StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) one of the best solutions
May 13, 2022
I use StarWind to provide shared storage for my hypervisor cluster servers, it solves and addresses the business problem of having to …
StarWind HCA
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
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What is StarWind HCA?
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
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Product Details
What is StarWind HCA?
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a turnkey hyper-converged platform that merges compute, storage, network, and software into a nuclear 2-node footprint. The solution is designed to simplify HCI management for Enterprise ROBO, SMB & Edge, while offering flexible scalability and powerful performance.
Users can start with two nodes, based on HeartBeat, that can be switchless and function without additional equipment. StarWind HCA is a software-centric architecture that removes the need for proprietary components. StarWind Engineers perform the configuration, testing, migration, and integration for users, free of charge.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance:
- allows using 100% of underlying storage performance
- has no hardware compatibility lists (HCLs)
- does 2- or 3-way replication + local RAID 5/6/10
- does VAAI and ODX data offloading
- includes load balancing and data locality
- does VM-centric hypervisor-level snapshots, and more.
To minimize CapEx and OpEx further, StarWind ProActive Premium Support (included in every license) substitutes an IT squad for the sake of cluster health assurance. ProActive Support monitors user environments 24/7/365, and uses machine learning to detect abnormal behavior so issues are prevented before they can become a problem.
The vendor presents StarWind HCA as a hyper-converged world enclosed in a tiny “building block” that comes at a reasonable price.
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| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | No |
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What is StarWind HCA?
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
What are StarWind HCA's top competitors?
What is StarWind HCA's best feature?
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.
Who uses StarWind HCA?
The most common users of StarWind HCA are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees) and the Retail industry.
Reviews and Ratings
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I use StarWind to provide shared storage for my hypervisor cluster servers, it solves and addresses the business problem of having to manage additional shared storage solutions and the complexity of networking this requires, my use case is the norm for many IT professionals in this current day and time, and I confirm it does everything they advertise after extensive testing it performs as well as any other solution, with the added benefit of low deployment timeless management overhead and a monitored system by StarWind directly.
- Storage Sharing
- Perfect for cluster hypervisor solutions
- 24x7 monitored system
- n/a
- n/a
- n/a
We use StarWind managed HyperV service for Virtualized Servers,
redundancy servers and the Star Wind support alerts us if there are any issues
with the HyperV servers. Their phone support is professional and great.
- Virtualization
- Hardware redundancy
- The central management
- in the past due to time zone differences to get to phone support later in the afternoon sometimes we could not get a hold of second level technical support on the same day. however we feel that this has been improved in the past year. Normally we can get to first level support immediately and then if an escalation needed, we schedule a time with second level support later
- Customer portal to schedule a time
- Discounts on Upgrades
Not used this service
May 05, 2022
Absolutely the correct decision
We moved to StarWind to allow us to simplify our environment, getting away from traditional iSCSI with compute, storage and switches, to a solution that uses less rack space but can do all of the same. <br><br>We also use StarWind as a form of redundancy, should one box have a failure, we have another ready and waiting to take over almost instantly thanks to the replication the platform provides. <br><br>
- Replication
- Redundancy
- Provide storage
- Product update notifications
We moved to StarWind as part of an entire solution. We opted for Supermicro hardware and everything arrived pre installed with our hypervisor of choice. In depth guides came with the kit to tell us what to put where and when it was online, StarWind arranged a call to connect up and complete the migration.
May 05, 2022
Excellent product, even better support
We were running MS Dynamics AX2012 on a HP LeftHand SAN solution, but it was just too slow. We moved to an all flash StarWind solution that performed much, much better and improved the user experience greatly, and only took up 4U of rack space rather than the full rack of SAN nodes and servers.
- Very stable.
- Takes up very little physical space.
- Excellent support.
- Easy to implement and use.
- Nothing to be improved.
May 05, 2022
Great Product and Support!
