StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews

We are using the product for a three-node stretched cluster spanning three buildings based on VMWare and StarWind vSAN technology.

We use this to host all the company servers (as VMs), which are a mix of Windows and Linux systems, providing various services such as domain controllers, file servers, print servers, application servers, license servers, etc.      

This setup allows us to quickly migrate servers between buildings for service or in case of a network outage.

The product allowed us to deploy the three-node stretched cluster, which has, in turn, allowed us to fully virtualize our infrastructure with all the resilience, performance and ease of management that comes with it.

The biggest improvements have been:

1. Resilience. The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service. It also enables vSphere high availability, so when there is a problem, service can be maintained

2. Management. Having everything virtualized has made it much easier to manage.

The solution's best aspects include:

Rock-solid performance. Since it has been in production (three years), we have had 100% uptime. This means that services have only needed to be briefly interrupted for maintenance and has created a great user experience for our end-users.

Easy management. The interfaces are intuitive and all IT staff can quickly be brought up to speed on how to use

Superb support. The support really is second to none. You can always quickly get through to a technician, and it's usually the same one you are used to dealing with.

The documentation could be better. It's not bad, however, it is quite often out of date. That said, this is mitigated by the fact that the support is so good that you rarely need the documentation.                                        

If I am really searching for a fault. To be honest, the licensing model is a bit confusing. They could definitely make that a bit more intuitive. However this is a minor gripe as it is such good value, and you only have to deal with it very occasionally anyway.                   

I've been using the solution for three years.

This was our first move to a vSAN solution.

This solution is of excellent value.

We looked at VMware vSAN.

I highly recommended the product. It has transformed our IT infrastructure.

I was hoping to implement a High Availability and redundant system without sacrificing performance or my budget. Looking at various HCI and vSAN solutions, the cost was a bit prohibitive.  

I really wanted my cake and to eat it to; however, VMware's vSAN offering and looking at a few HCI solutions (vXRails, Nutanix, etc.) just did not fit my budget. That is when I read a review on StarWind free vSAN, which got me interested, but I knew I wanted (and needed) support.

We set up a three-node cluster on new, identical servers with VMware's vSphere and added StarWind's vSAN product to expand our capabilities.

Our servers started out with 8 HDDs, and after production, we added 4 SSDs which StarWind assisted in getting online in the vSAN.

We have High Availability, failover, redundancy, and the ability to move workloads on the fly with no impact on the organization. It is great for patching and updates to the servers.

The ROI is great on this product.  We did have to upgrade our licensing to enterprise level as we surpassed the 8TB limit by adding additional storage.  Purchasing a three-year term helped bolster our ROI even further.

We did have a vCenter failure during an upgrade. StarWind support was able to get the systems back online and syncing with no data loss or impact on production (and even improve the installation by moving the critical StarWind components on the Boss Card).

I feel very confident in the support team's abilities.

First and foremost, StarWind has awesome support. You work with the same engineer throughout implementation or any issues.  

They explain the process of what and why they are doing whatever it is. You are not left high and dry when looking to implement the vSAN and can solve issues that may arise or even configure additional added storage.

The stability is great. The solution has been running with no issues due to vSAN itself. It is one of those "set it and forget it" types of systems. Perhaps this is a bad thing as you kind of do not think about it.

The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas. I would love to see more comprehensive walk-throughs or perhaps even videos. With this being such a critical piece of infrastructure, I do not like to take chances. Fortunately, support will be there to help hold your hand or even perform the process for you, ensuring everything is working.

It would be really nice to have a documented "Best Practices" list to ensure you are doing everything you can to ensure stability and performance. I have to be a bit nitpicky; overall, there is not much I can really add.

We demoed the product in early 2021. We have been using it in production for over a year now.

It is extremely stable thus far. We've been running well over a year without any issues due to StarWind itself.

It offers great performance and has the ability to add additional nodes to your cluster.

I would say StarWind has the best customer service and support. They are quick and aggressive in resolving any issues as quickly as possible. Not enough good things can be said about how they treat customers.

