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StarWind Virtual SAN

StarWind Virtual SAN

Overview

What is StarWind Virtual SAN?

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

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Recent Reviews

It's a Winner!! for us

10 out of 10
March 21, 2024
We have been using a StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) on two production locations with a Hyper-V Cluster for almost 7 years now in my current …
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Awards

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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Product Details

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

Screenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SANScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SAN

StarWind Virtual SAN Video

StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

StarWind Virtual SAN Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationNo

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(142)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using a StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) on two production locations with a Hyper-V Cluster for almost 7 years now in my current company but have 10 year of experience with the product. It has given us very good performance and we haven't had any issue with it in the past years. StarWind support is excellent, very fast and has very good knowledge of the StarWind and Hyper-V Cluster software. What we like best about it is that it's the only true two-node Hyper-V cluster solution that's available. On both production locations, we have a 2-node setup over 2 different server rooms. Our main goal was that we want to have all VM servers available on one Cluster host, in case of a disaster in one of our server rooms. Microsoft SSD (Storage Space Direct) always needs a 3rd witness (SMB or Cloud) but in ours a two-node solution this is not ideal. Direct connected fiber connections between the nodes makes everything fast and makes the chance of a Cluster split-brain fault less likely.
  • True two node Hyper-V cluster solution.
  • Performance.
  • StarWind support will install and configure the software and also update it for you.
  • Simplicity.
  • none yet
It's an easy and simple way to get a great HA Cluster environment without the need for expensive third-party appliances like physical SAN/Switches.
  • It easy to maintian with a small IT Team because of the great support of Starwind
  • It's fast and doesn't need a third witness voor you cluster to work
  • All VM can be running on one cluster host
3
Own IT staff, managing IT infrastructure for multiple locations of our company.
3
IT System/Network Administrators need all skills to support all kinds of IT software and IT Hardware of our company.
  • Storage for our Hyper-V Cluster.
  • Hardware is placed on multiple locations so fast sync is important.
  • Performance.
  • Support from vendor.
  • Keep it simple.
  • True Two-node HA cluster configuration (no 3rd witness needed).
  • none
We are already in transition to replace old hardware (with StarWind VSAN) for new hardware and of course StarWind VSAN.
Yes
HP StoreVirtual SAN
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
A 2-node HA cluster without 3rd party appliances.
We will not change the selection. We also checked Microsoft SDS for our new servers but StarWind matched more with our wishes.
StarWind Support did a great job.
  • Third-party professional services
Vendor (StarWind) did the installation with our own in-house IT staff.
No
  • none
  • No Training
By Remotly viewing how the install it and with the help of there documentation you have a good idea how everything works
basic stuuf you can do yourself and if you have question starwins supoort is great
no
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
no
Support from StarWind engineers is great and they have good knowledge of the products.
Yes, because it the best way to do when you have third-party software.
No
They always get in contact after a couple of days after they implement the software.
In the beginning it could be a little bit difficult to see what everything is but after a while it's much easier.
  • Installation is done with StarWind Support.
  • Check the sync status.
  • Iscsi target could be a little difficult if you never used it before
Yes, but I don't use it
Is is future proof for us.
Yes
Yes it was done by starwind support without any issues.
  • keep everything up-to-date
  • none
No
No
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
I have been using for sometime StarWind vSAN, and the experience is great, in terms of simplicity, the features it offers, and the little time it takes to set up everything and prepare the system. It includes every feature that traditional san offers, and also many more. I'm happy that I'm working with this product
  • It provide ROI of 100% over time
  • Cost saving in harware implementation are great, since you could by just storage and not entire servers.
  • Different range of vendors can be use in the same environment
1
I am the only that is using StarWind vSAN for the moment and I work as System Administrator. Right now the product is in our lab phase and still tasting the product. In the future other people from my team will use this product. In general we could be 10 people to use it.
4
People that will support StarWind Virtual SAN in our company will be dedicated to this product since it can be the only one that will support our datacenter. The team needs to have skills to use hypervisor, san usage, and some network components. These are the main knowledge needed by our team members.
  • To support vcenter infrastructure
  • To support our Veeam infrastructure
  • To support our Commvault infrastructure
  • We added storage on the go
  • We used our available infrastruture
  • No need to buy additional storage.
  • We could integrate it in our cloud infrastructure
  • We could use it in our newest datacenter
  • We could use it in our customers infrastuture also
It gives us the ability to grow our business without additional costs on hardware. We use only upfront costs and no other costs on the go. It gives us reliability, simplicity in setting up, and freedom to use hardware from different vendors.For all this reasons, we could renew in the future.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
This product is packed with many features, which in general it needs to buy additional hardware, additional license, and additional human resources to build up. With this product, we were able to use our in-house hardware, and it was very simple for the great team to create the perfect environment.
We could not be happier with this product, and we could say that we could change anything if we had to do it again.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
It was not needed to change anything in our management team, since the product was simple and the installation was performed by few people.
  • We did not face nay issue during implementation
Implementation was far more than easy.
  • No Training
The product was very easy to learn and training was not needed. I would advise other companies to try first if the team could implement it easily by themself.
The product we intuitive, and simple to use on daily basis, and no premium support was needed to support this product.
No
During the time of working with the product, was not necessary to call for exceptional support.
  • Adding of devices
  • Adding of Targes
  • Adding of VLT Devices
I have been using for sometime StarWind vSAN, and the experience is great, in terms of simplicity, the features it offers, and the little time it takes to set up everything and prepare the system. I'm happy that I'm working with this product and I will use it wherever I will get the chance to use for our customers.
Eren Cakmak | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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:
  • 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.
StarWind Virtual SAN is especially effective in a Hyperconverged environment where you want to have the best possible scalability while keeping an eye out on your budget. We utilize all hard drive slots for our cluster as redundant iSCSI storage and have the option to expand it anytime, for example, via storage enclosures.

