StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

StarWind Virtual SAN is a good solution. It helps our organization to fulfill the need for backup and restoration. 

Our organization was implementing a business continuity plan in which there was a need for regulatory compliance. We wanted to implement a solution to do scheduled backup and its restoration when needed. The process of implementing the solution was pretty simple, and it is readily available for use as well. 

As compared to other solutions, we found that it was easily integrated with our current solutions and could easily be deployed. 

We use the solution to improve compliance and risk management for our infrastructure. We also wanted to use it to create internal/operational efficiencies. 

We compared it with other solutions and have found we are able to drive revenue growth from this solution. It is keeping up with our needs and requirements. We found this solution offers good cost management. We also get the desired results of our RPO and RTO. During different operational issues, the backup restoration time of solutions is good. It's easy to use and is feasible in our virtualization environment. 

The performance of StarWind Virtual SAN is fast and effective. Reporting templates and customization have a very intense impact on senior management. 

The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy. It pulls out maximum IOPS from your existing raw storage with no crazy expensive hardware required. 

Licensing is flexible and transparent without any pitfalls or feature paywalls. 

Its HA deployment model is very easy with zero fault tolerance; we can operate HCI clusters through a unified StarWind web UI.

The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex. Most team members in our organization are new or have less experience with these kinds of complex solutions. It would be better to have a more user-friendly Web UI so that users with even the bare minimum amount of knowledge can also handle the product. 

In my country, it does not have a strong local support partner. If we have any issues or require support, we mostly contact the principal. It would be ideal if Starwind had a strong local partner with solid technical skills. That way, it would be very easy for us to handle any operational issues. 

I've used the solution for two years.

I'd rate stability eight out of ten. 

I'd rate scalability eight out of ten.

I did not use any other solution.

It was easy to set up and not that difficult. I'd rate the solution six out of ten. 

We implemented the solution in-house with the help of a vendor. I'd rate the setup process, and vendor support six out of ten. 

In terms of ROI, we have achieved our RTO and RPO.

I'd advise others to perform a POC before purchase and check whether it meets a company's needs or not.

I was not a part of the evaluation team.

Highly available HyperV cluster. Our environment includes 2 Hyper-V hosts with onboard storage running about 20 virtual machines. StarWind allowed for a redundant cluster to be configured without any extra storage and easily create an HA cluster. StarWind Virtual San functions as the primary drivers for all of our storage needs in the highly available cluster. It is used almost daily to allow for live migration of machines and failover in the event of maintenance or physical host hardware problems.

StarWind Virtual SAN improved my hyper-v deployment by making it highly available. It was easy to roll out and it is easy to manage. It has greatly improved virtual machine reliability and accessibility. Deployment of StarWind Virtual SAN has helped reduce the stress of not having a cluster that would allow for virtual machine failover if a host has a hardware problem. It is reassuring to know that all virtual machines are in a safer environment versus running on standalone hosts with no shared storage.

Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN. The StarWind support team is right on top of all monitoring activities. If I am maintaining a physical host and it has been down for too long, I will get a notice from StarWind to confirm a problem or inform them that maintenance is being performed. They are top-notch.

Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment. It is very much a step in the right direction to make StarWind Virtual SAN management easier and even Hyper-V as a whole. Something Hyper-V has lacked for years is a good Web UI to manage a host or cluster. StarWind has taken upon themselves to help with this as well as manage the Virtual SAN in a single pane of glass.

Five Years

Very stable. I've had little to no problem since rolling it out.

It should be easy to add a host to a cluster once VSAN is installed.

Excellent! 10/10

No. We used standalone hosts.

Setup is a bit complex but StarWind has great documentation to get setup and a great support team to assist in setup.

Implementation has been done using StarWind support and with an in-house team as we have 2 separate clusters both using StarWind Virtual SAN

12-24 months.

Evaluate your solutions. This is a great solution for those user Hyper-V and ready to hyper-converge.

