StarWind Virtual SAN - Easy, Resilient, and Cost Effective
We have StarWind Virtual SAN deployed on a 2-node cluster to achieve the need for shared storage for our virtualization project. …
Overview
What is StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.
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Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) is presented by the vendor as a lightweight software-defined storage (SDS) for Enterprise ROBO, SMB & Edge that removes the need for physical storage. The solution is compatible with any hypervisor of choice, and is hardware-agnostic. The vendor invites users to integrate it into an existing infrastructure with minimum requirements, and enjoy constant uptime in a true 2-node scenario.
StarWind VSAN has no strict hardware compatibility lists (HCLs) and is licensed per node. A license unlocks access to all features upon purchase and differs only by capacity volume. The vendors promises customers get the chance to reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) while receiving 99.9999% uptime. StarWind also helps with configuration, deployment, and migration.
StarWind Virtual SAN:
- provides 90% of raw performance
- squeezes 100% IOPS out of existing hardware
- works on the iSCSI layer
- “speaks” most uplink protocols, including NVMe-oF
- works on top of Hardware or Software RAID (MDADM, ZFS)
- does 2- or 3-way synchronous replication, and more.
The true 2-node solution is enabled through HeartBeat (no witness required). Thanks to “mirroring” of internal disks and flash between hypervisor servers, customers receive fault-tolerant storage. It’s scalable up and out, allowing users to introduce infrastructure changes without downtime or additional licensing costs.
StarWind Virtual SAN makes enterprise-level virtual shared storage accessible.
StarWind Virtual SAN Screenshots
StarWind Virtual SAN Video
StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)
StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors
- VMware vSAN
- StorMagic SvSAN
- Microsoft S2D
StarWind Virtual SAN Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | No |
StarWind Virtual SAN Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
StarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.
VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN are common alternatives for StarWind Virtual SAN.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of StarWind Virtual SAN are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(143)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 66)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 27, 2024
Needed a SAN - StarWind fit the bill
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We wanted to create a diverse data centre in 2 parts of the building where data is stored in both data centres. We initially looked at replicated Sans but this became quite expensive. We then looked at virtual SAN with Microsoft Storage spaces but then saw the StarWind offering with Pro support. We did a trial of the VSAN product on 2 failover cluster hosts and the solution was faultless.
- Replication of data between 2 server rooms
- 24/7 Support
- Remote help when needed.
- No real improvement required.
January 31, 2024
The right sized storage solution for our business
We deployed StarWind Virtual SAN in a 2-node configuration along with a brand new deployment of two HA VMWaRe vSphere nodes. We were looking for a solution that would work with less than 3 nodes and not further increase our dependance on VMWare licensing while retaining good support and performance.
- High availability
- Storage Performance
- Direct hardware passthrough
- NMVe storage
- Virtual appliance password security
- Taking full advantage of NVMe storage performance
January 19, 2024
StarWind Virtual SAN, reliable and easy to use.
StarWind Virtual SAN was very easy to install with help from support which was offered. Also the updating along the installing was very nice to get. The use is very easy and it's a very simple and effective GUI. I would definitely recommend it. Although we just use it in a 2-node setup. We wanted a 3 node at first but StarWind Virtual SAN support advised that a 2 node would do as well. So they are giving the best help instead of making money. Definitely very easy to use software and very good support. We altready had some unexpected reboots from omnde of the nodes and it was good we had Starwind VSAN because the other node picked up the jobs flawlessly.
- Easy to use GUI
- Great support
- Active community
- Fast connectivity
- Sometimes connections are lost between the nodes
- Technical knowledge essential
- Updating must be done meticulously
November 30, 2023
StarWind Virtual SAN Review
we and our IT consultnat were looking for physical tape backups to protect against DR situations but were concerned about the fact that it would require the manual intervention of changing the tapes and sending them offsite as we could easily forget. But then our consultant came across StarWind Virtual SAN, which is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes. The whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc.
