initial setup is easy, but after buying, support can help you with the installation and optimization.

I implemented through my team, but support helped me optimize the iSCSI paths.

StarWind has the best price.

The version for vSphere is very cheap, and anyone interested should buy a three-node version for the test environment.

No.

Thanks support for the quick help: I think you never sleep!