Maxta, Nutanix, VMware, KVM.

We have two servers in an HA configuration. The two servers having an identical configuration. On each server we have: two disks in RAID 1 (for the operating system), two arrays of four disks in RAID 5 (for virtual servers that require high data transfer speed), one array of six SAS disks in RAID 6 (for virtual servers containing a lot of data), and two arrays of six SAS disks in RAID 10 (for medium servers in terms of data volume and speed required). On the network side, SAN servers are connected to HOSTs via a 10 GB ethernet connection and between them for HB and SYNC via 1GB connections.

Until the installation of StarWind, we only use physical servers. After installing, I migrated all physical servers as virtual servers and added other new servers. We currently have approximately 30 virtual servers on only three hosts and the two SAN servers. Thus, we get significant savings from the necessary hardware. In addition, we have much more flexibility in allocating available resources. 

Having a configuration of two servers in HA, we can perform maintenance and upgrade operations without having to interrupt the operation of production servers.

From my point of view, the main advantages of this solution are the drastic reduction of the number of physical servers required and the reduction of acquisition costs for servers. 

In addition, there is less electricity consumption for servers and for their cooling and the possibility of dynamic and fast allocation of storage resources where needed. This simplifies the backup and restore process. The product has the ability to take snapshots on production servers before any major upgrade so that if problems occur you can quickly return to the previous configuration.

It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations. They should include advantages and disadvantages for each proposed configuration. Currently, you can only find information on this on the manufacturer's website, but it does not contain very detailed information regarding each proposed configuration.

It might help to add the functionality to automatically send an email to a predefined address when errors occur in the application.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for more than 10 years and, in that time, without encountering major operating problems.

It is extremely stable. Currently, it is not necessary to intervene or restart the SA servers for years at a time.

It is easy to expand the storage space. The only limitation is the space that the license allows you to use in the HA configuration.

The support provided is very prompt.

Previously, I only used physical servers.

Initially, the implementation of this solution seems complex, however, once you understand how the application is designed, it becomes relatively simple.

Before deciding on the solution offered by StarWind, we also analyzed HPE LeftHand SAN Solutions, however, this was significantly more expensive.

We were looking for physical tape backups to protect against DR situations but were concerned about the fact that it would require the manual intervention of changing the tapes and sending them offsite as we could easily forget. 

Luckily, I came across  Starwind VTL which is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes. 

The whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc. It's been six months and it has been working well without any issue with the jobs completed within 24 hours which meets our RTO. 

In regards to the cost, we ended up saving a few thousand dollars as well due to the high cost of the physical tape library.

With Starwind VTL, it eliminates the need to manually change and remove tapes and schedule them for offline pickup which users would not have the time to do.  It is also cost-effective as having a physical tape library would cost thousands of dollars. 

In addition, the virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection.  

Furthermore, having virtual tapes locally and on the cloud provides an additional layer of protection in addition to our normal backups that are performed. 

The cloud replication feature is most valuable as it copies the local virtual tapes from our on-prem storage to object storage where we can set object locking and governance.  This is a great feature in case something happens to our on-prem storage. 

Also, since it's virtual tapes, there is no manual intervention of changing tapes and scheduling them to take them offsite which is another additional cost. The support team is also good as they were able to resolve the majority of issues during the initial implementation.

There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA.  

Also, there is no date/time column so you don't know which is the latest tape that has been uploaded to object storage.  

You also cannot search by tape name so you have to scroll through the tape list if you ever need to cross-reference.  

Another shortcoming is that the tapes do not remove from the list once they've been deleted via the retention policy so you would have to manually remove them.  

I've requested all of these in a feature request with their R&D so hopefully, they will be included in future releases.

We've been using this solution for over two years now.

We did not have a previous solution. This was an add-on solution to our existing backup solution.

The pricing is very reasonable compared to a physical tape library.  

We evaluated the physical tape library, however, it was too costly.