Positive

We used an MS 2008r2 Cluster many years ago. Prior to StarWind vSAN, were using static servers.

For a three-node cluster, the setup seemed complex. However, upon purchasing a license, StarWind's excellent support took over and created a PoC install for us.

We worked with the vendor team. They were great to work with. Over multiple days, you work with the same engineer, which is a great way to work versus getting transferred from tech to tech.

While you can add nodes later on, I would suggest really putting thought into how many nodes you want to start with, as networking can get challenging if you omit a good 10+GB switch.

I looked at a few HCI (Dell, vxRail, and Nutanix) and the VMware vSAN solution.  It was cost-prohibitive for me

I cannot say enough good things about the support this company gives; more companies need to model this.

We found StarWind when trying to look for a hybrid storage space that could handle various physical hardware as well as virtual operating systems.

Upon first contacting the company, the sales and technical demo were superb compared to other products and they clearly explained and showed us a live demo of our potential environment.

The whole purchase process was swift and followed up by calls and emails from their team.

Compared to other products that we looked at, the cost-saving was so great that choosing StarWind was a no-brainer.

When I need something urgently and very technical, I get the answer back that I want. I don't have to battle through with a first liner that tells me to "turn it off and on again".

The solution has improved our organization by:

1. The variety of services offered

2. The financial viability compared to the services offered

3. Product functionality and performance is suitable for our organization

4. The strong consultation accessibility for customers that wish to discuss the product first with their experts and start the process how they like it, not how the company wants it to

5. The support team has the expertise of a strong service in the products that their customers have purchased

6. StarWinds, in general, has a strong user community that offers help on forums and other sites

7. The company has a firm customer focus keeping in touch with us at all times, even after purchasing the initial product after two years

The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful. However, now that we have a handle on it, it saves a great ton of time on management and caring about the hardware part of it as all it is is a software-based solution. I love managing the cluster that we have set up via the Virtual Storage Attached Network device, with the Web Management being so simple yet packed with all the features that I require. The management of the traffic and the speeds are awesome as well.

Some users have commented on online forums and others that the documentation and KB articles could be clearer or better written. However, I found this to be the case a couple of years ago. Now, in 2022, this has been rectified and you can usually find the information that you are looking for.

Another problem that we have come across is that when you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind.

I've been using the product for around two years now.

We previously used the standard SAN hardware solution from a big IT company - we switched to basically save on hardware costs and maintenance.

The initial setup cost will be great, especially with the new hardware. The StarWind pricing isn't that expensive compared to others, however, there are yearly maintenance costs to be aware of.

Yes, we had a look at Lenovo XClarity as well as Nutanix AOS and VMWare vSAN.

I'd advise new users to not hesitate and just go ahead with it.

After deploying a HA SQL Failover Cluster, we started to notice performance issues due to our storage, which was an off-the-shelf NAS.

I had already heard about StarWind and its VSAN software from previous blogs.

A VSAN solution seems like an ideal solution as we already had the hardware, minus the disks required. We already had two Dell R540's with six available bays in each server.

After reviewing their documentation, the setup process was simple enough to follow and so I decided to run a little test environment.

I was pleasantly surprised by the performance gains even on spinning disks and the overall setup being fairly painless.

I decided to go ahead with this solution, got the cost signed off, and implemented it in production.

We had some initial issues, however, their support was extremely helpful in resolving these and was very patient as we deployed this to a secure environment with no internet access. Yet they still offered support and worked closely with a single point of contact.

I then later moved to a different company and implement a similar solution in the Oracle Cloud using their free offering, again this was simple to set up using their collection of PowerShell scripts.

Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete.

In addition, their support contact was fantastic. They spent several hours troubleshooting an issue with me and due to the complexity of our environment this only made it more challenging, yet they were persistent and helped resolved any issues

Additionally, their white papers were a great starting point to get started.

The forums can lead to lots of topics with no resolutions.

The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent. However, when they do occur, it makes it very challenging to figure out what the cause is.

