StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

Our client had very little IT infrastructure in play relating to servers. They had a single Windows 10 low-end workstation that was acting as the controller for their food production assembly line. They were tackling a huge expansion and needed a more robust controller as their current one would go down often. 

StarWind vSAN gave us a cost-effective option to leverage three Dell servers, with two in HA and a third acting as a replica in a separate building on their site. This way, it can tolerate two full server failures and still allow the assembly line controller to run.

The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment. This allowed our client to have their food assembly line controller always available, as it costs them a lot of money if it goes down for any more than a few minutes. 

With Hyper-V and StarWind, they can have a quick turnaround in case a server goes down. It also gave us an insight into StarWinds as an alternative for future clients of ours if their server capability requirements ever increase. It's a great tool to have knowledge of and to offer as an option if needed.

The core feature of the entire product is the most valuable aspect. There aren't any features that stand out that provide a lot of value. We just like the ability to have HA storage replicated in real time between two nodes - which is enough for us to be more than satisfied. We do not interface with this product very often, so I can't speak to any feature in particular that stands out as being exceptional and valuable. The value of the product is the services given at a great price which is what drew us to the StarWind Virtual SAN to begin with.

It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster. We had to reach out to support to confirm the process to power cycle a single node, and even then, we had to go back and forth a few times with support to get a clear and concise answer to the question we had. It would be nice to have the option to put a single node in maintenance mode so we know we can safely perform updates and power down the server if required.

We've had the solution for six months in production.

The product is very stable.

I get the impression that this is better geared towards a smaller scale, for example, ad two or four-node cluster. Anything bigger, and it would make more sense to go with the big-name competitor. 

Technical support is Exceptional. They have very helpful and prompt responses.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

The setup is straightforward with the help of the support engineers to fine-tune our deployment.

We had setup help from the vendor team. They were quite knowledgeable. That said, I do recall them doing a few things in a different way than described by their setup guide.

I have not researched ROI.

The cost and licensing are very competitive.

We did not evaluate other options.

We were previously using old conventional backup methods. Last year, our organization decided to move to some cloud base storage solution, and we moved to StarWind as our primary storage solution. 

StarWind Virtual SAN is the solution exactly we are looking for. It replicates the data between the hosts, giving us 30 TB of usable redundant storage. 

StarWind Virtual SAN is a flexible solution in terms of storage expansion. The big advantage we got from StarWind is the ability to meet compliance requirements to ensure we are fail-safe.

StarWind Virtual SAN is cost-effective, with high availability and good flexibility, and is a high-performance software-defined storage solution. 

StarWind features like high availability and cost-effectiveness improve the ability of our organization by reducing the cost of old storage methods. Additionally, StarWind Virtual SAN provides excellent performance. It delivers fast data access and efficient data transfers, which actually improves the application performance and user experience.

In our case, the cost and high availability are the two most important factors which we were looking for in a solution. StarWind Virtual SAN is a cloud-native solution, and cost and other factors are favorable to us. I would recommend this solution if a company has a tight budget and hardware limitations in its environment. Of course, users do need to consider other factors as well as every organization has its own preference for solutions.

There is always room for improvement, and user expectations never end.

The first and most important thing the solution needs is video tutorials. There should be more focus areas. To use the solution, users should not need to always create tickets to get support from the vendor. There should be publicly available tutorials on YouTube or other platforms that help the users to integrate this solution with other platforms, for example. 

Documentation improvement is the second area that needs focus. We require more detailed documentation. That will definitely help users to effectively utilize this solution. 

I have been using this solution for more than one year. 

We were a using conventional backup solution previously.

We have evaluated a few options previously. However, I can't recall the names. That process was handled a year ago.

We used StarWind's Virtual SAN to create a cluster of hypervisors and databases that utilize iSCSI to access the SAN.  

StarWind's Virtual SAN allowed us to implement a virtual server environment that lets us scale our applications quicker and easier compared to the bare metal environment we had before. The database is also centralized, which makes it more fault tolerant than using a single-node database.

We are able to leverage the HA capabilities that StarWind offers in the event there is an issue with one of the SAN nodes.

We didn't have a SAN solution before StarWind, which meant all of our servers were bare metal. By implementing StarWind's Virtual SAN solution, we were able to transform our bare-metal environment into a hybrid of bare-metal and virtual servers. 

By utilizing virtual servers, we are able to scale and test our applications easier and quicker than by using bare-metal servers. This saved us in cost by not needing to order expensive parts whenever we needed a simple server. Now we can just spin up a VM.

StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before. It's very easy to create groups, targets, and review logs.

The management software is a clean and simple GUI. During implementation, StarWind's support assisted in getting everything configured properly, quickly, and to their best practices. On the rare occasion when I contact StarWind support, I always get a prompt reply and a quality answer. Having good support is one of the most important things I look for in a vendor, and StarWind excels with this.

The NFS functionality is a Windows-based NFS which has caused issues and forced us to implement a Linux-based NFS solution. You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue. This is annoying since, if you have a very large volume, it can take upwards of 30+ hours to do a full sync. With a "fast" sync, you can just sync the difference instead of needing to do a full copy. 

It would be nice if you could control the software via web GUI instead of the desktop application management software.

I've used the solution for over five years.

The solution is very stable.

We can easily add nodes. It is scalable. 

We have had a very good experience with technical support.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward since they did most of the setup for us.

We handled the setup in-house.

StarWind is very reasonably priced.

We previously evaluated FreeNAS.

