StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews & Insights

StarWind Virtual SAN is our production storage running on two VMWare ESXi hosts.

We are in the process of downsizing on site storage, moving as much as possible to the cloud - and there were not any affordable options available from NetApp a replace our out of production NetApp SAN. VMWare vSAN requires 3 host servers so it also was not a good fit. StarWind Virtual SAN has turned out to be a great soltuon that works just as well as what we had before but at a fraction of the cost.

It's a great solution to downsize storage cost without sacrificing performance or high availability. But if it's critical that that everything will work automatically after a power outage with non-graceful shutdown, it may not be the right option.

Just like virtualisation, StarWind Virtual SAN helps us to maximise the utility and capacity of the server hardware in our environments for over 10 years now, while giving us reliable performance and availability for our server workloads. StarWind Virtual SAN has been easy to configure and administer and we have had almost no need to escalate any issues to technical support. It just works and keeps on working.

Excellent fit for single site office and datacentre environments, small to medium-sized.Easy day-to-day admin along with responsive and competent technical support (from Starwind directly) makes this solution suitable for organisations and MSPs with small IT teams and/or junior/inexperienced technical staff.Less suited for geographically distributed environments, although it could function in this scenario as well, once the connectivity between locations deliver high-performance (high-speed, low latency).

We have been working with StarWind for over 10 years now. We have deployed their SAN software on physical Windows storage servers, Virtual Windows Storage Servers and as a storage appliance on VMware. We have deployed it as a single box solution for small customers and 2 and 3 way HA storage clusters for VMware environments for larger customers. In every scenario we have deployed StarWind, it has been the best solution we have found to push the full potential of the hardware for maximum data throughput and IOPs, while maintaining data integrity and availability with HA. We have worked with their support staff on many occasions. They are always quick to respond and they have always come through with a solution to our issues. They are always committed to ensuring the performance and functionality of their product. I would highly recommend StarWind to anyone! A+

It is a great solution for SMB's as it has a free version that can be deployed and scaled up as the business grows.

It is hardware agnostic and give a great amount of flexibility in this regard.

If you are going to deploy it on a mass scale it needs a single pane of glass management interface.

2 node StarWind Virtual SAN cluster for evaluation in production environment. HDD and NVME storage targets for VMware 8 3 node cluster. Leveraging existing hardware and network for comparison against existing VMWare VSAN solution. Recommend using a 2.5G network switching device (or better) to improve response times for network storage.

Use for Remote/Back Office locations where not cost effective to implement.

We have an issue with low data transfer between the application and database which causes a bad user experience. We require a solution that resolves our slow data transfer issue along with a solution that has a low cost. We require a solution that can easily be deployed in the HA model so that our database will be available 100% of the time and we can reduce downtime to zero. We use StarWind Virtual SAN storage on VMs in the HA model, and after that, we achieve very good results and our use case is fully provided by this solution

For those organizations that require high data transfer rates and want a cost-effective solution that can easily be managed in clusters without having physical hardware then this solution perfectly suits them, while you can also increase licenses as per your business need. For small organizations that have very small databases and only one to two applications for those,e they can use any other solution.

We use StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) to virtualize storage, create a hyper-converged infrastructure, and ensure disaster recovery. It addresses high availability, cost efficiency, scalability, and simplified management. It helps us maintain operational continuity, reduce hardware costs, and easily scale our storage needs. Overall, it enhances our IT infrastructure by providing reliable, scalable, and cost-effective storage solutions.

It is very effective for implementing high-availability storage solutions for SMBs.

Organizations looking for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure will find being able to consolidate compute and storage into a single platform very beneficial.

Large Enterprises with complex storage and High IOPS with low latency might need more specialized storage solutions. Organizations relying solely on Cloud-Native applications might find it less beneficial.

Hyper-V converged with 2 nodes using as storage Starwind Virtual SAN implemented a few years ago. A very reliable and versatile storage solution. Zero problems so far, exceptional technical support during this time. Very good in terms of costs, the alternatives being at least double in terms of implementation costs.

I only used and study hyper-v converged scenario, is excellent storage solution for that. Very easy to setup and full featured I needed. Extremely reliable even in worst conditions even when both nodes go down, resynced without any issues. I recommend anytime this solution in any HA scenario as a good virtual SAN storage.

We utilize StarWind vSAN primarily for the fault tolerance and high availability feature. We have multiple hosts running StarWind VSAN, which gives us the freedom to perform maintenance on one node without impacting the availability with other nodes. Our organization has been saved many times now after implementing multiple, redundant instances StarWind VSAN in a clustered configuration.

StarWind vSAN is best suited for high availability file servers, high-availability VMs, and running SAN storage independently from a physical machine. It is not best-suited to be ran in a nested configuration, from within a VM. Overall, StarWind vSAN is an excellent alternative to competing solutions for price, ease of use, and overall performance.

We have StarWind Virtual SAN deployed on a 2-node cluster to achieve the need for shared storage for our virtualization project. Purchasing a traditional SAN was going to be costly and complicated. StarWind Virtual SAN allowed us to achieve the redundancy and resiliency we required for our server infrastructure, without breaking the bank. We also needed something easy to deploy and operate.

StarWind Virtual SAN is best suited in any scenario that involves the need for a virtual SAN. Support is very picky about deployment scenarios, and hardware compatibility is carefully scrutinized, but I believe this to be a good thing because no one wants storage to fail. It's much easier to configure and maintain than Vmware's vSAN product.

We wanted to create a diverse data centre in 2 parts of the building where data is stored in both data centres. We initially looked at replicated Sans but this became quite expensive. We then looked at virtual SAN with Microsoft Storage spaces but then saw the StarWind offering with Pro support. We did a trial of the VSAN product on 2 failover cluster hosts and the solution was faultless.

One of the primary use cases of StarWind VSAN is to ensure high availability of storage resources. By synchronously mirroring data between multiple servers, it eliminates single points of failure and provides continuous access to critical data even in the event of hardware failures or server downtime. This is particularly crucial for mission-critical applications and virtualized environments where uninterrupted access to data is paramount.