- we can leverage our existing backup software without replacing it
- we can create multiple VTL libraries that allows simultaneous upload to cloud
- Much cheaper than physical tape library and has similar functionality
- You cannot see how long it takes for the cloud replication will take to complete
- you cannot search for tapes so you manually have to search when troubleshooting
- you cannot sort by date/time so it can easily get confusing on finding specific tapes
November 14, 2023
StarWind Virtual SAN user review
n our 3-node Hyper-V Clustering Environment with a 2-node standby, three nodes are online, and two are on standby. Windows Server 2019 is our chosen operating system for the Virtual Host environment. StarWind Virtual SAN serves as our storage solution, utilizing three nodes to virtualize the cluster volume, ensuring optimal performance, high availability, and reliability. The strategic use of standby nodes minimizes potential downtimes, aligning with industry best practices and enhancing our IT infrastructure's efficiency and adaptability to diverse workloads
- it's minimal the hardware requirement
- it's can be scale to unlimited node
- low maintenance
- backup and restore the configuration
- sync pause for node restart
- zero-configuration when adding node
We needed highly available servers to run a food production line. Previously their controller ran on a Windows 10 workstation, and was prone to crashing. With StarWind we were able to deploy a simple 2 node HA cluster to easily deploy the controller and provide safety nets in case one server is to go down in the cluster. With Hyper-V, if one server goes down the other can easily restart it on the secondary node.
- Cost effective software SAN
- Real time data replication
- Ease of deployment and management
- Better documentation about recommended hardware
- Better deployment instructions and guides
- Better documentation about update procedures in a 2 node cluster
The MSP that I work for brought on a client who realized they needed help with IT after the acquisition of another company. In the space of a few weeks, that client nearly doubled in size, and the aged tech in use at each location previously wasn't going to cut it. While we originally quoted a traditional SAN deployment for the client, they were concerned about having a single storage unit with two very distant servers. They weren't interested in buying two SANs so that each location could host one. StarWind Virtual SAN allowed us to keep their data synced between two sites without the extra hardware expenditure. This also meant we had rolled out an off-site disaster recovery location since it's unlikely both units would be affected by a disaster simultaneously.
- Cost-effective
- Easy to deploy
- Good support
- Documentation could be more succinct
- Support is sometimes difficult to understand verbally
We deployed a pair of Dell hypervisor servers (1U each) and they share the internal storage between each other using StarWind Virtual SAN, eliminating the need for a separate, physical SAN. We have had great success Live Migrating VMs when needed, adding VMs, removing VMs, and backing up and restoring VMs. Their support was very helpful and I highly recommend getting their support.
- 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.
- there is a "command center" VM recommended for monitoring and management which doesn't seem to provide as much value as hoped.
- We could not install SentinelOne EDR/XDR onto the hypervisor hosts due to the logic behind the vSAN storage.
- We realized we can not use Azure File Sync Share with Guest VMs on these hypervisors.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We deploy StarWind Virtual SAN to create a shared storage pool from the existing hardware resources. We install StarWind Virtual SAN software on the ESXi hosts and configure them to use local storage devices, such as SSDs and HDDs, to create a highly available storage cluster. By doing so, we achieve several benefits. First, we can improve the performance of virtualized environment by leveraging the local storage devices. Second, we reduce the costs associated with upgrading existing SAN, as StarWind Virtual SAN allows to use existing hardware resources. Third, we improve the scalability of storage environment by adding additional hosts and storage devices as needed.
- High Availability: StarWind Virtual SAN is designed to provide high availability for mission-critical workloads
- Performance Optimization: StarWind Virtual SAN optimizes storage performance by using a variety of techniques, such as write-back caching, automated tiering, and deduplication
- Easy Scalability: StarWind Virtual SAN allows organizations to scale their storage infrastructure easily and cost-effectively
- Flexible Deployment: StarWind Virtual SAN can be deployed in a variety of configurations, including hyper-converged, converged, and storage-only
- Cost-Effective: StarWind Virtual SAN is a cost-effective solution for storage virtualization
- 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
March 08, 2023
StarWind's Virtual SAN is a great budget friendly SAN
We didn't have a SAN solution before StarWind which meant all of our servers were bare-metal. By implementing StarWind's Virtual SAN solution we were able to transform our bare-metal environment into a hybrid of bare-metal and virtual servers. By utilizing virtual servers we are able to scale and test our applications easier and quicker than by using bare-metal servers. This saved us in cost by not needing to order expensive parts whenever we needed a simple server. Now we can just spin up a VM.