This is a new product for us, and right now, we are using it in our lab environment, using one HP Z640 workstation and 2xE2267 processor with 64 GB of RAM. 

We have installed StarWind vSan to support our VMware vCenter v7.0.3 infrastructure with 2x2TB HDD. 

We're also using the same ISCSI service for our Veeam and Commvault backup infrastructure. During our tests, we did not notice any problem with the product. 

It was a reliable, simple solution to add more storage on the go and allowed for flexibility. We are truly thinking of using this product in our production.

I have been using Starwind vSan for some time, and the experience is great. In terms of simplicity and the features it offers. It takes little time to set up everything and prepare the system.

It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more.

With the flexibility it offers, we can use expand the storage on the go as soon as our backup services need more space. We are not limited the same way were are on physical SAN storage. 

For different services, we use different protocols. SMB, ISCSI, etc.

The ability to add storage on the go without putting down the entire infrastructure is useful. This means SLA improvements for our customers, and the continuity of the services is increased. 

We also like the ability to use it on the cloud, as our clients use also backup services on the cloud, meaning more security for backups of our clients. 

We like the simplicity of setting up the system and making it ready to use for the client. 

We appreciate the integration with popular hypervisors and backup systems.

I would like to see improvements in the documentation area. Some things need to be clear, although, for some people, the manuals being larger is a big no. That said, it is more important to explain things in detail.

The free version does not offer GUI, and for some people, it will be very difficult to test all the features of the product. They might feel disappointed about the product without a GUI. It would be better to have a trial of the full features for new customers that want to learn about the product. 

Other than that, I have no other improvements to talk about.

I've been using this product for some months now.

The previous solution we used was a traditional SAN.

The first setup was simple and intuitive.

We implemented the solution by ourselves in-house.

I did not see any hidden costs. That said, everyone has to keep in mind that on the cloud, of course, the cost will be higher than using local storage.

We did not evaluate other products before StarWind vSan.

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 decided on StarWind's Virtual SAN product due to the fact that it was a simple way for us to use vendor hardware to achieve SAN functions. 

It allowed us to implement a robust solution without needing to buy dedicated SAN hardware for the remote site.  

We set up a 2 node cluster using Dell servers and Dell-provided hard drives and used Starwind to create several redundant disks across the two hosts. This solution allowed us to enable High Availability across the hosts using the shared storage without the need to purchase dedicated hardware.

The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget.  

We built out a pair of matched servers with vendor-supplied hard drives and were able to provide a fully redundant storage array between the servers. VM hosts can now provide high availability failover if either host goes down. Not needing to spend a huge amount for a dedicated solution was a plus and the system is easily expandable if we need to make changes.  

Their support team has been excellent in helping us throughout the project process.

Support was great and provided presale support for our test environment before the purchase and after to help us configure the product before it went into production.  

They have also been great in following up on our project and helping with other implementation issues.  

Being able to use existing hardware was a big factor in our purchasing decision and helped this project fit the needs of our client's budget. Using existing hardware greatly reduced the project costs and overall complexity of the solution.

The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us.  

Starwind provides excellent pre-sale support and scheduled several meetings between our IT staff and their support team to review the configuration and answer questions. This helped immensely in deploying the software in our test environment and helped us to understand the product better. Support was always willing to help with any documentation that we were confused over and continued to follow up with us after the project went live.

I've used the solution for eight months.

The product appears to be very stable and robust.

The solution appears to be easily scalable and adjustable to fit future needs.

Vendor support has been very responsive and provided help with all issues we have encountered.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

Setup can be complicated and the documentation is not always clear. Support from the vendor was needed in our test environment setup.

We used an in-house team with vendor support during the implementation. Support has been excellent and has followed up regularly with our team.

We did look at Dell and VMware SAN products as well. 

We built a two-server Hyper-V failover cluster. We build typical servers like we normally would with NVME drives and plenty of storage. This software works hand in hand with Microsoft hyper-v failover manager for a seamless setup that has not given us any issues since implementation. 

Live failovers are tested every week, and the customer does not even notice when the failovers are tested. The performance was exceptional, and everything worked as expected. We went ahead and got the three-year 24/7 support contract since it's a critical customer. While the price is a bit steep, this process and product have given us a lot of peace of mind that the servers will continue running even if one of the physical hosts goes down.

It's a very easy Implementation with the help of support. We received quick responses from support for any questions we had throughout the entire process. StarWind is a stable product that allowed us to build the cluster exactly like we wanted hardware-wise. This product has allowed us to build a two-node failover cluster without a SAN. 

We also did not need the datacenter edition of server OS. We were very worried about the implementation process. However, they helped us with the entire implementation, leaving no stone unturned and all questions answered.

Overall, it was a great experience dealing with the various StarWind team members from the pre-sales all the way through to implementation. This was our first experience with a hyper-converged failover cluster, and the team at StarWind made it easy for us. 

Before making the choice, we were weighing out all the cluster options, and everything kept coming back to StarWind. I'm glad it did, as we definitely feel we made the right choice. We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected.

Pricing is a bit high. That said, the support is worth it. It's really hard to point out any other negatives. The licensing and support pricing structure could have been laid out a little simpler, and then pricing could have been less, of course. However, the truth is the support really does make up for the cost, in our opinion. We did decide to go with three-year 24/7 support due to implementation in a critical communications center. We feel like we won't need to use them for much at all since the products just work. Due to this, the pricing could have been better, especially with us purchasing all three years at once.

I've used the solution for one year.