Tehnical Pre-Sales in Sales at MoD (201-500 employees employees)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Great product with great support at a fair price, This StarWind Virtual SAN solution is working great and is easy to deploy, with detailed documentation. I recommended this solution for a VDI deployment that needed shared storage also not costing an arm and a leg like Vmware VSAN.
Pros
Fair price
Great support
Detailed deployment documentation
Cons
More regional visibility
Return on Investment
Saved a lot of many comparing to the competition
Tiered licensed model means great predictibility and business use
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Manager in Information Technology at Wyatt Early Harris WHeeler LLP (11-50 employees employees)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
High Availability
Good performance
It's reliable with little need to do much to maintain
Cons
Difficulty understanding some support people over the phone due to heavy accent
Datastores do not work after power outage with non-graceful shutdown - manual steps required to bring back online
Full sync required after power outage with non-graceful shutdown resulting in degraded performance until completed.
Return on Investment
We paid less than half for hardware and software to implement StarWind Virtual SAN than our previous NetApp SAN 6 years before - and about 1/3 as much as it would have cost to buy the lowest cost replacement NetApp SAN
The Software has already been purchased so we only need to buy hardware when it's time to refresh.
Buying onboard storage for servers is cheaper than buying a separate SAN
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Solution Architect in Information Technology at JP Marshall Associates Inc (11-50 employees employees)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
Makes excellent use of older and new hardware to virtualise storage for our server workloads.
Very flexible with hardware configurations, and easy to use, simple to configure, and provides reliable redundant cluster-ready storage at a very affordable price point.
In one instance, hosting as many as 20 VMs on a single 2-node Hyper-V cluster and found no performance or responsiveness issues.
Cons
I haven't determined that there are any drawbacks with StarWind Virtual SAN yet. It has always operated as designed and intended for me and my clients.
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Return on Investment
Positive: Quick ROI for SMB environments, as compared to using custom HCI configs from Dell, HCI or Nutanix
Positive: Ease of operational admin, reliable support from manufacturer means less burden of investment on hiring/procuring specialised technical talent
Positive: Very stable, robust solution. No errors related to bugs or incompatibilities over the past 10 years. Never failed and required a rebuild, never corrupted data, etc in that period either.
Usability
Alternatives Considered
Dell Compellent (discontinued) and Dell EqualLogic PS Series
Other Software Used
Windows Server Failover Clustering, Windows Server, Hyper-V, Microsoft SQL Server, Arctera Backup Exec, Veeam Backup for Azure
Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use StarWind Virtual SAN to provide a resilient platform to host business critical VM's. We came across StarWind Virtual SAN when evaluation Hyperconverged storage providers and it allowed us to repurpose our existing hardware which was great. We have had it running reliably for 3 years now and its a key piece of our infrastructure that just works.
Pros
Solid reliable platform
Fantastic support compared to other vendors
Cost effective compared to hardware SAN storage
Cons
I would like to see some more monitoring / usage info in the management console
The SAAS license renewal method is a bit clunky having to purchase from distributors and then manually apply licensing files.
Return on Investment
StarWind Virtual SAN allowed us to eliminate the need for expensive SAN hardware reducing IT expenditure by approximately 30%
By leveraging synchronous replication, we achieved near-zero downtime for critical workloads, aligning with our business continuity objectives.
StarWind Virtual SAN with their pro active support reduced complexity in storage management, freeing up IT resources and lowering operational costs.
Usability
Alternatives Considered
StorMagic SvSAN, Nutanix AHV, HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE MSA
Other Software Used
ESET PROTECT, Windows Server, HPE Aruba Networking Switches
Analyst in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our organization used StarWind Virtual SAN to transform an older server into a feature-rich SAN based storage appliance for our organization. It was very easy to implement and we liked the fact that we could still run MS Windows Server along with the vSAN software. We were able to add storage and saved a lot of money vs the larger SAN manufacturers. It was a great fit and inexpensive for us to implement.
Pros
Cost Effective
Ease of Implementation
Feature Rich
Fast
Allows for easy storage expansion
Return on Investment
Saved money vs other solutions
Repurposed our hardware
Saved time doing research/training
Usability
Alternatives Considered
NetApp E-Series
Other Software Used
Cisco Endpoint Security Analytics, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows, Macrium Reflect
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