StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

One of the biggest hydroelectric power plants in the world asked us to prepare a project using HA Virtualization for environmental weather monitoring. In this project, we used three hosts virtualized by VMWare ESXI+VCenter (Essential Plus License). However, one of the prerequisites was that it should be able to integrate with other preexisting virtualized systems that were deployed by other suppliers and use other hypervisors like HyperV or Proxmox. That is where StarWind Virtual SAN comes in. It is really flexible and reliable. We were able to assemble this pilot project using it, and it is in testing, so far, without failures or any malfunctions. It is really an excellent solution.

The flexibility of StarWind Virtual San allowed us to create a system that is integrated into pre-existing solutions and is also independent of VMware itself, making it more reliable and robust.  

It made the system much easier to operate, maintain and manage inside the data center alongside many other systems. It is very easy to migrate the entire virtual system to other hosts or other data centers safely. 

It is really a good solution when you need to be flexible and, at the same time, reliable in a critical system.

First of all, the flexibility and reliability are great. 

The ability to be managed by PowerShell scripts made the management of the system really easy and efficient. We're able to do remote operations or even some operations different from the standard ones (allowed by the GUI).

It also runs under a Windows OS, so it is able to be installed in any virtualized system, independent from the Hypervisor itself.

The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way. It also makes it very easy to deploy and configure. 

It has good documentation, and I did not need technical support once during the entire deployment.

It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery. I would also recommend an easier way to back up/restore and export the filesystem images.

Another feature that I would like to see implemented is a configurable email alert and report system. While it can be managed using Powershell, it would not be hard at all to configure reports using PowerShell scripts, it would be nice to have some additional features in the GUI.

I've used the solution for about two years.

It is really stable and reliable. It perfectly fits our solution with an active-active failover solution.

The free version is limited, so it is not so scalable. If you need more scalability, you have different license options from the paid versions and the cost is totally worth it.

I did not need any service and support as it is really well documented.

Positive

We also used VMware VSAN and Nutanix. The StarWind Virtual SAN seems to be more flexible and easier to manage in the case we were developing.

The initial setup took about ten days. This included the studying of the documentation, setup, testing, and commissioning. It is well-documented and really easy to operate.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

The Star Wind Virtual SAN has a free/trial version that can be used for study and is suitable for simple solutions. The pricing for the paid versions is really worth it. When you need flexibility and reliability with good technical support, you are paying for what you get. 

We also evaluated VMware vSAN.

Our company needed a Virtual SAN solution that would fit perfectly into our private cloud architecture based on Windows Server virtualization (Windows Server 2016/2019/2022) and Hyper-V without having to substantially modify its composition. In this case, it has allowed us to provide storage with geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources in the event of a disaster, allowing data to be migrated between the different delegations and guaranteeing that we comply with current regulations regarding data protection, as well as ISO 27001 and ISO 22301.

The StarWind Virtual SAN product has allowed us to improve the availability of our services, as well as their security. On the other hand, it has allowed us to make these improvements without having to make a large increase in investment, as could have happened with solutions such as those from VMWARE, Dell, etc. In this way, we have also achieved clear profitability and an immediate return on investment (ROI). Of course, it has allowed us to align with the business continuity management strategy using geographic clusters for the evacuation of resources.

The StarWind support team is, without a doubt, the best part of this product. The engineer assigned to us for the implementation showed great involvement and a willingness to work and share his knowledge with our team, which was great and smoothed out the resistance to change as well as the learning curve. The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently. The team is always aligned with our needs, and they try to give maximum performance to the vSAN. So far, the solution has shown great stability with no noticeable issues. The ease of use has helped our juniors.

The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own. This problem is really solved when the team of engineers is assigned to the project since, with the willingness of the support team to provide information when required, it is very easy to move forward and solve these deficiencies. On the other hand, perhaps it can be said that it would be interesting to publish a greater number of pre-generated scripts.

