StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

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.

Our use case is for an oil and gas site with 200 ATEX cameras and 30 administrative buildings that have 400 indoor and outdoor cameras. All of the cameras are connected to a VLAN switch in each area. 

All of the switches are connected to the core switch in the data center through a fibre network between buildings. 

We add all cameras to management servers and they are divided to recording servers. There are 30 cameras for each recording server. 

We create a Microsoft failover cluster to achieve redundancy between management servers.

Another use case is to create a storage pool (4TB) to store SQL DB to achieve database stability and make it reachable to each server.

It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times have changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage

From time to time we face some issues with the storage unit and the whole cluster goes down. We replaced the storage with virtual SAN on both the nodes of each system using StarWind and now the system is more stable and has failover redundancy.

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check the storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” accessible by all hosts. 

StarWind cuts down virtualization costs and complexity by eliminating the need for physical shared storage (SAN). 

It offers enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployable and easily configured. We get technical support from their team for the implementation software and if we have any issues.

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. 

Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, 

The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

I have been using the solution for five years.

We needed a solution that provided highly available storage via ISCSI, replicating to multiple physical sites synchronously. We needed it to be easy to use, easy to manage, and cost-effective. Ideally, there would be no vendor lock-in or special hardware needing to be purchased. 

We found StarWind, and this 100% solved our problem. We've used StarWind on a pair of nodes populated with a large amount of flash disks. They then are running on dedicated switches for ISCSI back to our Hyper-V hypervisors, as well as utilizing a dedicated sync link for replication across our metro wan. With this, we're able to have real-time replication of our data between multiple sites.

The ease of management of StarWind, compared to other vendors, has made it a top winner for us. Not only is it possible for junior sysadmins to understand it - it's also reliable. It's backed up by time-tested systems, such as MPIO, ZFS, and ISCSI. 

There's no vendor black magic in a StarWind Box. It's just a box that works. By adding the synchronous repped storage, our system is able to keep real-time data in sync for our virtual machines without having to look into application clustering.

The highly available setup and synchronous replication without the need for a quorum node is huge for us. We wanted storage that would sync the replication between two sites as fast as possible. By utilizing StarWind, we were able to set this up quickly, using dedicated connections, and not have to worry about it. 

It works as well as can be expected. In addition, the ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain.

The company is going through a changeover in its current product lineup. This has led to looking stuff up via search engines, hitting both the new and old content, which makes answering questions on your own difficult. I also would have preferred it if I had been able to get pricing before contacting them. 

For additional features, I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software. I'd also like to see a more robust API for controls.

I've used the solution for 12 months.

The stability has been rock solid. We're running it on a KVM hypervisor and have had no issues in the slightest.

Scalability met our needs; however, it would not perform as well if you added more nodes, as you're increasing your replication delta.

Customer service and support have been great for the little time that we've had to talk to them. They are out of Eastern Europe and are obviously on a virtual phone. This can lead to some audio issues, however, nothing stops it.

Positive

Historically, I had used HPE Lefthand for sync rep storage. While it did the job, it was definitely older technology and has been unsettled.

The setup is extremely straightforward. The software is delivered via a template, so rolling it out is like any other VM. Also, the software includes setup support directly with an engineer who is more than willing to answer questions.

We did a combo of both in-house and vendor. We deployed the VM and then had the vendor assist us. I'd rank them a ten out of ten for knowing how their system works and offering various hypervisors access storage.

Our ROI has been difficult to calculate as this was a required purchase.

The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own hardware costs.

We have gone through the gamut of technologies and examined Linbit, Ceph, non-clustered ZFS, cluster ZFS, HPE Nimble, Pure, and more.

Our primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is to repurpose older servers with substantial disk capacity for use in a three-node vSphere cluster. This setup was for proof of concept (POC) environments for the first time and after to host production workloads.

It allows us to create scalable and cost-effective virtual storage solutions. The integration with vSphere ensures that we can efficiently manage and utilize these resources, enhancing our IT infrastructure while minimizing new hardware and licensing costs.

StarWind Virtual SAN has greatly benefited our organization by reducing hardware and licensing costs through repurposing older servers with significant disk capacity. It has enabled us to extend the lifespan of our existing hardware and align with sustainability goals, all while providing a cost-effective and scalable storage solution. Its seamless integration with vSphere has improved our storage management and operational efficiency in production environments.

It was our first two steps to a hyper-converged solution.

The most valuable features of StarWind Virtual SAN include its cost-effective repurposing of older hardware, seamless integration with vSphere, and high scalability. It enables us to extend the lifespan of existing servers, significantly cut down on licensing costs, and manage our storage environment efficiently. 

Additionally, its flexibility allows us to scale effortlessly by adding nodes (up to 32), which supports our growing storage needs and enhances the adaptability of our production environment.

Areas for improvement in StarWind Virtual SAN include simplifying the setup process, especially for users with limited vSphere expertise. Future releases could benefit from an enhanced configuration wizard to streamline deployment and more robust data migration. There is also a need to address the problem of CentOS's end of life. 

Additionally, incorporating a built-in backup solution would significantly enhance data protection. Improved features for managing and migrating data effectively would further strengthen the product.

I have been using the solution for three years now

The stability of StarWind Virtual SAN is robust. The solution performs reliably with minimal downtime, ensuring consistent operation in production environments. 

In case of the loss of a node, the reconstruction, depending on the amount of data to synchronize, is always made with no data or integrity loss.

However, the reliance on CentOS, introduces potential future stability risks. Despite this, the system has consistently delivered dependable performance and resilience, maintaining stability even under significant workloads.

The solution allows for easy expansion by adding nodes (up to 32), which supports growing storage demands and adapts well to increasing workloads. This flexibility ensures that as our storage needs evolve, we can scale the system efficiently without major reconfiguration or downtime. 

Overall, its scalability is a significant strength, making it a versatile choice for both current and future requirements.

I haven't experienced support since I used the free version. Anyway, I have found plenty of support from StarWind through their forum.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

It was complex to understand the mechanism of the hyperconverged solution put in place.

The ESXi consumes the virtual disk created by Starwind Vsan from the local disk.
The cabling was not that difficult since I didn't use any for data sync between nodes.

The most difficult part was the usage of PowerShell scripts to create the cluster because the free version doesn't provide a Gui.

The implementation was in-house, in a new data center.

The ROI was excellent because we reused old servers that already had capacity disks.

If you are comfortable with the solution and you feel that you don't need support, you can begin with the free licences for three nodes.

We did not evaluate other options.