StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is testing in lab environments and as a temporary setup where I needed storage on existing hardware.

A specific example of how I used StarWind Virtual SAN in my lab is as storage for virtual machines in Proxmox.

The best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers in my experience are that there is a free version and it can be used as hyper-converged storage over multiple nodes.

StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization because the straightforward setup has made things easier for my work and organization.

StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved by adding a possibility to install bare metal on hardware to use as storage without using it in a hyper-converged configuration.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for approximately two to three years.

In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is stable.

From my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN's scalability is good.

I did not need to contact customer support for StarWind Virtual SAN.

I previously used a different solution, specifically Open-E, but the experiences were not as good from a stability standpoint.

I have not seen a return on investment and cannot share any relevant metrics, such as time saved, money saved, or fewer employees needed.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that there is a free version, which is beneficial. However, when you need pricing information, you have to contact sales, which is a downside.

Before choosing StarWind Virtual SAN, I did not evaluate other options and simply found StarWind Virtual SAN ranked first on Google.

I have used StarWind Virtual SAN on multiple virtual machines to create a high-availability storage solution. I gave this review a rating of 8 out of 10.

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN involves our physical servers, where I monitor the virtual machines and the storage we have attached to it.

It has simplified the daily monitorin gof our VMs

In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are its flexibility and the ability to combine the storage types we have, and it stands out because it is easy to use.

StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by giving us the flexibility and freedom to have more time for other projects. It is a tool that does not have many problems or create any issues, so we can concentrate on other projects.

Currently, StarWind Virtual SAN is working perfectly fine, so there are no changes I would suggest.

I have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for a couple of years now.

StarWind Virtual SAN is stable.

The scalability of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty good.

We did not use customer support for StarWind Virtual SAN.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution before StarWind Virtual SAN.

The pricing and setup were easy. It was easy to deploy, which was the best part I think, and for pricing, it is a relatively good price.

I have seen a return on investment with StarWind Virtual SAN, particularly in time saved, as I can have more free time to concentrate myself and the team on other projects.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN was okay.

Before choosing StarWind Virtual SAN, I did not evaluate other options.

My advice to others looking into using StarWind Virtual SAN is that they should use it and give it a try because it is a very nice, easy, and working solution.

I just want to say to StarWind Virtual SAN to keep up the good job.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate StarWind Virtual SAN a ten out of ten.

The product is being utilized within an airgap lab environment, which means it is isolated from external networks and internet connectivity for security reasons. The virtual Storage Area Network (SAN) is integrated into the system alongside Hyper-V, a virtualization platform developed by Microsoft. 

This configuration allows for efficient storage management and virtualization capabilities within the isolated environment of the lab. The virtual SAN helps in providing centralized storage resources that can be dynamically allocated to virtual machines running on the Hyper-V infrastructure, enhancing the overall performance and flexibility of the system. 

By combining these technologies, users can optimize their lab environment for testing, development, or research purposes without compromising security or network integrity.

This innovative product has significantly enhanced speed, security, and organization. With its advanced features and capabilities, users can experience improved efficiency and productivity. 

The optimization of speed ensures rapid performance, allowing tasks to be completed more quickly and effectively. Additionally, the enhanced security measures provide peace of mind and safeguard sensitive information from potential threats. 

Furthermore, the organization features streamlined processes and ensures easy access to important data, ultimately contributing to a more seamless and structured workflow. 

This product has proven to be a valuable asset in enhancing overall operations and effectiveness.

When it comes to ease of installation, the whole process is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward. With simple step-by-step instructions and all the necessary tools included in the package, setting up the product is a breeze. Even for those who are not particularly tech-savvy, the installation can be completed in a matter of minutes without any hassle. Whether it's assembling a piece of furniture, installing software, or setting up a new device, the ease of installation ensures a smooth and hassle-free experience for users.

