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StarWind HCA

StarWind HCA

Overview

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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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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  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi…

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  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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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.

StarWind HCA Video

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

StarWind HCA Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

Scale Computing Platform and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure are common alternatives for StarWind HCA.

Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of StarWind HCA are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings

(64)

Reviews

(1-25 of 60)
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA): A Budget-Friendly Hyperconverged Powerhouse for Education

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 20, 2024
JB
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) efficiently hosts our school district's production server environment, ensuring reliable performance and uptime for critical applications like student information systems, email, file sharing, and learning management systems, all within our limited budget and IT resources, making it an ideal solution for our needs. Basically, it covers our production environment.
  • High Performance
  • Reliability
  • Stellar Support
If you're looking for something cost-effective with reliable performance, you can't go wrong. Having previously used a top vendor in this space, we were looking for a hyperconverged solution that could deliver similar performance and reliability at a fraction of the cost. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) has exceeded our expectations on all fronts.

My impressions with the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Rating: 9 out of 10
May 04, 2023
TW
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
5 years of experience
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is used as shared storage in a 4 host cluster. The connection is via LAN (10Gb) and runs with good performance. In this way we can virtualize an area of IT and thus relieve the hardware costs. In addition, data security is increased, although there is a stable backup and restore concept.
  • turnkey hyperconverged appliance
  • uninterrupted application delivery and data security
In an environment where flexible storage usage is important, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is the optimal solution. With the right planning, the system can be expanded flexibly. Personally, I find the integration into VMware class successful. This makes it easy to scale shared storage, which is almost always scarce. Thanks to the node principle, the reliability is high and the hypervisor can be maintained or replaced during operation without restrictions.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's have been stellar for our nonprofit organization!

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 26, 2023
RB
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
I am the sole sysadmin at a small nonprofit. We replaced our old VMware hosts/SAN storage with a pair of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's and have since converted numerous physical servers to VM's and have been smoothly running about 50 VM's on our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's ever since then. The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's have been instrumental in helping us to simplify our server and network environment and provide the capacity, performance, and stability we need to virtualize more of our infrastructure.
  • Proactive monitoring of our StarWind HyperConverged Appliances - We've only had a couple minor issues, and all have been identified early.
  • Fantastic support - Support is knowledgeable and can fix things in a remote session or provide guidance.
  • Very reliable - We've never had VM downtime on our cluster in our almost 3 years.
  • Super easy onboarding process - Sales was knowledgeable and very helpful in helping us to pick the "right size" StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's.
As a nonprofit, we needed a virtualization platform that was reliable, cost effective, and simple to administer. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance checked all the boxes for us. We went with their refurbished models to lower the cost, and they've been rock solid. We were able to simplify our environment and the platform has been so reliable that I really don't have to think about it. This has been great for me as the sole sysadmin. There are a lot of pieces to manage, and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance have allowed me to focus less on the platform and more on the VM's themselves and the other pieces of our network environment. I think as long as you get the "right size" of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance that this platform could work well for many organizations.

High performance and redundancy, with 24/7 support, at a surprisingly reasonable cost.

Rating: 10 out of 10
December 01, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
The StarWind HCA solution is used for our VMWare virtualization environment in a two host high-availability cluster to support critical business operations running over 20 virtual machines/servers. I needed to have a setup that provides the highest level of performance, due to a few critical virtualized servers, as well as the highest level of redundancy in the situation where we will need to recover from any given incident affecting business operations.
  • Redundancy provided by the clustered hardware and synchronized storage vSAN
  • High level of performance due to the quality hardware components that comprise the system
  • 24/7 support team that is always available, professional, and very responsive
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is well suited for environments needing redundancy and high performance. I feel comfortable running virtualized critical servers on the StarWind setup due to the benefits provided by the two-node system. Cost is more along the low-end of pricing compared to other brand-name hyperconverged solutions, so the return on investment is high.