Another factor in our cost-driven decision was the maximum utilization of hardware, such as network interface and performance-boosting caches, such as RAM and SSD. Those requirements were met as well.

The third and, in my opinion, most important factor was the support, which was fantastic. Even though we did not have a support license, a technician offered us help in correctly setting up StarWind Virtual SAN and checked our configuration. This positive experience is the reason we will be staying with StarWind Virtual SAN for a while.
  • StarWind Virtual SAN in combination with the Hyperconverged Environment has saved us approx. 50% in hardware costs, as well as additional maintenance and licensing costs
  • The resulting less complex environment helps in better managing the infrastructure and avoiding many working hours
  • StarWind Virtual SAN is a "set up and forget" solution
  • Up to date documentation as well as support from the StarWind technician via the official forum saved major costs for a setup via an on-premise technician
The best experience in using StarWind Virtual SAN so far was from the technical support we received. We had several questions regarding RAID setup and block size up to setting up L2 cache on a striped volume, which the StarWind technician was willing to help us with in the course of several weeks with regular checkups. We are extremely satisfied with the support that was provided, which is absolutely not the norm in the industrial-level software solution market.
55
Several departments, ranging from Accounting to Art Direction and file-heavy users, such as Film Department.
1
Setting up StarWind Virtual SAN should be done by a senior-grade IT Administrator when done in-house. While many would think that StarWind Virtual SAN is a simple software installation, it comes with prerequisites in hardware and network topology configuration. When those requirements are met, though, StarWind Virtual SAN is very reliable and easy to maintain.
  • High availability / redundancy
  • Fast syncronization between nodes
  • Performance, ranging from small to big files, additionally with cache support
  • No unexpected features, every feature we use was well researched beforehand to meet company needs
  • Expanded filesharing or a second highly available storage
This review is my baseline experience with StarWind Virtual SAN, should something significantly change in my experience over a longer period, then I will update this review but since the feature-set of StarWind Virtual SAN has been researched to meet our on-premise needs (and StarWind fulfills them), it should be relatively steady.
No
  • Price
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
Price: We wanted to maximize the hardware that we bought in an HC environment, and StarWind Virtual SAN successfully assisted us in that task.

Reputation: Using a well-renowned and widely used Software is an important base to create a long-term reliable infrastructure for critical workloads. StarWind Virtual SAN is well-known in the storage industry.

Experience: StarWind Virtual SAN was initially recommended to us by another IT Administrator who works for another company and was ultimately the reason we started researching StarWind Virtual SAN as a VSAN solution.
If I had to do it again, I would start with researching the documentation as well as having a wide and active community. The reason we were successful in setting up StarWind Virtual SAN in such a short time was thanks to the easily available and easy-to-understand manual from StarWind as well as the community/technician support we received.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
Since the implementation was mainly on the backend, it did not show any major impact on the workflow of the company itself, though changing from a simple NAS solution to a full fledged Active Directory in a cluster caused changes in our IT department. The changes were well received and trained by an external professional.
  • Provisioning of the storage during the initial setup took a very long time, and we had to redo it because it froze and we thought it crashed.
  • Setting up the infrastructure (redundant switch and connection) to have a solid base took time but paid out in the end.
Following the manual to the letter was extremely important and helpful. Having a solid base to work on also ensured that we did not have any issues down the road. Another big help, as mentioned before, was the support of the StarWind technician, who helped in the setup of the L2 storage.
  • No Training
I did not purchase premium support. The reason for that was that StarWind provides a good community as well as good documentation, which was my basis to start configuring StarWind Virtual SAN. Though if that would not work out, then Plan B was to purchase a premium support plan. Fortunately, that was not needed in our case, since the community was a great help.
No
Yes, we had 2 issues which needed to be cleared up; we posted them on the official StarWind forum:

1. What are the recommended configuration parameters in setting up the RAID array for StarWind Virtual SAN
2. How do we efficiently set up L1 and L2 cache without buying the StarWind Management Console

Our post was answered within 2 hours by a StarWind technician, which not only excellently addressed the issue but offered remote support from a certified StarWind technician the same week.
  • Putting device in maintenance mode
  • Software updates on a cluster
  • Editing storage options through the paid StarWind Management Console
  • Managing StarWind Virtual SAN on the free StarWind Management Console through PowerShell
Overall I like the usability of StarWind Virtual SAN because it is a "Set-up and forget" software. Once you correctly have set up the parameters, StarWind Virtual SAN pretty much rolls by itself. The biggest fact that one needs to keep in mind, though, is that the licensing for StarWind Management Console needs to be purchased separately, and while managing StarWind Virtual SAN through the paid Management Console is really easy and is well documented, going the free or - in other words - PowerShell Template route can be taxing if you are not that deep into the topic. You need to be especially careful with it if you switch from paid to free because using the templates incorrectly can cause issues.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are an SMB that can't be bothered paying tens of thousands of dollars just to get a proper HA storage for a two-node failover cluster. Therefore StarWind's vSAN was financially attractive from the start. The reviews you can find all over the web incentivised us to research this solution deeper (e.g. just check all the great posts vom Kooler on Stackoverflow), leading to us actually implementing it. We were coming from an S2D implementation which already gave us a ridiculous amount of headaches (bugs, performance stalls, "we know what's best for you" automatisms) IN ADDITION to being slow AND annoying to administrate/debug WHILE ALSO having the most annoying documentation ever to be created by mankind. Just the usual MS crap basically. Rush out some code and ship it and never fix anything (but break it every few weeks with patches)... The initial tests were easily implementable (without begging some sales folks for a POC, due to a free version being available) as well as proper documentation *that you actually LIKE to read due to it having been typed by a tech* (and that also isn't behind a pay/registration wall). As close to perfect as the documentation is, do read the blog posts e.g. the 2 node HA setup as well - some minute details were only found in those. No showstoppers, and not many things in general, just a few hints here and there. The installation itself is easy as pie, the config file is properly documented (you can do most things via GUI, just some things are set in the main config file). Do help yourself to the iSCSI Powershell commands (Windows defaults from MS) when implementing, way more attractive than clicking via GUI! (New-IscsiTargetPortal, Connect-IscsiTarget etc.) Some things must be done via GUI though since iSCSI has been implemented way back and "making scripting available" wasn't that widespread for developers back then. This being a Microsoft topic, not StarWind though...they would have had to make their very own iSCSI implementation otherwise. For testing, you should use a proper tool like https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/manage/diskspd-overview since "Windows copy from within the VM running on the test setup" can be flakey. Not as in "the results aren't valid real-world performance if you check with the Windows copy within a VM" but rather "non-scientific" since you can't extract much data from that process aside from size/time. Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a... let's call it "planned disaster"...feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline. Atm (20220609) this is still necessary since taking a node offline without properly activating maintenance mode on the vSAN would trigger a full sync of the vSAN nodes. This is fine and a good thing! since it ensures data integrity. But there is something in the making that would ensure integrity without a full sync after a node goes down...which, as stated above, one could "abuse" to patch (and boot = take down) the hypervisors during business hours. Other than that the thing is rock stable and chugging along without issues. Like I said we are an SMB so we "only" have around 50 VMs on our FO cluster, which is a medium load for SSDs. So if you plan to go more to the "max" side of performance use, do proper testing! Price-wise this is very attractive, the support is great (little that we needed due to the good docs) and I would expect you to reach very good performance just like we did. The next-best solution from my research back then - that you would actually want to use, so no S2D crap or anything - would have started at 7x or 8x the price. Started! So...since StarWind's solution has served us very well over the last two years already...you get who I would recommend.
  • Providing HA storage for a FO cluster
  • You can use any underlying disk setup you want.
  • Very attractive price
  • Good support
  • Techy documentation
  • Improved sync speed after node failure, e.g. with a journaling kind of system - supposedly coming this year though!
  • Other then that we are happy with everything. So nothing to add!
Providing a rock-stable HA for a small price for SMBs. You don't need to sell a kidney to VMware to get it!
  • ROI/TCO in comparison to VMware is ridiculously better since it is way cheaper, and we basically don't ever have to touch this again after the initial setup!
  • The usability for us admins is so much better than Microsoft's S2D crap...
The support does a final check with you if you choose to implement everything yourself (which we did so we could properly support ourselves day to day should something arise), which was our only required contact so far. Since that experience was proper.... a 9/10. Aside from that we only had small questions which we took to the forums, and timely responses, so...what more can you ask for. :)
I selected "Windows Server" since I couldn't find S2D in the list... S2D just sucks overall. Crap UI. Crap CLI. Megacrap documentation. VMware is very expensive...
4
IT admins
4
IT admins
  • HA storage
  • Unexpectedly just as easy to setup and maintain as one could assume by reading their docs. Rare that this is the case.
  • More nodes? :) who knows.
The product works properly and the price is very attractive. The performance is great too. So...why WOULDN'T we renew.
Yes
Microsoft S2D