The dashboard is functional, but it could benefit from a more modern and visually appealing design. A facelift would not only enhance the overall aesthetics but also improve user experience by making it more intuitive and user-friendly. 

Updates such as streamlined navigation, clearer data visualization, and customizable widgets could make the dashboard more engaging and efficient for users. 

A fresh look and improved functionality would elevate the dashboard to better meet the needs and expectations of users.

I've used the solution for six months.

One of the standout features of the device is its exceptional stability when used for virtual SANS (Storage Area Network). The stability ensures that data transfer and storage operations are smooth and uninterrupted, making it a reliable and efficient solution for managing and accessing large volumes of data in a network environment. 

This feature enhances the overall performance and reliability of the virtual SANS, making it a valuable asset for businesses and organizations that rely on secure and high-speed data storage solutions.

One of the best features of the product is its scalability. This allows users to easily customize and adjust the product to suit their specific needs and preferences. 

Whether it's expanding storage capacity, upgrading performance capabilities, or adapting to different user requirements, the scalability of the product ensures versatility and flexibility. 

Additionally, scalability often means that the product can grow with the user, accommodating changing needs over time without the need for a complete overhaul or replacement. This feature adds significant value to the product by enhancing its longevity and adaptability in various scenarios.

Their support team is highly knowledgeable and skilled in assisting customers with any technical issues they may encounter. 

Whether it's troubleshooting a complex setup, optimizing performance, or addressing compatibility concerns, the StarWind customer service team is well-equipped to provide expert guidance and solutions. 

Customers can rely on their technical expertise to ensure smooth implementation and operation of the Virtual SAN solution.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. 

The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was straightforward and seamless. The user-friendly interface guided me through the process step by step, making it easy to set up and configure. 

I was impressed by the clear instructions and the minimal technical knowledge required to get the software up and running. The whole installation process was efficient and well-organized, allowing me to quickly deploy the virtual SAN solution without any hassle.

My experience with installing StarWind Virtual SAN was smooth and hassle-free.

We used an in-house team.

We witnessed an ROI within one to three months.

I did not evaluate other options. 

We use the service to provide two-node hyper-converged storage to our application servers. 

We previously did not have any type of high-availability storage, and as you can guess, it was a mess. Getting high-availability storage was one of our first priorities when a new IT team was formed. 

Through talking with other customers, this is a great solution for us. In the more than six years of use now, we have not had any issues and support has always been great. They have helped us make config changes and do updates without any downtime.

Moving us to high availability storage has made our websites and applications more reliable. It also has allowed us to perform updates on storage and application servers without having downtime. Previously, to do any of those things was a pain as we would have to shut services down to perform any updates, whether security or features.

When compared to other providers, StarWind provided a great product at a reasonable price. Cost is also very important to a non-profit.

Having high-availability storage has made our lives easier. Having a two-node cluster without dealing with split-brain saves us the extra costs in hardware and maintenance. This is especially important to us since we are a non-profit. 

Having support is also very valuable to us as we are a small team. We have had very few vendors that we never had frustrations with their support and StarWind is definitely one of them. As for reliability, we have never had a single problem.

Since our needs are simple in comparison to large corporations, when it comes to needs, we often just need the basic plans. Therefore, we cannot speak much into what we want to see improvements in due to our simple needs but also because we rarely touch it. We mostly touch it just to do updates. 

As for the financial aspect of this, there is not much need for improvement either as they are much cheaper than the alternatives. We have found this product to suit our needs. 

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

Never had an issue with stability.

We have never had issues with scaling and we run applications and databases using the storage solution.

Their support did most of the work when it came to the setup.

In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specifically Hyper-V nodes with local resources.

The best features of StarWind Virtual SAN are in the paid version. The integration with Hyper-V is very useful and stood out to me in the version features.

The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available.

I wanted to see better understanding of the software in the free version to have at least for a period of time all the functionality from the paid version, so I could make an opinion about the software.

I have been using the solution for over four years.

StarWind Virtual SAN is stable.