Efficiency, Performance And Piece Of Mind With Minimal Cost

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 26, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
We had a two physical host, two SAN VMware setup on aging hardware. The SAN's setup as a pool, therefore not redundant. We wanted to simplify this setup, improve performance, reduce the single point of failure, all while dealing with a SMB budget. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) allowed us to simply migrate our VM's over to a new set of HCA hardware. All setup and support is included and within an hour or two overall we were all setup.
  • Simplifies infrastructure
  • Knowledgeable support
  • High performance
  • Easy migration
It is well suited for an SMB. SMB's don't always have a large budget. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) gives you high performance hardware setup with minimal cost. SMB's also don't always have an IT team so the fact that it's all supported hardware and services is great. The fact that you can migrate easily is a plus.

Affordable and Reliable Hyper-V cluster

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 08, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
5 years of experience
We've been using a StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pair as our Hyper-V solution for 5 years now. Their support remotely configured the initial environment and it just works. Very easy to maintain. Because of its simplicity, I'd definitely recommend for a small to medium business with limited IT resources. It is definitely an affordable and reliable solution without the need for an expensive enterprise level SAN.
  • Low maintenace
  • Affordable
  • Reliable
It is a perfect solution for a small business with limited IT resources and budget. It will be a reliable solution that is easy to maintain.

Solid Product and Great Service!

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 07, 2022
DC
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
2 years of experience
Being a facility that hosts horse shows and restaurants we need servers in a HA solution to ensure that shows are not delayed and we didn't have any major downtime. The StarWind HCA vSAN solution gave us the product we needed to ensure we stay online. Our horse show software is necessary to run each of these shows and very necessary element for our companies success.
  • Coping date every second in real time
  • instant failover
  • the ability to upgrade software in background without affecting users during business hours
When upgrading servers and software it is so easy to to switch the active server over to another node. The cluster manager makes it easy to work on managing servers and upgrades. Our server is not overly complex so it meets our needs in every way. updates can be done during the day instead of waiting till the middle of the night to do upgrades.

Affordability and Redundancy made easy

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 05, 2022
CF
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is our primary server setup. The setup has allowed us to have a redundant server solution with lower hardware costs. The support the solution comes with means you always have an extra set of eyes watching your servers and will notify you when you have issues on the servers. The solution has allowed us to extend our server offerings due to an HDD\SSD hybrid configuration.
  • Reduced Hardware Costs
  • Support
  • Simplified set up
The server went down at a weekend, support was on hand to quickly get the server back up and running before the next working day. Availability of hardware when we purchased was slim, and we wished we had waited for another vendor but the servers we were provided weren't bad just better vendors out there we would have waited for.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance makes even me look good!

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 01, 2022
DE
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
2 years of experience
We use them as our main servers. Load balancing between the two nodes to offer faster performance to our end users and allow me to bring once outsourced applications back on-premise. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance replaced a very outdated hodge-podge of PC-based servers that were not keeping up with the demands of our growing business.
  • Redundancy
  • Load balancing
  • Technical Support
Well suited for a company like ours where growth has outpaced IT support.
A low entry point for the quality of hardware and services received.
A key point for us was plenty of room for growth. I didn't want us to get caught behind the growth curve again.

Top product and good price policy

Rating: 8 out of 10
August 31, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
We would like to have a cheaper solution compared to a storage system but with all the advantages and not the disadvantages. Here only StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) came into question. On average, we achieved a saving of 20% with comparable storage systems. Also the possibility to build a scalable virtual cluster that guarantees high availability. A high availability cluster was created for a data center. Active Directory Application Server DMS Pros: - cheap - Scalable - top support - the best of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) server and storage systems Cons: - Delivery time - Limited hardware packages
  • Good price policy
  • best support compared to other
  • the product itself
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) offers a solution that is comparable to a storage system because it has all the advantages and is less expensive. It is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses that need to be more cost-efficient and are therefore more limited in choice, but this does not mean that StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is not the right choice if a higher budget is available. The comparison should be made with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) versus other manufacturers.

StarWind Goes above and beyond.

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 30, 2022
JG
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
6 years of experience
Starwind HyperConverged Appliance is used in a two-node cluster running HyperV. HCA has allowed for easily entering the hyper-converged market, kept costs down, and added much resiliency to my on-premise network. It addresses my virtualization needs while being very user-friendly, budget friendly, and management friendly. It solves my highly available virtualization problem.
  • Virtual san.
  • Virtualization
  • Budget
HCA is well suited for the SMB space. Schools, non-profits, and budget-conscious orgs that want to virtualize their environment. HCA is hypervisor agnostic. My experience is with HyperV, and it works great! HCA is well suited for two or more hosts. The team works with you to spec what you need and is very responsive along the way.

