StarWind Virtual SAN

StarWind has been such a huge win for our company. Using this software allowed us to create a two node cluster, without the need for any additional storage. We were able to create a hyperconverged cluster, with full failover capabilities, using only two servers. We now have highly available storage between the two, and VM's can live migrate freely between them. The real value comes with the Professional Support they offer. Within minutes of a node going offline, their Support reaches out to make sure everything is planned, and to offer assistance in getting the cluster back up and running. I cannot recommend StarWind enough. If you are looking for real 24/7 support, or if you have any limitations around storage, StarWind is an easy win for you and your company.

• Increased visibility on outages from StarWind Support
• Allows the company to avoid purchasing and upkeeping SAN equipment
• Gives us the ability to keep all virtual machines in highly available failover, with 24/7 uptime
• The ability to migrate virtual machines from one node to the second allows us to patch mission critical systems without downtime

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.

• risk reduction
• operational continuity

Veeam Data Platform, Zabbix, Netbox

We implemented StarWind Virtual SAN in our environment, initially with VMware and later transitioning to Proxmox. This setup enabled us to take full advantage of the servers’ NVMe storage while keeping it synchronized across just two nodes. After moving to Proxmox, we also benefited from the free version’s web-based management interface, which is especially useful for those who prefer not to handle volume creation through PowerShell.

• The free version works for us, since we don't have a need for more advanced features

Proxmox VE

We use StarWind Virtual SAN to create hyperconverged storage using our existing server hardware for our vSphere high availability environment. We had previously looked at so many hardware SAN and NAS solutions, but all were out of our budget as a small organization. Virtual SAN allowed us to keep our costs down, while still being able to setup the redundancy and availability we need for our on prem systems.

• Thousands of dollars of our budget that would have gone to hardware can now go to other upgrades.
• Before Virtual SAN, we were not able to afford true high availability.
• The complexity of setup was a challenge, but the learning curve was well worth it.

VMware vSAN

VMware vSphere, VMware ESXi, Veeam Data Platform

We use StarWind Virtual SAN to affordably repurpose old servers as a failover cluster without needing to purchase a separate SAN storage array. The free version has full functionality with no time limit but is harder to setup and manage due to being locked out of the GUI and having to rely on a collection of Powershell scripts as well as community support.

• Repurposed old servers as a Hyper-V failover cluster at no additional cost.