StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

StarWind VSAN eliminates the NAS/SAN as a single point of failure. It's an affordable synchronous HA storage solution which allows us to use extremely fast direct-attached SSD storage in an HA environment. 

• We have deployed StarWind VSAN for several customers. 
• Super affordable HA solution for SMB private cloud infrastructure. StarWind VSAN is our go-to solution.

Support is outstanding, responsive, and goes above and beyond. They were able to help with some existing AD issues that would typically be out of scope.

I would like additional documentation regarding possible networking configurations with 10GbE switching.

Their support goes above and beyond with the integration of their software.

• It is a fairly straightforward product. 
• The support is great.
• It just works. 
• It meets all my criteria for success. 

I use StarWind Virtual SAN software to change our old HPE Fibre Channel storage into an iSCSI solution for our development environment.

We have an old HPE Fibre Channel SAN that we wanted to reutilize for a development environment. However, we didn't want to spend too much on fiber infrastructure or replace the controller with iSCSI, since this would cost thousands of dollars. 

StarWind Virtual SAN software solves our problems. The software is easy to setup and manage, and the support is excellent.

I like the simple management interface:

• It is easy to setup.
• It has good support feature.                                                   

• It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks.
• It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted.

I have not faced any issues with stability.

Not applicable.

We are happy with the price. 

Replicated, high availability storage for VMware vSphere cluster of VMware ESX 2-nodes in an HA cluster for Virtual SAN storage, only this software can do a 2-node cluster.

It provides cost-friendly replacements for VMware vSAN or the dedicated storage solution that I am using it for to build shared, replicated storage for my VMware vSphere.

You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS/SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage.

• I would like to replace Windows nodes to Linux. As of today, Linux nodes are ready for production. 
• Ability to to test the virtual storage are network area and storage speed from StarWind Management Console.
• Ability to check network card settings (such as MTU), VMware settings, and other settings needed for work under StarWind best practices. I would like to have something like a StarWind Best Practices Analyzer.

The setup is fast.

The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great.

We evaluated VMware vSAN and HPE StoreVirtual VSA.

To give us the ability to install a cluster environment, increasing reliability for our plant infrastructure.

This product allowed gave us the ability to implement a cluster environment which allowed us to implement a stable infrastructure for our plants.

The best feature of the StarWind Virtual San product is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure.

One area that could be improved is the reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot. Rarely, the shared drive will not connect automatically.

StarWind is used as the primary storage for three VMware hosts. It is running as a two node cluster for HA.

StarWind has provided an active-active HA storage system that keeps our systems running 24/7. We have the ability to keep everything up even when maintenance is required for updating the cluster or underlying OS/hardware issues.

My favorite feature, active-active HA, provides top performance and redundancy. Administration consists of patching/updating the product a few times a year but otherwise it simply works.

I haven't had a lot of interaction with support. My only complaint is that an update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it. Every other time I have used support, it has been for a training/configuration question and was not time sensitive. They normally responded to those requests within 24 hours.

I switched from a Synology HA cluster after it had a split-brain situation and their tech support couldn't tell me why the issue occurred.

StarWind was the least expensive option I considered. Their maintenance cost is reasonable.

I looked at a number of other options including EMC, NetApp, Dell, HPE, etc.

Our primary use case of this solution is the deployment of a highly-available Microsoft Hyper-V environment. Using the StarWind Virtual SAN product allowed us to deploy a Hyper-V cluster that provides uninterrupted failover between nodes that would have otherwise not been possible. Additionally, we have implemented the same redundancy on our dedicated file storage systems.

The Virtual SAN product has greatly improved the organization's infrastructure by allowing us to create a scalable, highly-available, and cost-effective storage system. It has integrated flawlessly into our Microsoft Hyper-V environment, which, among other limitations, previously required manual intervention to move virtual machines. Our file storage systems also benefited tremendously from the seamless failover we were able to deploy with StarWind.

The product's core feature of virtualizing our storage is by far the most valuable. The abstraction allows us to use commodity hardware, and upgrade/modify it on demand without impacting SLAs. It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud.

It's been a while since I checked the associated PowerShell module, but I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management. 

No, the only bug that was encountered over the course of several years was due to our negligence in updating the software in a timely manner. Support engineers were very knowledgeable and able to pinpoint the issue quickly.

No, we can add additional nodes and hard drives at will without downtime. This is the beauty of virtualizing the storage.

Technical support has been fantastic on the very few occasions we've had to call them. The engineers aren't just well versed in the product, but also in Microsoft systems as well as storage/networking architecture.

Response times have been fast, and the support engineers follow-up consistently to make sure the issue is resolved.

Yes, we were using a non-clustered Hyper-V setup. The two main problems with that deployment that caused us to switch were:

• Single points of failure in both our virtualization and storage systems.
  The loss of one node in either system didn’t allow for seamless failover.
  

The initial setup was very straightforward and quick. The engineer used a remote session to quickly get the environment configured and provided insight into the architecture. 

Implementation was handled by an in-house team with help from the StarWind engineer.

Our ROI has been very impressive, as the only recurring costs have been the support contracts. As hard drives become cheaper and cheaper, expanding the capacity of our systems has been trivial.

As a nonprofit with a limited budget, we are very satisfied with the licensing model provided by StarWind. The initial setup was quick and mostly effortless. Additionally, the support has been superb on the few occasions we've had to reach out to them.

We were unable to evaluate other options because the dedicated SAN systems that provided the same level of redundancy were out of our price range.

The product is solid, simple to use, and well engineered. Very impressed and looking forward to future releases.

We use StarWind vSAN software storage solutions to run two hypervisors in an HA clustered environment. 

This is a cost effective solution that allows us to have an HA clustered environment with redundancy and scalability. Storage has been very stable, and without issues, failures, or  bugs.

Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management. This solution can be used with hardware RAID. Additionally, there are many white papers and informational studies about how to utilize the software.

Updates seem to be non-existent. The software is stable, but I do not get any updates or emails about new releases.

I've used StarWind Virtual SAN software in two different solutions for several years. Both were highly critical production environments requiring 100% uptime and fast performance. In both solutions, this platform satisfied those requirements.

The software is easy to configure. The more resources you throw at it, especially network throughput, the better it will perform. I'm using SSDs behind it and I am still very happy with the performance.

The StarWind tech support is extremely helpful, especially during the initial setup. They make sure to be part of the install and configuration so that your experience is positive and productive. 

It is difficult to control all of the hardware components. I went through a couple of different NICs before I found the one that would work with my hardware and server OS, and yield the necessary throughput for the StarWind portion.