A feature that would be helpful, is a way to update the software automatically on all the hosts. Instead, you must find the download link, which in itself can be challenging, and then manually upgrade each server one by one. This process can take a while depending on the time to resync your VDISKS. 

For about 3 years, in which I deployed it in 2 companies.

Previously we were using a Synology NAS

Try the free version and see if it meets your requirements. 

I did look at purchasing EqualLogic, however, the cost of that hardware would be far greater than StarWind's

We have been using StarWind in conjunction with Veeam as our backup solution, and the results have been exceptional. StarWind’s seamless integration with Veeam has allowed us to enhance our data protection strategy, providing robust and reliable backups. 

The performance and stability of StarWind have significantly reduced our downtime, ensuring that our critical data is always protected and easily recoverable. The ease of setup and configuration, along with the comprehensive support from the Starwind team, has made the process straightforward and stress-free. 

Starwind’s flexible and scalable architecture perfectly complements Veeam’s advanced backup features, giving us a powerful and efficient backup infrastructure. The combination of these two solutions has greatly improved our data management and recovery capabilities, making it an indispensable part of our IT operations. We highly recommend StarWind for anyone looking to optimize their backup strategy, especially when paired with Veeam.

Implementing StarWind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging StarWind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage. 

This approach has significantly reduced our dependency on physical tape hardware, leading to considerable savings in both equipment and maintenance costs. The virtual tapes are not only more cost-effective but also offer enhanced flexibility and scalability, enabling us to manage our growing data needs without substantial additional investment. 

Furthermore, the integration with Azure Blob storage ensures our backups are stored securely in the cloud, providing us with peace of mind and reducing the need for expensive on-premises storage solutions. The combination of StarWind’s VTL and Azure Blob has streamlined our backup process, reduced our overall backup costs, and improved our data management efficiency. We are extremely satisfied with the financial and operational benefits StarWind has brought to our organization.

StarWind's customer service is exceptional. From day one, their support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and proactive. They quickly address issues, minimizing downtime, and offer tailored solutions that fit our specific needs. The team's professionalism and courtesy make even complex problems manageable. Extensive documentation and resources further enhance our experience. StarWind's commitment to customer satisfaction is evident in every interaction, making their support truly outstanding.

In the next release, StarWind should include enhanced integration with cloud services for more seamless hybrid cloud operations. Advanced analytics and reporting tools would improve monitoring and decision-making. Improved scalability options for growing businesses and enhanced security features, such as advanced encryption and multi-factor authentication, are crucial. Additionally, a more user-friendly interface and expanded automation capabilities would greatly enhance usability and efficiency, further solidifying StarWind's position as a top-tier solution.

We've had Starwind for almost three years now. 

We needed an efficient solution to replace SAN-based clustering that we can build and drop into branch offices without consuming too much rack space or requiring a great deal of expertise. Starwind VSAN delivers exactly this alongside best-in-class support services.

The value for money is fantastic, and the product's simplicity makes it accessible even for beginners. It's easy to recommend Starwind for its support, pricing, scalability, and compatibility with both Windows and Linux. 

We are more confident than ever in the reliability of our office services thanks to the mini-clusters that Starwind has facilitated. We no longer have to plan outages to perform updates, which betters our ability to harden the security in our offices.

Starwind VSAN exceeded our expectations as a two-node cluster storage solution. It offered a cost-effective alternative to expensive hardware SANs and is a great product offering good value for money.

One remarkable feature is the elimination of any single point of failure of storage, which was common with traditional 3-2-1 approaches.

The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices.

One of the most crucial aspects of Starwind VSAN is its ability to provide high availability and redundancy across our Hyper-V clusters. By creating a fault-tolerant environment with redundant storage, it ensures that our VMs keep running even if a node or storage component fails. This feature has proven invaluable in maintaining uninterrupted operations, especially during critical times.

The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment. The iSCSI configuration stage would benefit from some sort of bootstrapping to get it set up the way Starwind recommends.