I use it with just two nodes of Hyper-V, and it handles growth well.

I use StarWind Virtual SAN because I switched from a different solution.

Before choosing StarWind Virtual SAN, I evaluated Cisco and Dell.

The StarWind vSAN product is not used directly by me. We use it in the organization via one of our clients. It is used as a shared storage solution for a Hyper-V converged project with two nodes. The project consists of a cluster with two Hyper-V nodes in which several virtual machines are running. 

The hardware is quite common. The disks used on the two virtual hosts are normal 7000 SATA disks. Only the synchronization interests are 10GB. Otherwise, there's nothing special; they are usual servers with Xeon processors from the 2018 generation.

StarWind Virtual SAN was the most optimal choice, both from a financial point of view and in terms of compatibility. It is an excellent choice for use together with Microsoft Hyper-V. Other options would have been the use of Microsoft Server Datacenter licenses on the two nodes and the use of Storage Replica and Storage Space Direct as a storage solution or VMware vSAN, both of which would have cost considerably more without bringing anything extra from the point of view of functionality or reliability, compared to Starwind Virtual SAN.

Although StarWind Virtual SAN free is fully functional and can be used in production, the support that comes with the license is priceless, the expertise of the StarWind support specialists is worth all the money. 

Also, the administration console, which is only available for the paid version, is extremely useful, being very intuitive and easy to use. The information displayed in the console is excellently structured, so that the complete solution can be seen in a single screen, which is very useful in monitoring and diagnosing the system.

While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a strict set of requirements, and StarWind Virtual SAN explicitly fulfilled that set of requirements, we were not looking for a solution with many options. That's why I can't say if improvements are necessary. The options used in our project have everything we need and they have managed in excellent time regardless of the citations that have appeared so far.

We have been using this solution for over five years.

It is very reliable. In the five-plus years since we have had it in production, it has coped brilliantly with all the events that have occurred.

It is extremely scalable. The free version is limited to three nodes. However, the licensed version has an unlimited number of nodes.

The support was excellent. I was assisted well and all the steps were explained to me, including how it should be set up and why, making the initial implementation of the project easy.

Positive

We opted from the beginning to do the project with StarWind Virtual SAN.

The initial setup was quite intuitive. That said, I had full support from StarWind at the beginning of the project implementation.

The solution was implemented in-house.

Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.

I evaluated Window Server Datacenter licenses for Storage Space and B2B, and another attempt with VMware vSAN. Both did not fit very well and were also considerably more expensive.

You can use the free evaluation version to see if it is what you need.

I have a two-node high-availability setup. The first goal is to use it as a hyper-visor for critical servers to be hosted locally. If this use case works well over time, I may use the Virtual SAN as a storage cluster for multiple servers to connect to.

Two servers used for Hyper-V hosting, with high-speed NVME underlying storage, are being used for high-availability hosting and storage. No additional hardware is required beyond a high-speed network connection between the two (25gbps fiber optic in our case).

The storage/hosting cluster is currently being used for test servers. We have hosted some of our test SQL servers on the devices to ensure seamless failover and good IO performance.

Once it moves out of testing, we will host critical servers on these devices and will be able to quickly transfer servers between hosts to allow for host server maintenance without VM downtime. It will also provide instant failovers in case of hardware failures, reducing downtime that would otherwise occur while a VM is being restored from a backup or the host server is fixed.

The ability to host high availability storage between existing servers without additional hardware is a great benefit. This not only saves money but also reduces the complexity of the hardware configuration creating fewer points of failure.

I also appreciate the alternative this product provides compared with the very restrictive options provided by large vendors for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. That this solution can be configured on existing hardware and managed on Windows servers as opposed to a proprietary hardware-tied HCI solution is a positive in my book.

Including their own hyper-visor would be a valuable improvement over simply integrating with Hyper-V. 