I've used the solution for three years.

So far, we haven't had a noteworthy problem to attribute to the solution. We only had initial problems due to the operation error of the junior technicians while they were learning to use the tool.

The scalability for us is perfect. The solution allows us to work elastically, responding to changes in the requirements of our infrastructure according to demand. In addition, it scales easily and quickly.

In my experience of over 20 years in the IT industry, I've noticed that they provide one of the best services available today. They are very involved and proactive technicians.

Positive

We evaluated other solutions, however, it is the first one that we implemented.

In terms of the initial complexity, it would come from the previous tests in which we did not have support or all the documentation. As soon as we contracted the software and had support, everything was easy, and we had an engineer that was really valuable.

The experience of the team that collaborated with us in the deployment is undoubtedly very high. The desire to work and the availability to share knowledge are points that, without a doubt, must be valued very positively.

Replacing the previous model with a vSAN model has allowed us significant cost savings. Even if we consider the license, it will not cost much to amortize the investment.

The investment is really low compared to other options, and the stability and flexibility guarantee the security of the investment.

We looked into VMware, Hyper-V, and some other options.

The solution is really easy to implement, manage and maintain.

A customer wanted to build a test environment for his VMware. However, he was running out of financial resources. 

I suggested this product (vSAN in particular), and he was quite happy with its features. Later, he decided to convert his test environment into production using the same StarWind products, and to date, he is a happy customer. 

After this success story, I have referred many of my customers to use this product; no complaints so far. 

Happy customers mean good business, and the company is progressing well, so I'm enjoying the benefits as well. 

StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer. It's a user-friendly solution. We are integrators and deployed vSAN from StarWind with multiple clients and all are happy with its performance. 

Creating the new server and deploying it to be used by hypervisors over ISCSI is good. It is very easy to configure. 

I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided. That way, the customer doesn't have to log in to a specific server where the product is running. That could be very beneficial. 

I've been using the solution for four years.

I have deployed this product at multiple locations (for clients) and have had no complaints so far. It is a fully stable product. 

The scalability is relatively easy to manage on StarWind. When having real hardware, it's a bit complex to scale, yet way easier with StarWind than with other options.  

Customer service is easily available by email. I have not tried by phone. However, it's my understanding that they would be of great help if I reached out that way too.  

Positive

I have worked with NetApp, Lenovo, EMC, and some other brands as well for storage with VMware and Hyper V. 

StarWind is easy to manage as compared to these and is a cheap solution with very similar features. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Any IT professional can handle it after some studying and training from Youtube. 

After reading the help material and watching some Youtube videos, I deployed this product myself. 

A happy customer is the best ROI. I have many happy customers using StarWind. 

It's quite easy to deploy this product. 

Any IT professional can read a few documents and watch some videos and maybe go to Youtube to learn about deployment and management. It's a very simple and user-friendly product. 

We were looking to replace three to four physical hosts running 10-12 virtual servers with one solution requiring less maintenance and full high availability. 

We could have developed our own stack. That said, this was so turnkey and useful that it made the most sense. We now have two physical hosts with more power and high availability than all the previous servers combined. 

Support has an incredibly fast response to requests such as size increase of the SAN and installation software updates whenever we need them. 

This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business. It allowed us to take advantage of all the Hyper-V features and live migrations without the expense of dedicated SANs. 

We can perform maintenance on either host during the day, and the users don't even notice a difference in performance. 

We survived a couple of facility power outages. However, due to the redundancy of the entire host, the HCA failed over quickly and accurately with no downtime. Support also helps us improve our infrastructure with the best practices of other organizations. 

There is immediate redundancy and HA without a huge amount of configuration - which is ideal. Their support was even better - with proactive monitoring and efficient setup and configuration changes. 

We recently upgraded the physical hosts and maxed out the memory and hard drive space, and their support team walked us through the upgrade every step of the way. There were no issues. Even with an older HCA we have plenty of room for future growth. 