Introducing a centralized web-based management interface would streamline the administration process. A user-friendly web console that allows for easy monitoring and configuration of the entire VSAN infrastructure would be a significant improvement.

While the product currently supports Hyper-V, expanding compatibility to other popular hypervisors like VMware vSphere and KVM would increase its market reach and cater to a wider range of users.

We've used the solution for four months.

Since implementing StarWind VSAN, we've experienced little to no downtime. The system has been running like a champ, handling our workloads without a hitch. I can't stress enough how crucial this stability is for our business operations. Knowing that our critical data and virtual machines are in safe hands brings a sense of relief.

The scalability of StarWind Virtual SAN is one of its standout features that really impressed me. It's been a game-changer for our storage needs, allowing us to grow our infrastructure seamlessly as our business expands. The way it handles scaling is just so smooth and efficient.

The customer service and support provided by StarWind were exceptional. Whenever we reached out with questions or concerns, they were quick to respond and genuinely attentive to our needs. 

The support team was knowledgeable and patient and went above and beyond to ensure our issues were resolved quickly. 

Their dedication and responsiveness made us feel valued as customers, and it was a pleasure working with them throughout our journey with StarWind.

Positive

We used native Hyper-V replication before this, which didn't provide the high availability we were looking for.

Setting up StarWind Virtual SAN was remarkably smooth and user-friendly. 

The installation process was well-documented, and the setup wizard guided us seamlessly through the steps. Using our existing hardware was a breeze, saving us costs without compromising on the benefits. 

The management console was intuitive, and real-time status updates provided confidence. The support team was responsive and helpful, making the initial setup a positive experience. 

The scale-out architecture allowed us to grow our storage infrastructure effortlessly. 

Overall, StarWind made it easy to deploy a solid and reliable storage solution.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

I can't speak to the current ROI.

Compared to other vendors in the shared storage space, Starwind is extremely price competitive and has a simple licensing model. I recommend it highly if you're on a budget.

We did not evaluate other options.

Our organization was facing issues with storage. The main challenge was the secure backup and its restoration. 

StarWind Virtual SAN helps us get rid of storage issues within the organization. The best part is StarWind Virtual SAN supports a hypervisor environment and our organization was also using the same platform for infrastructure which makes it easier for us to deploy and implement. 

It also has built-in multifactor authentication which makes it compliant with our local regulations for the banking sector.

Our organization now can easily back up and have the data also available. Our main issue was to have a solution that has high availability of data and this solution solves that problem. In the internal audit, we also observed how helpful it was to have a proper backup solution with high availability which is now achieved by StarWind Virtual SAN. The solution has high performance which means the backups do not suffer from restoration and availability. It also has different storage RAIDs which helps to manage data in a proper way. We can use it without any latency.

The management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is user-friendly.

You can also manage the storage in different segregated RAIDS.

It has built-in multifactor authentication available.

The performance of the solution is accurate and concise.

It gives great high availability.

The cost of the solution is overall effective.

Reporting is a great tool available in the product to demonstrate it to senior management.

StarWind Virtual SAN has very appropriate features available with the solution and it is all in one solution.

Overall the experience with StarWind Virtual SAN is good. One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting. It has all predefined reporting. They should introduce reporting which can be customized according to the organization's needs. 

They need to have local support available for the product which will make response to the support cases easier and more effective.

Overall, the experience with StarWind is good and the product is precise and readily available.

I've used the solution for less than one year.

The solution is overall stable and effective.

The solution is highly scalable.

They have very responsive customer support.

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously. Only the backup was done on local systems.

The deployment is pretty straightforward and we implemented it with the help of the vendor.

The overall vendor team is professional and skillful. They helped us a lot. 

It gives good ROI to the organization since it is cost-effective.

They also offer a free trial version of the product with basic features. An organization should test the product before implementing it.

We have evaluated VMware and found the cost was a bit high compared to StarWind Virtual SAN.

We have a hypervisor environment and it works best with that. If your organization is running any other environment for infrastructure, you need to ensure all features are up and running before implementing them in production.

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.

We have faced performance issues due to less storage in our organization. 