A more streamlined setup where components like the iSCSI connectors were configured from the application would be useful as well (currently, there is a lot of back and forth between the StarWind application and Windows Server High Availability configuration screens when setting it up)

The only issue I have dealt with is slow contact with support and things like trial license extensions through my sales rep.

I used the free version a few years ago and have been using the paid version for around six months.

The application itself has operated without issue. That said, it is utilizing a number Windows Server roles and hardware devices that themselves can have issues. The web of interconnected components can be harrowing, however, it still is a superior option to a closed-box HCI option that provides no insight for troubleshooting.

You could have significant scaling by just having more two-node or three-node clusters, but you cannot scale a single cluster past three-nodes currently.

My experience with support was terrific. The only issue was having to communicate through a sales rep instead of being able to directly contact the engineer.

Positive

Our previous solution utilized Direct-Attached Storage devices. We are evaluating this vSAN-based approach to storage and integrating hosting to reduce surface area, improve I/O performance, and provide more seamless failovers.

The setup is very complex, particularly regarding network configuration.

Pricing on this product is controlled largely by the number of nodes and the storage volumes involved. One of the cutoff points for license cost is 10TB. If you intend to use storage volumes beyond that size, expect an uptick in cost.

I did some basic research into Azure and Dell HCI options.

StarWind was the perfect solution that I was looking for: a true, two-node virtual SAN solution.

We're too small for three physical hypervisors, however, we still have two and want high availability. Native vSAN for the hypervisor we use requires two nodes plus a witness, or three, and we just couldn't do that.

In a search for an alternative, I found StarWind. They offer a true two-node setup with agent VMs on each host and two high-bandwidth links to each other, and that's it!

We're a visiting nurse association and rely on redundant hypervisors to keep our patient software up and running around the clock.

It has cut costs that we would've spent on network links and SAN appliance(s), allowing us to just include drives with our hosts and run a Virtual SAN.

Not only that, but the addition of two 10GB links now means that our hypervisor can live-migrate virtual machines very fast between hosts, and data is also synced between StarWind RAID arrays quickly too.

All this combines into a very efficient, fast, and reliable Virtual SAN solution that blazes past our previous physical SAN infrastructure.

The accessibility is great. It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly. It's pretty darn fast at syncing and I appreciate how friendly it is to SMBs.

Pricing is also very fair and their support is top-notch. I had some trouble setting it up. That said, it didn't take long at all to get in touch with support reps and they were knowledgeable on the product, not just an agent reading a script.

PROS include:
• Relatively easy to use
• True two-node vSAN
• Redundancy
• Stability (no issues in the years thus far of using it)
• Friendly pricing for SMBs and great support
• Great solution for SMB environments overall

The only thing I could suggest to improve is the documentation. The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc. However, they've improved the documentation greatly since I got started in 2022 (writing now as of 2025.02.19)

CONS include:
• Documentation for initial setup can be a bit ambiguous at times, yet support helps you get through it; you're good once you're up and running.
• It's not native and not a bad thing. Just keep in mind it's a third-party solution so it won't be as "drop-in" as a native solution offered by your hypervisor.

Since 2022

So far. I have had no issues or lapses in performance/stability.

The solution is scalable. It is very easy to add more virtual disks.

Customer support is very good! The support rep knew what they were talking about and quickly got back to me with an answer.

Positive

Before we had a physical SAN, maybe the HP MSA P2300 (I may have gotten the model number wrong).

It was just too expensive and demanding of physical links/resources to go with another MSA, so we decided to try a Virtual SAN.

The initial setup was both straightforward and complex. It wasn't too hard, however, there were some little parts in the documentation where I got stuck without much help other than calling for a support agent, which solved my issue and cleared up the confusion.

The implementation was done in-house.

Pricing is pretty fair and includes one year of support (as of purchase in August 2022).

The license is based on how many hosts you have and how much in TB you need the vSAN to accommodate.

We looked at our native Hypervisor's vSAN product, however, it required three nodes (or two with one witness node) and just wasn't feasible for our setup as an SMB.