We also can install security patches with no problems during the day instead of after-hours. 

Some of the new hyper-converged tools seem basic as a single pane of glass dashboard. However, they are constantly looking at improvements and updates. 

The actual interface is somewhat cryptic, so we wouldn't know what configuration changes to make. That is kind of the point. We have their full support, and we don't have to staff a Level 5 engineer to make large configuration changes. 

I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions. That said, they continue to release updates, so I'm sure that's on the roadmap. 

I've used the solution for three to five years.

In my company, we employ a sophisticated infrastructure comprised of three distinct hypervisors and a dedicated storage server featuring vSAN technology. This intricate setup serves as the backbone for delivering a diverse range of services to our clients, encompassing web hosting plans, secure and efficient file sharing, compute power, and bespoke storage solutions. 

Leveraging the flexibility of multiple hypervisors allows us to scale our services to meet the unique requirements of our clients, ensuring optimal performance and resource allocation. 

It also acts as the centralized storage for my home environment as well. Within my home setup, this robust virtualized storage solution plays a role in supporting various functionalities, including the storage and retrieval of data from surveillance cameras. 

It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration.

Hypervisor offers agnosticism for flexibility. My company could seamlessly transition workloads on VMware without worrying about storage compatibility issues.

It has dynamic workload management. As business requirements change, my company might need to migrate virtual machines (VMs) between two or three (or more) hypervisors based on performance, licensing, or other considerations. With Virtual SAN, I can easily move VMs without the need for complex storage transformations and involving other solutions.

The customizability and reliability of Virtual SAN setup in our infrastructure stand out as the key pillars supporting the seamless delivery of services to my clients. 

The ability to provide my virtualization environment to meet specific client needs ensures that we can meet diverse requirements, from web hosting plans to file sharing and storage solutions. This degree of customization not only enhances the client experience but also allows us to optimize resource utilization and calculate future improvements.

Moreover, the reliability of Virtual SAN plays a critical role in maintaining the stability and availability of my services. The redundant and fault-tolerant features in the Virtual SAN architecture provide a resilient infrastructure that minimizes downtime and ensures a consistent and reliable service for my clients.

Embarking on a 14-day GUI trial is a good approach for enabling an exploration of Virtual SAN's capabilities. This period can facilitate a better understanding of real-world performance, interface, and overall system suitability. 

By affording users the opportunity to dive deeply into the product's features, this trial can ensure a comprehensive evaluation, regarding the adoption of Virtual SAN.

An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration.

I've only used the solution for one year.

We have a  pair of StarWind hypervisor servers that share the internal storage using Starwind's Virtual SAN, eliminating the need for a separate, physical SAN. The primary purpose of this deployment is to provide highly available hypervisors to run file servers, domain controllers, critical servers, and DNS servers.

The vSAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm the health of the sync. The high availability nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end-users noticing any downtime. While it isn't used for StarWind exclusively, the Remote Console access on the Enterprise iDRAC is invaluable to me in my daily duties. We have had great success live migrating VMs as necessary and adding, removing, backing up, or restoring VMs.  

I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful.

The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought.

Our inability to use Azure File Sync Share meant we had to deploy a separate hypervisor for a file server that isn't on the Starwind High Availability setup. We could not install SentinelOne EDR on the hypervisors without getting too many warnings in the storage event logs.

We deployed a pair of StarWind vSAN hypervisors in January 2020 and have been using them for more than three years.

StarWind seems highly stable after three and a half years.

StarWind vSAN is highly scalable and easy to configure.

I rate StarWind support 10 out of 10. They are fantastic. The StarWind team proactively alerts us about the latest firmware, including iDRAC and BIOS. They reach out and schedule a remote session when they see warnings on our event logs, such as the time we deployed SentinelOne to the host machine. The StarWind engineers are always knowledgeable and take control to "drive " the session. 