We decided to shift to a product that led us to automate the worry of being out of space. 

First, we tried the free license, which has more than the expected features. By using the free version, we were capable of using it in production. One month's trial can be used as proof of concept. It has an easy software-based visualizing environment. Setup is easy and all in one place.

The trial version can be upgraded to the production one if required, which will cause less hassle to start it all over again.

It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage.

We have gotten the most out of the trial version. Once done, we easily shifted to the production one. StarWind Virtual SAN offers faster performance than conventional storage solutions since it pools the storage space of several servers or disks.

We get fast responses from the support team. There is proactive monitoring of storage.

There is high availability. StarWind Virtual SAN is designed to provide high availability for mission-critical workloads. It uses a variety of technologies, such as synchronous replication, automatic failover, and real-time replication monitoring, to ensure that data is always available and accessible.

The segregation of the concept of memory virtualization is quick and effective. All the storage features RAD0, RAD1, RAD10, and RAD5 are available. You can also have the local backup option available. The best part of StarWind Virtual Scan is that you can move your trial 30-day license to production. The instance can be shifted easily, which makes it easy to convert and use in production. Both two-factor authentication and multi-factor authentication are also available. Cloud backup is also available.

The management interface is too techie for those new to the specific product.

Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing.

Trial licenses should be around two months so that the end user can get most of it.

The guides and documentation are not always up-to-date, and old documentation is not labeled as having been superseded by newer documentation.

It is slightly difficult to manage. This is being addressed with the new StarWind Command Center.

Overall it is a cost-effective product.

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

This solution is stable.

It was straightforward to set up as it is an all-in-one appliance solution.

The vendor team helped us set it up. They are extremely professional, and response from them is quick.

We set up a virtualized environment with the need for extreme flexibility and reliability to provide our IT-Services. 

We had to implement a solution that could take on this task and was very pleased with StarWind Virtual SAN. 

We could implement it into our environment easily with low maintenance and could focus on achieving our central task. 

It made our whole project a lot simpler and more user-friendly. We benefited from the scalability to expand our Service capability and were able to do so easily with StarWind vSAN.

We had a rough time using our previous solution. StarWind vSAN made our whole operation much easier and added a lot of particularly useful features. 

In our highly virtualized environment, we had a requirement for high flexibility due to our wide spectrum of services. 

StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time. 

Scaling our systems was something we'd been worried about before due to growing demands and the complicated software we had before. With StarWind vSAN, we could easily accomplish all of our tasks and could benefit from the amazing performance and reliability this software had to offer.

The web-user interface was very user-friendly, and it did not take a lot of time to school our employees about this product. 

All administrative tasks could easily be done, and integrating new systems was easier than ever before. 

This saves us a lot of time as even more complicated tasks can be resolved in way less time than before. We used vCenter and were very happy to see a dedicated vCenter plugin for StarWind vSAN. 

It made our whole operation much more smooth and reliable, not to mention the saved time on schooling employees.

I would say a point that could be improved upon would be the level of documentation and guides that are available. 

While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation. User guides would be greatly appreciated by all of us. 

Preferably these documents could be directly in the console. That said, I wouldn't mind having it not as tightly integrated. We have some apprentices that use the console, and we don't want to make them call support every time they don't understand something.

I've used the solution for six months.

It is very reliable, and we were confident storing data using StarWind vSAN.

The scalability is great. We were able to scale our systems effortlessly.

They were very friendly and helpful, staying professional and competent at all times.

Positive

We did use another solution. The previous solution was open source, and we needed some kind of real support on the other end to guarantee reliability.

The initial setup was very simple and straightforward. We were able to implement StarWind into our system, and we did not require special help.

We implemented it ourselves, in-house.

We prefer not to publish our ROI.

StarWind vSAN has great value and is definitely worth the price.

We did not evaluate other options. We used other software from StarWind beforehand and were convinced of the quality of their products, so the first thing we looked into was StarWind's solution to our problems.

I highly recommend the solution. It saves a lot of stress, hassle, and time.