- Easy to setup
- Easy to add new disks
- Great support
- Windows-based NFS is not great
- Full sync on write-back cache disks
- no web GUI for management software
February 14, 2023
A reliable, scalable, and cost-effective storage solution for SMBs
StarWind Virtual SAN is a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective storage solution for virtualized environments, especially for small businesses (SMBs). We have a small VMware-based virtual environment where we use StarWind Virtual SAN as a storage solution to store data and critical applications. StarWind Virtual SAN offers real-time synchronization and load-balancing capabilities in a cluster environment and makes our infrastructure high availabe in case of any disaster.
- Cost Savings: StarWind Virtual SAN can significantly reduce storage costs compared to traditional storage arrays, as it eliminates the need for expensive hardware and allows you to take advantage of existing hardware resources.
- Performance Optimization: StarWind Virtual SAN is designed to optimize storage performance by using advanced caching algorithms and other performance-enhancing technologies.
- Scalability: StarWind Virtual SAN can be easily scaled as your storage needs grow, allowing you to add capacity and performance as needed.
- Easy Management: StarWind Virtual SAN features a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage and monitor your storage environment, reducing the need for specialized expertise.
- Integration with Other Platforms: Some users have reported difficulty in integrating StarWind Virtual SAN with other platforms, such as cloud environments or other storage arrays, making it less flexible for some use cases.
- Lack of Advanced Features: Some users have reported that StarWind Virtual SAN lacks some advanced features, such as the ability to perform in-depth storage analysis and reporting, or the ability to manage storage tiering and data migration.
- User-Friendliness: While StarWind Virtual SAN features a user-friendly interface, some users have reported that certain features are still hard to use, especially for those without a background in storage technology.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I implemented StarWind Virtual SAN at the Cancer hospital I have worked at in Sydney for 9 years. We did a lift and shift from on-premises and required windows clustering and HA for some of our workloads. This product has been the core to that solution for three years and the product, services and support is outstanding.
- Virtual SAN in AWS between availability zones
- Real time data synchronisation between AZs
- Provide redundant HA within clusters
- There is not much missing but if I had a wish list, I would have stronger remote management capabilities
January 21, 2023
StarWind Virtual SAN - reliable and easy to use software
StarWind Virtual SAN is used in my organization in virtualisation enviroment specifically for synchronous replication of high-availability fileservers. This software is a part of our disaster recovery strategy, it ensures real-time synchronization and load balancing of data between two or three cluster nodes that work in a fully active-active mode, so our virtual machines are still available, even there is any failure on one of the storage node.
- reliable software
- easy to set up thanks to detailed technical documentation
- prompt and professional technical support
- regarding the functions we are using there is nothing
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
My primary use case was for a SOHO deploy. We were thinking for the Branch offices to have a software-defined storage, for needs, performance, and costs, and StarWind Vsan was incredibly cost-effective with the best feature ever, not witness needed for small deploys, so the money we spent in licenses and deploy was less than purchasing another host, licenses for it, and also a storage solution to fix the issue, or rely on remote witnesses over the internet, Mpls or any other kind of communications, not fully local and independent.
- SYNC
- easy to deploy
- easy to manage
- better video resources
- marketing, it does it sounds around the it world
December 03, 2022
Starwind Virtual SAN: Budget friendly full scale SAN
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We chose starwind as a budget friendly solution to expand our existing storage infrastructure. We quickly learned how great starwind is, not only the product itself but support is phenomenal. The product was chosen as our underlying storage solution for our Hyper-V cluster. This product allowed us to repurpose existing hardware to create a full scale SAN.
- high scalability - can add more than two storage nodes
- low cost solution
- excellent support, agents are always able to answer any questions via phone, e-mail or remote support session.
- I'd like to see a web based GUI for management of the application.
- Setup for additional storage (how to expand storage) isn't quite straightforward.
- More instructional videos from the vendor would be nice.
December 02, 2022
Flexible product, easy to implement and easy to use.
We are using StarWind vSAN in our Lab environment to test the full features of the product before using it in production. It is supporting our VMware vCenter system and also our Commvault and Veeam backup solutions. We use it with iscsi and smb protocols to feed our infrastructure in our Lab.
