StarWind Virtual SAN

Score9.5 out of 10

167 Reviews and Ratings

What is StarWind Virtual SAN?

StarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.

Categories & Use Cases

Software-Defined Storage (SDS)

Media

Screenshot of StarWind Management Console

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Screenshot of StarWind Management Console

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

“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”
— IT Manager, Wyatt Early Harris WHeeler LLP

Pros

Cost-effective alternative to traditional SAN hardware
Enables high availability and failover for virtual machines
Straightforward deployment and management

Cons

Complexity in initial setup and configuration, especially CLI for LUNs
Requires manual intervention and full data synchronization after non-graceful shutdowns
Scalability limitations, particularly regarding 3-node clusters

Dan Vrabie

VP, Finance and IT in Finance and Accounting at NextSource Materials (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using on-prem servers for identity management, Enterprise Resource Planning, and file storage due to our remote location in Madagascar. StarWind provides us with a cost-effective, robust storage infrastructure solution by using existing hardware and software, avoiding the purchase of dedicated hardware solutions, which would be much more difficult to deploy and maintain and more expensive.

Pros

StarWind simplifies the storage management for on-prem servers.
StarWind is very cost-effective and easy to maintain, compared with equivalent software and hardware solutions.
StarWind provides high availability and reliability.

Cons

StarWind is difficult to deploy without their dedicated support. Luckily, this support is very good.
StarWind has certain technical limitations as it shares resources with our existing servers.

Return on Investment

Positive cost effectiveness.
Positive availability and reliability.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager

Larry Bates

IT Administrator in Information Technology at Grand + Benedicts (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize StarWind's VSAN to enable a Hyper-V cluster with 2 physical servers with direct-attached storage. This product allowed us to use existing infrastructure to get full-featured SAN capabilities without the expense of purchasing a dedicated SAN hardware appliance. The product is easy to install and configure, and is backed by a very good support team.

Pros

Shared storage access from direct attached storage.
Ease of setup and configuration.
Monitoring and Maintenance is straightforward.

Cons

Scalability is limited to 3 node clusters.
Logging is tied to local server logs.
Would be nice if the software remembered all cluster nodes when starting up.

Return on Investment

Saved us the expense of having to purchase a dedicated SAN.
No need to purchase fiber network.
ROI is great as we were up and running quickly with Hyper-V.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

Other Software Used

Azure Files, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Microsoft 365

James Harris

IT Infrastructure Manager in Information Technology at ALL.SPACE (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Starwind VSAN to back our Windows Failover Cluster running Hyper-V. The solution allows us to leverage internal storage whilst also providing redundancy in the environment. We were driven to consider VSAN solutions due to both cost and physical constraints. This solution replaces standalone Hyper-V boxes with poor RPO/RTO.

Pros

Easy to manage.
Competitive cost.
Allows us to consolidate hardware.

Cons

Documentation can be confusing.
A less manual approach to iSCSI config would be useful.
More granular native alerting.

Return on Investment

Increased uptime.
Reduced cost.
Reduced time spent on administration.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Dell PowerVault NX Series

Vincent FREMY

RSI in Engineering at Avize Viti Campus (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In order to replace our aging EMC storage array, our structure has implemented a StarWind Virtual SAN virtual HA storage.
Managing storage and performance via the dashboard makes it easy for storage administrators.
The reliability of the Linux OS makes this solution very stable and very efficient in its response times.Administration is very simplified and makes this task easier for administrators.
The "StarWind Management Console" is very affordable by all and allows an even easier management than the web version.

Pros

Adding a node is very simple
Data reconstruction between nodes is very efficient
Storage response times are very fast

Cons

A mobile app for alerts

Return on Investment

The response times for our storage are increased
The serenity due to reliability made the teams responsible for storage peaceful.
Our VMWare virtual machines are experiencing increased response times.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft 365

Other Software Used

Microsoft Azure

Dylan Friesen

Systems Administrator in Information Technology at DeVry Greenhouses (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use StarWind Virtual SAN in my clustered Hyper-V infrastructure with paired cluster nodes and replicated VM storage. The VMs are replicated between clusters and rebuilt by re-enabling replication from one cluster to the other. Essentially, StarWind Virtual SAN is the storage/HA layer that keeps VM storage available across cluster nodes and supports failover and recovery.

Pros

It supports clean, repeatable VM replication between cluster environments
It provides clustered storage that fits real Hyper-V operations, not just a theoretical HA design
It works especially well in my paired cluster-node design
fits neatly into my full VM lifecycle: provisioning, protection, backup, and monitoring

Cons

Complicated to setup even with documentation.
Requires StarWind Virtual SAN support to confidently deploy
Disks can be stuck synchronizing for days if you are not careful.

Return on Investment

risk reduction
operational continuity

Usability

Other Software Used

Veeam Data Platform, Zabbix, Netbox

StorMagic SvSAN

VMware vSAN

StarWind Virtual SAN

What is StarWind Virtual SAN?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services