We mainly use this as a failover and not have to expense for additional or separate storage. Our environment is pretty small and with less than 50 users. We only have two servers in the failover cluster that are part of the StarWind Storage. Prior to StarWind we always had to schedule maintenance windows and have all of our services down. Compare to before, our downtimes have been decreased substantially and maintenance windows have almost been eliminated. Not to mention, I no longer have to come in on weekends!
- Easy Implementation
- Easy GUI
- Excellent Customer Support
- User Training
We purchased StarWind as a bundle initially and everything was included. We've only had to renew our support plan and they been able to work with us.
May 05, 2022
Reliability and simplicity is good!
We use StarWind Virtual SAN on-premise to host 30+ Hyper-V VMs. We also have a test environment with 15 VMs. The product is amazing due to its ease of use and reliability. Before StarWind, we were on a traditional SAN/Switch/Server setup (AKA inverted pyramid). Obviously, storage was not fully redundant, so we wanted to address this in the new solution.
- Simplicity and ease of management were great. Much easier to maintain than other complex redundant solutions.
- Proactive support is great and available 24/7.
- Reliability have been solid (no downtime at all) for 5 years.
- Support team has slight accent but is not too difficult to understand.
- Emphasis on security can be improved. Things like default passwords were not changed initially until requested.
- Can't really think of much else...If I had to split hairs...on reboots sometimes it took a while to sync with the other node. Max was 30 minutes, but 99% of the time it's 3-4 minutes.
Have not used any custom hardware or service. So, can't speak to this.
April 25, 2022
StarWind HCAs Help Me Sleep at Night
Virtual file server and Active Directory domain controller for the corporate office and virtual development and technical support environments for our Developers and Technical Support staff at our corporate office. Has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation. Previously, we had the traditional SAN environment of 2-3 virtual hosts, 2 SAN switches for iSCSI, and then one storage array/server (all Dell hardware). The problem was the single point of failure (SPoF) at the bottom which was the one storage server. Because of the cost, we could only afford one storage server but this meant that SPoF. Now we have a completely fully redundant SAN solution at half the cost and rackspace footprint.
- Reliability.
- Redundancy.
- Ease of use.
- Ease of installation/setup.
- Our use case is very simple and I can't think of anything that needs room for improvement.
- For our use, it's mainly set it and forget it and it does everything we need it to do out of the box.
When we initially signed up with StarWind and was going through the configuration with my sales rep at StarWind. He and his engineer stepped me through the process of what we needed for our environment and then asked what additional hardware/software we needed. All this was an easy, low stress process and I was able to fully customize/add components to my HCAs that allowed me to drop in my HCAs to may existing SAN environment and that simply VMware vMotion off all of my VMs from my all SAN to the new StarWind HCA SAN.
April 25, 2022
Amazing product, Amazing support
We used to have a large physical server farm. A few years ago we decided to condense this down into two, HCA, hyperconverged devices. Starwind was the obvious choice. It allowed us to decrease our overhead costs on power, cooling, network, and physical devices and focus the environment into a very manageable, very scalable machine. We can now spin up new servers in a very short time period - thus making the response to business needs nearly instantaneous.
- The appliance scale very well. If need be, we can add new appliances to the pool with ease.
- The appliance runs maintenance-free. We rarely have to touch the StarWind software or the appliances beyond routine VM maintenance
- It load balances extremely well.
- Price. It is a little expensive for small businesses to buy into - however it is on point with other solutions in this market space.
Their services are unmatched. They walked us through every step of the process from the sales pitch up to implementation - and beyond. Well beyond.
April 21, 2022
Excellent service and reliable hardware
We were looking to expand our virtual environment and VMware was too costly of a solution so we were looking to move to HyperV since we are already a primarily Microsoft shop. We were looking for something reliable but also wouldn't break the bank. StarWind was able to provide high end hardware and support for a great price.
- Easy to use and deploy
- Great service and support
- Failover and live migration are quick
- We haven't run into any issues with the product in the time we've used it
We only needed to install the hardware ourselves and then we simply provided them remote access to the machine and they were able to configure everything for us. It was very quick and easy to setup and support was able to provide us details on how the system works. Knowing how painless the setup and implementation has been we are very happy and are excited to continue to use their product in the future.