- Flexible in storage increase
- Ability to use it on the Cloud solution
- Alibity to use it with most Hypervisors
- Free versions needs to offer full feature and GUI support
- Documentations need some improvements
- No other improvements I'm thinking of
November 30, 2022
StarWind Virtual SAN - SAN on a budget!
I learned about StarWind Virtual SAN while searching for a solution to use at my home lab, and as I tested the product and got to know better how it works, I was amazed and use it until this day at my home lab. A few years back at work, I found myself a need to address a lack of HA for a few VMs at our remote sites, StarWind Virtual SAN to the rescue! Since I had some experience with it, I've deployed on similar hardware, run-it for a few months of testing (as it was a different purpose from my home lab), and after extensive testing, it was ready to deploy. I've never had any problems and 0 downtime for years. One of my main concerns was network usage for replication since at work is way more intensive. Testing showed that it did not matter, and I never had any issues with that, either. Overall it is a great solution, the support team is amazing and it does deserve this recommendation.
- Easy and simple to manage, the powershell scripts are handy
- Sync between nodes are a breeze on the network
- Stability is fantastic
- Support staff are very knowledgeable
- Documentation can be better ( is not bad, is just that has room to improve )
- Security is always an area to improve, even if I have never had any problem with this
- Pricing can always be better, too, there is a free option, but maybe it will get more customers if the price is better
November 30, 2022
Incredible Virtual SAN
We bought StarWind Virtual SAN as a replacement for our unsupported NetApp SAN. Old, using HDD, out of warranty, and poor user interface, we opted to upgrade to a newer system. We have two on-site server rooms, which we fitted with storage servers holding 15TB of SSD storage respectively, which we installed StarWind Virtual SAN software into. With the help of the fantastic support from the StarWind team, we connected 5 compute servers from our previous SAN setup, running Hyper-V, and everything worked seamlessly. All our data is stored on the Storage nodes and replicated almost instantly.
When testing a power outage in one of our server rooms, we hardly noticed a difference in performance, and more importantly, the failing over of the VMs on the compute server’s downtime was minimal.
When testing a power outage in one of our server rooms, we hardly noticed a difference in performance, and more importantly, the failing over of the VMs on the compute server’s downtime was minimal.
- Amazing Technical Support
- Flawless replication
- Perfect failover capabilities
- Simplify management
- Might be hard to set up without support
We switched from a standalone Windows Server to a more reliable and redundant cluster. The challenge we had was to find a server solution that is scalable but cost-effective at the same time, so we decided to implement a Hyperconverged Solution.
Challenges:
The scope is to synchronize a 70TB storage with an additional SSD partition, which runs several critical VM instances, such as HA-Databases, Network Authentication, and ADFS. Additionally, we run a Fileserver on Hyper-V. Considering all those requirements, the storage needs to be reliably fast on broadband of workloads (small to big files)
Challenges:
- Reliable sync in a 2-node cluster, e.g., avoid split brain
- Low latency and lightweight solution for storage
- Support as well as community size and up-to-date documentation
The scope is to synchronize a 70TB storage with an additional SSD partition, which runs several critical VM instances, such as HA-Databases, Network Authentication, and ADFS. Additionally, we run a Fileserver on Hyper-V. Considering all those requirements, the storage needs to be reliably fast on broadband of workloads (small to big files)
- StarWind Virtual SAN helps in reliably synchronizing in a 2-node cluster via a reliable heartbeat (384 days uptime so far)
- Ample boost is provided through L1 (RAM) and L2 (SSD) Cache Partition with industry leading bandwidth
- Fantastic Forum Support and even better mail support, as well as up-to-date documentation helped us in setting up StarWind Virtual SAN within 48 hours and bringing it online within 3 days after setup and initial full syncronization
- Avoiding a full sync through its fast sync technology: When running maintenance on the cluster, StarWind Virtual SAN reliably synchronizes data in the background when e.g. restarting the service
- Full utilization of our bandwidth: We use 2x 25GBit for Sync Interface and 2x 10GBit for end user interface and reach a file transfer performance of over 750MB/s through a Windows Fileserver VM
- While StarWinds Documentation is well maintained and up to date, we wished that it was clearer in providing a clearer guideline in setting StarWind Virtual SAN up with a free license of the Management Console, resulting in a setup with the provided PowerShell templates.