The initial setup will take time, however, their implementation team will assist all the way through.

Our team was looking for a reliable and cost-effective solution for our VMware vSphere platform.

VMware vSAN wasn't an option due to cost and scalability issues.

Enabling storage high availability across multiple nodes was our top priority as we couldn't risk having any downtime in case a node was to fail.

We ideally wanted a dedicated set of tools to administrate and perform maintenance on our hyperconverged storage.

That solution had to be as platform agnostic as possible so that we could reuse it with another vendor.

The product provides a robust and cost-effective alternative compared to other available products.

StarWind Virtual SAN allows our team to aggregate our cluster storage in a scalable way without seeing an explosion in the licensing costs.

It let us decouple our hyperconverged storage from the actual virtualization plartorm.

As an agnostic software solution, StarWind Virtual SAN could be re-used in other projects across different teams with another virtualization vendor. That aspect was key to the success of our department as all teams were able to work together.

Data replication is useful as it enables storage high availability on the cluster.

The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage.

There are easy-to-use tools for the administration and maintenance of hyper-converged storage.

StarWind Virtual SAN also let us fine-tune the desired level of replication across all nodes, allowing the administrator to specify a custom number of fault to tolerate across the cluster nodes.

StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere.

Tooling is spread across web UI plus desktop clients which can sometimes be confusing as the team isn't always sure which tool to use during maintenance procedures.

Also one drawback, when compared to VMware vSAN, is that StarWind Virtual SAN requires a lot of network interfaces in order to provide the same data replication and node redundancy features.

I've used the solution for one year.

We have never encountered any bug or problem that would bring the cluster down.

We are very happy with scaling, especially regarding licensing.

Technical support is very responsive, helpful, and friendly.

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously.

The initial setup was a bit hard to do by ourselves as there are many moving pieces and tools to operate. However, support helped us a lot with setting everything up.

I'd advise users to consider the scalability of the project as licensing can become a problem with competitors' products.

We did ook at VMware vSAN.

Will definitely recommend this product and have been dealing with support for over three years. Normally, the biggest grievance we have in the IT industry is support and support is great. Sales representatives were knowledgeable and very helpful whether you use the free or paid version. 

This is perfect for mainstream organizations. Even small businesses can cover legacy methods and all new methods in terms of hypervisors and backup methodologies. 

I work for an organization that has standalone hosts in rural areas in Africa where tape backup is still a thing. With the assistance of StarWind, we were able to share a backup device on Hyper-V as Hyper-V does not support pass-through natively. It is a fantastic software that I highly recommended for the virtualization of storage and backup methodologies.

It is more appropriate for businesses that use Hyper-V and direct attached storage arrays. This solution works well with VMware as well as with smaller systems, although it is a bit of a waste using it when you have a strong SAN. 

It works very well in clustering smaller arrays to create a bigger array for storage platforms. It is the perfect software for interfacing Hyper-V components with other hosts sharing resources.

The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option. 

I work for an organization that has standalone hosts in rural areas in Africa where tape backup is still used. With the assistance of StarWind, we were able to share a backup device on Hyper-V which did not support pass-through natively.

The ability to use older native technology integrated with 21st-century AI is what allows these applications to be above their competitors.

From vSAN all the way to their VTL pass-through technology, it is compatible with multiple platforms and is truly a universal application with great potential.

The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application. That might be a bit off-putting to customers as they would like to use and play with the application without the limitation of what the free license offers. 

Another downside is there is no way of downloading the older versions online. It would be great to have a content library to get the older versions.

I have been using StarWind for about three years.

I have not used a different solution. During my search, StarWind was the first site that I visited.

Do not waste any time on the free product; it's better to get a license. Use sales to evaluate and explore and you will be ready to implement a solid product.

For storage, I have explored Open NAS (Linux) and Windows NFS 3.0.

Try out all of the other solutions as well; there might be a solution offered by StarWind that might suit your organization's needs.