April 20, 2022
Fantastic product for a SMB
When I first started this role, all applications and services ran on physical servers. I migrated those physical servers to ESXi and re-deployed those applications and services as VMs. Over time, we needed more HA capabilities and StarWind HCA along with vSphere Essentials met that need at a very good price point.
- Ease of deployment
- No need to create a storage network with their Virtual SAN
- Great ProActive Support
- Virtual SAN setup requires more storage than traditional
- Steps need to do maintenance can be a little confusing
- Had to use Windows Server licenses at time of deployment
These services made deployment a breeze. After racking the severs/clusters in two different deployments, we were up and running in less than two hours.
April 19, 2022
Great SMB Hyper-Convergence Solution
We use two of these appliances in a Hyper-V Failover Cluster that host all of our VMs. The two appliances replaced three Dell m630 blade servers, 2 Dell MXL Force 10 blade switches, and an EMC VNXe3200 SAN. They were the last blade switches in our environment, so we were also able to decommission the m1000e blade enclosure.
The appliances are providing nearly all the network, compute, and storage resources for our server needs.
The appliances are providing nearly all the network, compute, and storage resources for our server needs.
- Onboarding is well supported and simple. We were able to migrate all our VMs within a week of receiving the appliances.
- StarWind's Virtual SAN software gives the reliability of a failover cluster with the performance of local storage.
- ProActive Support ensures errors are detected and contact initiated automatically.
- I no longer have to troubleshoot three disparate systems when something goes wrong.
- Since Hyper-V Failover Clusters require Cluster Shared Volumes, the appliances have to be configured to access their local storage through an iSCSI connection. It adds a small amount of overhead, but is still much faster than an actual SAN.
- ProActive Support is sometimes a little too much. We were having issues with our Backup/DR software that was generating errors in the appliances' event logs, and we had a new series of emails from StarWind every morning until they were sorted out.
- Lead time on receiving the appliances was pretty long. Dell provides the hardware, so their delays are StarWind's delays as well.
- Each appliance has to be able to be able to support all of the VMs' storage/compute needs, so enough disk space needs to be purchased to house all the storage needs on each appliance. If you require 10TB of storage before taking a RAID into account, you would need to purchase 20TB of storage.
We received on-boarding assistance that was very well done. We had to rack the appliances ourselves & join them to our domain, but once that was done they were able to connect and configure the storage, CSV, and Failover Cluster. They made it available to receive Hyper-V migrations, so live migration was a breeze.
April 19, 2022
Amazing product, better support
We use StarWind HCAs as primary servers for operations. They have been used to carry the load of some of our more critical systems and have been amazing hardware. The failover clustering has performed flawlessly in testing and in production, I trust it wholeheartedly.
- Failover
- Clustering
- Customer Support
- The interface can be confusing to a novice, but their support is awesome at making sure you understand the capabilities.
We do not use these services.
April 06, 2022
StarWind a very good solution
The challenges we faced were finding a reliable, robust, efficient, and economical solution, and StarWind covers all the areas described.
- reliability
- flexibility
- medium
- Trust
- Hyperconvergency
- Sincronization
- Proactive support
Yes, we have used the support services during the migration and we are very happy with the support offered
April 05, 2022
Great Solution
We needed a cost effective, redudant virutal environment to host our virtual applications. Storage size was not the main factor but more so uptime. We are now able to run apps with failover and backup plans if necessary. We also needed a good support system in case of trouble with monitoring.
- Great support
- Failover is reliable
- Makes maintenance task easier
- Works for us as intended
April 04, 2022
4 Years Running Strong with 2 Node HCA Appliance
We are running a two-node HCA cluster and have been very happy with the performance and proactive support. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is one of the only solutions that allowed us to simplify with hyper-convergence without spending a fortune. We looked at other HCI systems to replace our traditional SAN/host system and nothing compared to StarWind HyperConverged Appliance in terms of cost or functionality. If you are a smaller organization or school, I would highly recommend looking at StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
- StarWind HyperConverged Appliance allows you to run hyper-converged infrastructure for a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
- They offer proactive support to quickly identify problems in your environment.