Great Product, Amazing Service, Perfect Performance

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 29, 2022
MR
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
We utilize StarWind as a clustered Hyper-V platform in our organization. We upgraded from a stand alone Hyper-V server to StarWind in 2019 and its been absolutely amazing to use. Support monitors the devices 24/7 which takes additional time off my hands to work on my other responsibilities. I've even been surprised a few times when we had a Guest issue and Starwind support actually remoted in and resolved it with our assistance. Its been a great experience, I can't imagine going with any othet vendor from here on out.
  • Network Speed
  • Storage Management
  • Failover
I love my HCA for a 2 Hyper-V cluster, not sure how well it scales past 2. I know they have a solution for it, but it seems like it could be a bit cumbersome. Physical setup was easy, software required some hand holding with support, however they are very knowledgable and were able to get us setup without any major issues.

Before purchasing a vsan check out StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)!

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 25, 2022
NC
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
5 years of experience
I run StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) on 2 ESX clusters each with over 100vm's for the past 5 years. I came from a traditional 3-tier architecture and Starwind simplified everything! Gone are the expensive iscsi switches and configurations, crazy tough hardward compatibility, and months to get up and running. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) was able to single source the entire solution for me with hardware and software and remotely install it all. It was a no-brainer and support is awesome to work with. They know everything inside and out and the 24x7 monitoring keeps everything running great. I can't reccomend it enough and should always be considered when looking at other vsan type products
  • cost
  • ease of use
  • ongoing support
Small to mid environments that need quick and easy setup.

Very happy with the product and the support!

Rating: 9 out of 10
August 17, 2022
GG
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
We are a company with about 50 employees and StarWind HCA is the backbone of our on-prem IT infrastructure. It runs 4 Windows Server VMs in a high-availability cluster + 2 Domain Controllers. When I started at the company everything was run off a single bare-metal server install and downtime was common. Since migrating to StarWind HCA performance has improved and downtime has been reduced to almost 0.
  • A single off-the-shelf solution for a high-availability system (usually entails a mix of solutions)
  • Support is excellent. Responses are prompt and reps are knowledgeable.
  • Relatively low cost
StarWind HCA is ideal for small and medium sized businesses who want to run their servers on-site and desire high-availability on a budget. Their support handles the initial software setup/configuration and leave you with a hypervisor that is ready to be loaded with VMs and utilized. Once setup it is easy to manage and reliable, and if you do encounter issues support is responsive and effective. Probably not the ideal solution for large enterprises or fast-growing companies since I imagine it's more difficult to scale than some other solutions - but if you have a somewhat consistent performance/storage needs, want the benefits of a HA cluster, and want to host things yourself, it is an excellent solution.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) - It just works

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 12, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
4 years of experience
We needed a solution to our ever-growing server racks. We previously had a small implementation of ESXi on a single host and many physical servers. We were looking for a solution that would help consolidate all of the physical servers and allow us to scale easily in the future.
  • Scalability
  • Service and Support
  • Reliability
  • 24/7 monitoring
I would highly recommend StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) for small to medium-sized businesses. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) can easily be scaled with the additional hosts to support businesses small and large. We currently have two hosts and can easily add more hosts in the future if need be. It is also a very budget-friendly solution.

Set It And Forget It - A Great Experience

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 12, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
Our two node Starwind HCA cluster hosts our internal environment as well as environments for some of our MSP clients. The system has proven itself time and time again to be much more reliable than our original failover cluster, leading to less troubleshooting and downtime
  • Stable
  • Easy to manage
  • Great support
Starwind HCA is a great option for anyone who wants a simple, stable, ready to go solution out of the box. The solution is well suited for a modest internal environment all the way up to a full MSP hosting dozens of client environments.