Positive

We used single hypervisors but had never had a failover cluster before StarWind vSAN.

Support walked us through everything after we got the server racked and online.

The in-house team provided access to StarWind support for deployment. After that, we sat back and learned from the support person. StarWind later provided us some training materials.

It is hard for me to quantify the ROI as an IT person, but we would buy it again in an instant.

We underestimated how many guest VMs we would have running on these hypervisors after three years, and would have bought more Windows licenses upfront.

We briefly researched Dell and Microsoft options, but those were physical SAN solutions, not vSAN.

I rate StarWind Virtual SAN 10 out of 10. I recommend purchasing support and contacting them before you install any new agents or sync with Azure File Sync share.

The primary use case is for on-premise synchronous replication of high-availability fileservers. If the primary node fails in our virtualization environment, thanks to simultaneous replication, the backup is immediately available. StarWind keeps both of the disks mirrored.

We are using StarWind as a virtual SAN Solution for our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster environment. We were looking for a simple-to-use, reliable and cost-effective solution. For our purposes, we also tested Veeam and VMware vSAN. StarWind suits us better.  

StarWind Virtual SAN improved our disaster recovery strategy and made it much more secure. The software is cost-effective when it comes to licensing and maintenance. We don't need any extra hardware just install it on our existing virtual machines

The config, which was initially prepared in cooperation with StarWind technical support, is easy to replicate for purposes of maintenance (the user didn't notice anything in performance during the maintenance).

The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free.

It's a reliable software, which you set up once, and doesn't need much maintenance. 

Thanks to detailed technical documentation, it is easy to set up. The technical support team from StarWind is experienced and collaborative. 

We did the implementation by ourselves without any third party (StarWind's technical support team checked the configuration made by our administrators), which is cost-saving. Also, our technical team can provide effective first-level support (which you don't often need as it's a reliable product).

We don't find any parts in need of improvement. We don't use all functionalities which StarWind offers. Maybe we could find a cheaper solution, however, when it comes to the above-mentioned pros at the end of the day it's good value for money.

For every issue we had during the implementation or during the period of usage, StarWind Virtual SAN's technical support helped us to find an effective solution.

If I have to find any area of improvement, there is only one thing - other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users. 

We've used StarWind Virtual SAN for more than three years.

We did not previously use a different solution.

We took into consideration VMware vSAN or Veeam. However, we chose StarWind Virtual SAN.

I used the software as a virtual SAN solution. When I tried it for the first time, I found it easy to use and working perfectly. The most important thing is that the vendor keeps developing and enhancing the solution to include more robust features.

I have three servers running VMware ESXi and used the solution as a SAN for the VMware Cluster by connecting the servers as ISCSI targets to the StarWind vSAN using a 1GB network connection peer. That helped me to run my application with peace of mind.

I am currently running servers with a hosted application for my business, and I had a problem having them online all the time thanks to of server maintenance and updates. 

That's why I used a vSAN to avoid buying a hardware SAN and use my existing servers only. The software improved my productivity by allowing me to have high availability and fault tolerance in virtualization.

I plan to invest in NVME disks where the software provides perfect integration to speed up the systems and get cache capabilities.

We like the ease of management. The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard.

The ISCSI is good. The connection using software made it easy to me to connect my servers without extra investment in hardware SAN.

I like the vCenter plugin. This allows me to monitor the SAN performance in the VMware web interface.

It offers good fault tolerance and high availability. I can update or restart the physical server without worry.

It's got great deduplication and compression. I am planning to use this feature when investing in new NVme disks.

They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor. Also, they need to provide how-to videos on social video networks about the setup, upgrades, and migration from real hardware like HPE, DellEMC, or Fujitsu to vSAN solutions.

They need to make it easy for the customers to find a solution for any error happening during migration or setup. That way, it will be more accurate and have fewer errors.

We've used the solution for ten years up until now.