November 29, 2022
Amazing Alternative to VMWare vSAN, for much Cheaper!
Virtual SAN is used to integrated Storage between multiple VMware ESXi hosts which allows us to be able to migrate servers, scale backups, and maintain server uptime. I no longer have to migrate virtual hard drive files if I just need to migrate a VM. This has been an amazing product and I use it every day.
- GUI is AMAZING!
- very good documentation
- Customer service is great!
- Licensing was a little tricky when switching from the Free version to the paid version, but nothing customer service was not able to help with
- No other issues that I have found honestly!
November 18, 2022
Excellent product, even the free version!
We needed to put in place some testing for ESXi DR, Migrations and upgrades. To do this, we wanted to put in place an environment which was close to the live environment, but whilst keeping costs right down. StarWind's vSAN application allowed us to do just that by letting us take advantage of a fairly large host server in terms of compute and storage and use that for nested hosts along with a VM running the vSAN application to replicate a real-world environment.
- Full functionality whilst always being free.
- Although you cannot control the free version through the UI, you can still monitor it and confirm it's set up correctly.
- They provide the scripts required to set up the product, even for free.
- It would be nice to have at least some UI functionality in the free edition, but understand why not
- A web interface would be nice, to reduce the need for people to have to log in to servers.
November 11, 2022
StarWind Virtual SAN with GEO Failover Cluster
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind Virtual SAN is our non-stop working program, that runs our disks on our two servers that are in separate locations. In that way, we created Geo Failover Cluster. We faced problems with the Raid Controller that was unable to add current disks to Cluster, with help of StarWind Virtual SAN we created a solution that now we have our programs running non-stop in case of an outage. We have been searching for a Virtual SAN for a long time. When we found StarWind Virtual SAN our problems were fixed, and easy PowerShell scripts were ready to edit and run for everyone. We are using it for GEO Failover Cluster and now have been using it for a few months with no problem. I highly recommend it!
- Easy one-click PowerShell script ready to run
- Works great with Failover Cluster
- Great support team
- More PowerShell scripts
November 08, 2022
Easy to manage and deploy, cost effective full of features vSAN.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
This product offers cheap yet the best features for any small and medium enterprise. We wanted to build a test lab to replicate certain issues we were facing in a production environment. Going with hardware-based storage was not a possible solution as we were already in the budget-cutting phase. I chose this VSAN product where we didn't have to buy any additional hardware, yet it fulfilled our purpose. Management was so happy with it that we decided to retain this lab forever for testing we might need to do in the future as well.
- Easy to deploy
- Easy to manage
- User-friendly interface
- Deploying new servers is easy
- A remote console will be a game changer for StarWind Virtual SAN
November 08, 2022
StarWind Virtual SAN a good product for making high quality smaller systems more affordable. Particularly when you get an HCA
I was approached by a client in the Pharmaceutical Industry to provide a virtualization solution for one of the areas in their facility. This is a smaller section of the facility, and cost-efficiency and space-saving were considered to be at a premium. The StarWind Virtual SAN solution, which I proposed and implemented in the form of a StarWind HCA device, was able to meet all of their needs while being much more cost-effective than a traditional setup of 3 virtual machines and a stand-alone SAN with associated switches.
- Saves on space
- Provides a more economical solution for smaller application
- Excellent Customer Support
- Can be complicated to set up
- More Involved Startup/Shutdown Procedure
- A virtual appliance that assisted in configuration would be a nice addition
November 07, 2022
StarWind Virtual SAN review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am currently running servers with hosted applications for my business, and I had a problem having them online all the time because of server maintenance and updates that's why I started using a StarWind Virtual SAN to avoid buying a Hardware SAN and use my existing servers only. The software improved my productivity by allowing me to have a virtualisation high availability and fault tolerance. I am planning to invest in NVME disks which the software provides perfect integration with to speed up the systems and to get cache capabilities.
- Ease of management: The management was very easy, and I was able to find all that I needed in the software dashboard
- ISCSI: The connection using software made it easy to me to connect my servers without an extra investment in hardware SAN
- For now I see all application features fits my requirements