We provide managed web hosting services, including dedicated servers in physical or virtual configurations, for various customers, including small, medium, and large companies. We started hosting operations in 1995 and operated our own hosting infrastructure in data centers in North Carolina and Virginia, USA.

Our infrastructure included physical and virtual hosting environments based on VMware, which is where our StarWind Virtual SANs were deployed.

With our growing needs and customer requirements and demand, we added virtualization to our infrastructure, based on VMware. Storage requirements for the virtualized infrastructure also grew rapidly. We explored all available options, from hyper-converged solutions to the large "big name" solutions. Our infrastructure was too big for hyper-converged solutions. However, we were not ready for the major investments that a full-sized storage infrastructure would need. StarWind's offerings were a perfect fit for us, and remain so until today, almost ten years later.

Prior to StarWind, we were using "local storage" with each hypervisor, and this had many drawbacks, including size limitations, performance, technical management, and redundancy. 

With StarWind Virtual SAN, we could easily deploy and manage the storage solutions, add additional storage servers when needed, implement automated redundancy and failover, and scale storage allocations as and when needed, including adding high-performance SSD solutions alongside traditional hard disk solutions.

The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well.

While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage, for example, when servers are rebooted. Bitlocker solutions require a physical presence in the data center to enter the encryption string on the server's physical console.

Built-in "Data at Rest" encryption would be an important need, especially for customers with sensitive compliance requirements e.g. Government customers, healthcare customers, eCommerce customers, and many other compliance-sensitive application areas.

We have been using the StarWind Virtual SAN product since 2014.

StarWind Virtual SAN is very scalable, simply by adding additional Windows servers and installing the StarWind Virtual SAN software on it.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Compared to similar solutions from NetApp etc., our savings were likely in the tens of thousands of dollars over the years, and we did not need to pay for features that we do not need.

We were very happy and impressed with StarWind's products and the technical support from StarWind's support team. If and when we needed assistance, StarWind's tech support has been very responsive, thorough, and very helpful.

We found the licensing costs and pricing to be very affordable and manageable.

We looked at big-name solutions such as NetApp, Cisco, and others.

Our storage infrastructure had been operating flawlessly with great performance and reliability.

Our use case is to provide a vSAN for Microsoft Windows Server failover clusters. We are a web hosting company that prefers to purchase smaller discrete servers rather than larger and expensive integrated with SAN solutions. However, we still want to provide a high-availability environment for even our small web applications.

We use StarWind vSAN to accomplish this goal without having to use the extremely tightly validated server hardware and networking options required by Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.

StarWind vSAN has solved the problem of cost-effectively providing a high-availability failover cluster utilizing standard server and networking hardware. We save many thousands when purchasing hardware and the vSAN has never been the cause of any downtime. So, not only have we saved money, we have beaten our internal SLAs that our previous solutions were negatively affecting.

In addition, the highly competent support alleviates stress when we do have questions. Our technology stack has improved since we have started using StarWind vSAN.

First, we have found StarWind to be a "set and forget" type of product. It really is nice to not have to spend administrative time monitoring, tweaking, and configuring a product.

Second, the reliability has been exceptional. In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems.

Third, their support team is excellent to work with when we do have questions.

Fourth, the documentation on the product is exceptional, and while not necessarily part of the vSAN product, they publish a lot of helpful information on their blog.

Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful.

We have been using StarWind Virtual SAN for three years.

We've never had to handle any problems with the product.

Beyond a three-node direct-attach, some of the cost advantages decrease a little.

The technical support is responsive and competent. If only more companies were like this...

We previously used DFS to synchronize between nodes; however, it did not provide nearly the same level of reliability and is not a true HA solution as a hyper-converged environment with StarWind vSAN.

With the excellent documentation and having their support review our configuration, the initial setup was very easy.

We deployed using our in-house team.

StarWind vSAN has saved us far more than we've ever spent on it.

If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise. 

We tested out Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and priced out other competing traditional SAN options.