- StarWind HyperConverged Appliance virtual san software works as advertised and does so efficiently and effectively.
- I would like to see some better power management/additional sync settings during an unplanned power outage.
The implementation process was ridiculously easy. Prior to recommending hardware, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance ran some tests against our previous system to get a benchmark of several performance metrics. We explained our future needs and we selected ah HCA appliance that was appropriate for us. Installation was a breeze and with the help of support, we were up and running in half a day.
April 02, 2022
Incredibly Experience with StarWind
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is hands down the best for managing virtualized servers. This solution has reduced server downtime and increased productivity. StarWind support is also exceptional and incredibly prompt. Managing servers for high availability with this solution is incredibly simple, StarWind delivers on all of its promises, hands down.
- Manage Virtual Servers.
- Decrease server downtime.
- Provide high server availability.
- Hard to name anything specific that could be improved, the solution delivers on its promises.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) with services such as custom hardware and software bundling, installation, and integration makes implementation incredibly simple. Everything is handled by StarWind and deployment is easy. Their incredibly support team is always available to provide any help we needed as well. Implementation was simple and quick, with no issues at all.
March 31, 2022
Simple To Set Up And Manage, A Dream To Work With
We were looking to replace a large amount of older physical servers, and move to a smaller footprint, with a lot more virtualized systems. We also wanted to be able to increase uptime of our server by being able to failover between nodes. We had all our eggs in one basket - a single powerful Hyper-V server running VM's which ran our business systems and customer systems. If that machine had died our business would've died. We implemented HCA and were then able to load balance and have resiliency for all of our systems across the infrastructure estate. We initially ran with a demo system, a couple of older servers with some high-speed network cards configured using the StarWind software - which was provided as a demonstration even with some technical support for a number of months, so that we could try the system out. We had some very niche bespoke software that we provided to the recruitment industry, which in turn used some bespoke indexing and categorising software which was very picky on how it run. StarWind amazed us by being able to host this bespoke software on the HCA and fail over between nodes with Live Migrate without any issues whatsoever.
- Provides a stable platform for Hyper-V.
- Provides fast migrations between Failover Clustering nodes.
- Provides powerful branded servers in a simple solution.
- Provides a fantastic management interface.
- Easy to configure and simple to manage.
- Initial configuration could do with more documentation.
- A fully supported trial version.
- A minimal GUI version for the Free version after license expiry.
We requested to use copper / rj45 cat6 cabling for our network cards, instead of fibre. This was costed out in the solution. Unfortunately the servers shipped with fibre network cards which was not what we wanted. However! StarWind quickly rectified this and sent out cat6 rj45 compatible network cards.
March 29, 2022
Amazing Product, Even Better Support!
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is used to host our development, test, and UAT environments internally. The redundant, scalable, manageable, and synchronized solution allows us to quickly virtualize, migrate and clone hosts speeding up project delivery and reducing overheads on internal IT infrastructure technicians. The redundant and synchronized nature of the solution allows patching and upgrading to take place within office hours and the support is brilliant.
- The migration of hosts between nodes is extremely fast and we are yet to see an error when doing so.
- Creating new hosts from templates or from fresh is very fast.
- Synchronisation is fast and provides good HA
- Difficult to manage capacity and usage on CSVs
- Reporting and visibility of resource allocation not brilliant
March 29, 2022
Affordable and easy
We use StarWind Hyper Converged Appliance to have an easy solution for virtualisation. Since we don't need any huge setup StarWind Hyper Converged Appliance was the right solution for us. With StarWind Hyper Converged Appliance we get what we need without paying an overprice as with many of the other vendors.
- Easy to use
- Nice support
- Affordable
- Bether web manage GUI
February 08, 2022
Servers without the down time
We currently us StarWind as our main appliances. All of our servers were getting outdated and all needed to be replaced. We were looking for a one stop shop that could replace all our physical servers in two units. Now we have been successfully running 100 users on remote desktops with great success.
