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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    FreeBSD

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AFreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms. A large community has continually developed it for more than thirty years. Its advanced networking, security, and storage features have made FreeBSD the platform of choice for many of the busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices.N/A

    StarWind Virtual SAN

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AStarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.N/A
    Pricing
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    StarWind
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    123 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    123 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    116 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    117 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Small Businesses
    CentOS Linux
    Score8.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM AIX
    Score9.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    Score9.1 out of 10
    IBM Storage Scale
    Score9.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (163 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.8
    (33 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (119 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    FreeBSDStarWind Virtual SAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    FreeBSD is an excellent choice to continue using older hardware and have it perform, it is a great choice for a UNIX based development environment. Although I haven't used it as a server, it is most suited for this - it would make an excellent, secure and robust server for and I would love to start using it for this as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    For remote locations, where communications are limited and cloud services are difficult to obtain, on-premises servers are the only solution. Hardware solutions require spares in storage for redundancy and are more expensive than software solutions. If communications and cloud computing are highly available, then solutions such as StarWnd Virtual SAN would not be needed.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Open Source
    • stability
    • security
    • scalability
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    • the StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm health of the sync
    • The High Available nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end users noticing any downtime
    • Their support is proactive alerting when firmware updates are needed (including iDRAC firmware) or when there are any warnings in the event logs, and schedule a time to remediate the issue with you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Open Source
    • Installation can be tricky for first timers
    • You need to be comfortable using a command line terminal most of the time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    • Complexity: StarWind Virtual SAN can be complex to set up and manage, especially for organizations with limited IT resources
    • Limited protocol support: StarWind Virtual SAN supports a limited number of protocols, primarily iSCSI and SMB3
    • Limited scalability for storage-only deployments: In storage-only deployments, StarWind Virtual SAN has a limit of 32 nodes per cluster
    • Lack of reporting and analytics: StarWind Virtual SAN has limited reporting and analytics capabilities, which can make it difficult to monitor and troubleshoot performance issues
    • Limited backup and recovery options: While StarWind Virtual SAN provides some basic backup and recovery options, it lacks advanced features such as snapshot management, backup scheduling, and offsite replication
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    StarWind Virtual SAN is a great solution and is now an integral part of our network of servers. The product is superb and the support has been amazing. It's perfect for our organisation and we won't be looking to come away from it any time soon!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    Very easy to use and manage from an IT standpoint. The user interface is well laid out, provides access to the underlying hardware configurations, and allows customization of storage volumes from each cluster node in your environment. Can provide differing levels of access, so team member access can be set up based on roles.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    The solution has been tested under constant usage for 5 years now and there (knock on wood) has yet be an outage. There were instances if human error during the operation and the StarWind reliably intervened, either through a synchronization or reporting of a degredation of interfaces, e.g. the heartbeat interface.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    The software delivered exceptional performance until now with very fast write and speed rates, around 900MB/s through a 10GBit connection on a virtualized fileserver. It meets our demands without any problems whatsoever and we are a very media heavy environment with TBs of raw data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    Their support team is dedicated to providing top-notch customer service and is always available to help with any questions or issues that may arise. Their expertise and responsiveness have proven invaluable in ensuring the smooth operation of our virtualized environment. With such excellent support, we feel confident in our ability to utilize this product to its fullest potential, and we highly recommend it to others.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    Overall the setup was easy, we did require some help from the technical support team but other than that, we followed all of StarWinds prerequisites and everything else just fell nicely into place with hardly any downtime. The downtime was only due to moving VMs from our previous cluster over to the new StarWind storage cluster.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    FreeBSD is the closest to the original BSD unix. This OS is currently used by vendors in the field of routing, switching, security as well as base OS for MAC devies.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    We have found the solution surprisingly simple to use. The management
    console allows us to monitor the solution and we have configured email
    alerts to alert us about critical issues. These alerts have been proven
    to work in an actual failure scenario, for example, when we had a memory
    issue with one of our servers that caused the entire server to crash.
    The management console also allows us to monitor the solution
    performance and provides us with access to system logs.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    StarWind
    The software is very scalable storage wise. The storage is provisioned through config files, which are created either through PowerShell scripts or the Management Console on the paid version. After that the storage is provisioned through iSCSI. In our case, in case of expansion, we would have to run the PowerShell scripts and do another full synchronization to update any remaining backup nodes, but the procedure is clear and even easier via Management Console, just expand the RAID array, punch the new capacity into the console and start the synchronization!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • As FreeBSD is free - the ROI is at least the cost of some commercial Linux or Windows based OS (which can be very expensive)
    • Allowed the re-use of older hardware that would have otherwise been disposed
    • No cost development environment
    • Opportunity for a no cost server setup also
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    • It eliminates the need for expensive storage hardware and provides an affordable software-defined storage solution.
    • It allows organizations to use commodity hardware, reducing the dependency on proprietary hardware.
    • It ensures that data and applications are always available, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    StarWind Virtual SAN Screenshots

    Screenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SANScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SAN