CEO

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 09, 2022
StarWind Virtual SAN is an amazing product. It replaced HP Lefthand for us. This has saved us thousands of dollars in maintenance costs vs HP lefthand. The product is running perfectly. The performance is amazing. Recommend this over HP Lefthand. Very well-built product. We had an issue in the setup of the config of the device, when calling support they were very prompt in their emails. They helped us through the entire problem. The support staff is very friendly. Support contracts are priced at a very reasonable rate.
  • Support
  • Ease of setup
  • Perfomance is great

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA): What's in the BOX?

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 25, 2022
DR
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
I recently did a hardware refresh and I moved from StarWind VSAN (I have reviewed previously) to StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). Since this was during a hardware refresh it was obviously to replace old hardware. I chose StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) because of the good performance and support I had gotten when running StarWind VSAN on our own hardware. I went from a three-node cluster running VMware Horizon View to a two-node cluster with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). One of the key upgrades with the HCA was moving to all SSD.
  • It is extremely easy to set up, it comes with most options pre-configured for you. But the support group will walk through your entire setup and migration.
  • It is monitored by StarWind 24x7. Instead of issues being reactive with the monitoring I'm hoping things will be more proactive.
  • The performance has been outstanding. I think disk was our main limiting factor with our hold hardware.
Our use case is in a VMware Horizon View cluster. It works extremely well. The SSD gives outstanding performance and I suspect that the "appliance" does a better job of managing the VSAN than the application running on top of Windows did. We have not had a single hiccup with the changeover. It was so easy to implement and easy to migrate VM's over to it. It was simple. I really can't speak to other scenarios. But if the performance here was an indicator - then it should be good as general storage or another virtualization platform.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) one of the best solutions

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 13, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
1 year of experience
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
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is well suited in scenarios where you required a fully replicated, fast storage solution for cluster hypervisor host platforms whilst being directly attached without the need for any network-attached storage or additional hardware, allowing for seamless Virtual Machine migrations along with additional data security and lower power consumption to boot.

StarWind Managed Virtualized Server with Great Customer Support

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 13, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
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
It is well suited for Virtualized Environment The central management, redundancy and 24x7 alert system via managed service provider is a key component that we were looking for. The HyperV Servers comes Preconfigured and the product sales specialist recommends Hardware specs as needed for your environment. In case of updates for the firmware and StarWind Softwares the Starwind support contacts us since it is managed service and remotely does the upgrade which is great.

Absolutely the correct decision

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 05, 2022
RP
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
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
StarWind provides fantastic replication across the nodes. We haven't had any real world failures but in simulated tests, data is always replicated and compute is switched almost immediately.

It also allows us to quickly and confidently perform maintenance on the VMWare environment as we know we can take down a node and no one even notice in the production environment.

Excellent product, even better support

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 05, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
4 years of experience
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.
I can only speak to our own use. We run a Hyper-V failover cluster on 2 StarWind nodes (Dell R730dx) and I never have any issues with the StarWind software or hardware. If there is ever an issue it tends to be with the VM, and StarWind proactive monitoring picks up on this 24/7 before I know about it, the support is excellent.

Great Product and Support!

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 05, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
5 years of experience
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
Really, it can be suited for any environment, not just large enterprises. Our office is less than 50 users so it can really scale from Small business environments to Large environments I'm sure they are able to offer a solution for anything in between.

Reliability and simplicity is good!

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 05, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
5 years of experience
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.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is well suited for SMB companies that need a simple, reliable, and fully redundant solution. Small IT teams can't afford to spend a large portion of their day managing a complex system. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance helps with this problem with its vSAN system. Pricing for StarWind is very competitive as well. We got several other quotes and StarWind came in much lower. We've had zero issues with downtime in 5 years, all smooth.

StarWind HCAs Help Me Sleep at Night

Rating: 10 out of 10
April 25, 2022
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
3 years of experience
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.
I had to upgrade the StarWind SAN software and at the same time, upgrade the firmware of the hardware of the virtual host and I was able to move all our VMs over to the other host and perform the upgrades on the one host all while keeping all the VMs up and running during the upgrades. In the past, I would have to shutdown all the VMs to upgrade the firmware of the storage server and then power back on the VMs after the upgrade on the storage server.
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