- Robust
- Excellent Software
- Scaleability
- Excellent Customer service
- Wouldn't change a thing
January 28, 2022
Starwind HyperConverged Appliance Is One Of The Best Solution
We were in the middle of an installation of a new ERP system and we were needed a stable server that would be running 24/7 since we are working round-the-clock and in multiple locations around the world. When looking for a redundant system to put some of our most important VMs (HyperV), we found a Starwind solution. We got a great demo from the StarWind sales department and we proceeded with a 2 node server. Until now, this is one of the best systems that we have and we have increased our partnership with them with another 3 node server. We had some issues with the creation of the CSV and other small issues, but the support from their customer service is really great and proactive. I say proactive because they are keeping track of the system alerts and contacting us to offer their help. "
- Strong customer focus (great support)
- Overall cost
- Proactive support / advice
- A bit hard to implement at the beginning but worked with the help of the support
- I would have purchased a 3 node instead of a 2 node to start. The 3 node is better since we can have 2 servers down and still be running.
- Since the 3 nodes are plugged together, the cabling management is a bit of a mess behind the server but not so bad either.
December 27, 2021
A rock-solid and affordable alternative to VMWare native vSAN
We settled on StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) as a less expensive alternative to VMWare's more expensive license for vSAN shared storage between our two VMWare hosts, providing full hardware redundancy of everything. The peace of mind knowing that all of our data and VMs are running on two fully redundant hosts is amazing.
- Fully redundant shared storage (vSAN)
- Proactive monitoring of all of the hardware
- 24/7 support
We ordered the new Dell hosts through StarWind, and they preconfigured everything, then shipped them to us. Implementation was as simple as racking them, connecting the cables as directed, and turning everything on. Once this was done, I added the new hosts to my existing vCenter server/environment, migrated all of the VMs over to the new hosts, then decommissioned the old hosts. It was extremely painless, and while I didn't need much help with that part, StarWind was right there with me in case anything went wrong.
December 14, 2021
High Availability at an Affordable Price.
Starwind HCA is used as the primary [solution] for our virtualization environment on Hyper-V. We run a wide selection of [virtual] servers on this [hardware]. Virtualization brings a large number of [advantages] over physical servers, and Starwind's HCA solution provided a very [cost-effective] solution for creating a [highly] [available], clustered storage and [virtualization] solution. Starwind's support has been great in transitioning from our old [environment] of Cluster-In-A-Box solutions.
- Cost Effective
- Great Support
- Great Hyper-V Solution
- Easy To Work With
- Flexible Solution
- More documentation -- particularly in regards to Starwinds VSAN
- Management Console Could Use [Improvements].
- More detail into what data is reported to Starwind ongoing.
We did not use these services.
December 11, 2021
StarWind HCA is The Perfect Solution for SMB IT Departments
We were resolving longstanding issues with a traditional data center sprawl with separate compute and storage products. StarWind came in with an appliance that ran windows and provided a massive uplift in compute/storage on the same box!
- Great support.
- Lowers single point of failure.
- Competitive cost compare to other solutions.
- Documentation.
- Easier to understand adding cache or advanced options.
December 10, 2021
Affordable and Rock Solid
We use StarWind HCA as our main server infrastructure and all of our core VMs are hosted on this platform. We needed a product that could provide high availability, but not have a large hardware cost, because our infrastructure is relatively small. StarWind HCA allowed us to accomplish both things with their HCA by providing a highly available cluster with only two physical nodes.
- The VSAN software is extremely stable and easy to use.
- The hardware setup was extremely easy because most of it was pre-configured before it was shipped.
- The ability to use any hypervisor that you prefer is a great feature.
- The support level is fantastic.
- Honestly, they don't need to improve from my experience, the whole experience has been perfect.
Because of these services and their excellent support, I was able to switch our hypervisor to Hyper-V and save the company a lot of money on licensing costs. I didn't have very much experience with Hyper-V, so if StarWind hadn't offered such comprehensive services, I wouldn't have felt comfortable making the switch to Hyper-V.