Director of IT at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 10
2020-06-04T20:17:00Z
Jun 4, 2020
It's the main storage (CSV) for our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster. We have two devices on Dell hardware that have StarWind VSAN installed, they have 25GB NIC in between for storage replication and all the storage is replicated so we can easily work on one node while the other is active. It's in Active-Active state so the load is shared. The storage is formated as CSV and it works over iSCSI protocol so we use our same network so there is no need for expensive fiber links. We run hundreds of virtual machines on this storage that needs to be always available.
Network Services Manager at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
User
Top 5
2021-07-15T21:30:00Z
Jul 15, 2021
We were using 4GB FC to support our 3-host ESXi cluster and switched to StarWind over 10GB iSCSI. We installed one 2-node SAN for proof of concept, then another one so we could retire our FC SANs, then another SSD-based one when we needed better performance on critical VMs. We were able to select hardware from our preferred vendor. Two of the clusters run on standalone servers, and the SSD SAN runs on our ESXi hosts, giving us a hyper-converged environment for those servers that need the additional performance.
I manage a number of different IT environments ranging in the 10 to 500 staff level, and the StarWind Storage Appliance is one of the products that I use in this role.
The use case is that it is cheap and easy to set up. There are no complex software complications. Use this solution for a simple, high-availability setup.
Please share with the community what you think needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance. What are its weaknesses? What would you like to see changed in a future version?
Director of IT at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Jun 4, 2020
It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage. It also will be great if it will be able to send weekly reports about the status of the storage, any issues, etc. More features that will provide how many IOPS you have per volume/disks, with nice charts, etc so you get some insight into what your environment is using.
Director of IT at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Jun 4, 2020
Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it.
It's the main storage (CSV) for our Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster. We have two devices on Dell hardware that have StarWind VSAN installed, they have 25GB NIC in between for storage replication and all the storage is replicated so we can easily work on one node while the other is active. It's in Active-Active state so the load is shared. The storage is formated as CSV and it works over iSCSI protocol so we use our same network so there is no need for expensive fiber links. We run hundreds of virtual machines on this storage that needs to be always available.
We use it together with Microsoft services.
We were using 4GB FC to support our 3-host ESXi cluster and switched to StarWind over 10GB iSCSI. We installed one 2-node SAN for proof of concept, then another one so we could retire our FC SANs, then another SSD-based one when we needed better performance on critical VMs. We were able to select hardware from our preferred vendor. Two of the clusters run on standalone servers, and the SSD SAN runs on our ESXi hosts, giving us a hyper-converged environment for those servers that need the additional performance.
I manage a number of different IT environments ranging in the 10 to 500 staff level, and the StarWind Storage Appliance is one of the products that I use in this role.
The use case is that it is cheap and easy to set up. There are no complex software complications. Use this solution for a simple, high-availability setup.