Megacrap from Megacr...uhm Microsoft....
No really. Just avoid S2D.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
S2D performance is a mess. S2D licensing is a mess. StarWind's on the other hand...works... great GUI and docs... so... do test it :)
Aside from possible feature/price changes on the vendor side, I wouldn't change my process.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
  • Initial tests with free license
  • Set up one node
  • Set up second node
  • Activate HA
  • Migrate test VMs onto final setup
  • Once that's fine and dandy for a few days, migrate all prod VMs to the HA setup.
Change management was minimal
We are an SMB, I am my own Change Management.
  • None encountered (yes, actually!)
Read the docs I linked in the main review as well as StarWind's documentation. Then it will be easy as pie.
  • No Training
Vendor documentation is proper, so that's all you need.
Yep, because you can't be on your on with such a critical solution.
Yes
Yup, investigated some specialty with Microsoft's iSCSI implementation in Windows and received proper help.
Wasn't needed since the product works very well since implementation.
  • HA device setup
  • Performance tracking
  • Microsoft iSCSI related things, since CLI is sometimes nonexistant
No
Proper GUI, proper documentation.
October 08, 2021

Excellent Solution

Mirza R. Baig - CISO,PMP,CISM,CRISC,AWS,SFC,MS,CCNSP,CCA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is used in our organization for DR and HA for the VMWare Hosts. We use the VSAN feature in StarWind for the data availability across our networks.
  • High availability.
  • Performance.
  • Gain 100% uptime and full fault tolerance.
  • Cost-efficiency.
  • Witness server improvement required.
  • TTL value below 5ms very tough.
  • Linux learning.
Virtual SAN from StarWind ensures high uptime and fault tolerance starting with just two nodes. No expensive hardware required to set up the solution. Eliminates any need for physical shared storage by simply "mirroring" internal hard disks and flash between hypervisor servers.
  • Licensing is very much flexible.
  • No add on payments required in future.
  • Performance overrides the cost of the solution.
The premium support feature is the best of all as they call back within 15 minutes whenever we log a high-priority case with StarWind. Never looks like it is going to take a day or more for the resolution of any issues with the support team. They are experienced in the software and they give good suggestions to improve the performance of the servers as well.
The other products for VSAN in the market are very very expensive compared to StarWind VSAN solution, and when I used it on the trial for a month I decided to go with this solution as it is the best in performance and scalability.
3
IT and Security
2
Knowledge of SAN
  • HA
  • Data Scalability
  • Performance
  • DR
  • Failover
  • Migration
  • Tape Library
  • Backup
  • Redundancy
I will renew this product support as it is required for updates.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
Cost
I can test the evaluation again and proceed with the purchase.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
3 Phase
  • Network
  • Switching
  • IP Mapping
  • Firewall
  • Data
It's overall good.
  • no training
It's easy to learn on [your] own after using it for few times.
Complex
No
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
No
Yes, and it is the best support option from StarWind.
No
Last month when our data center was down due to a power issue, we switched to the secondary site with the StarWind.
  • Failover
  • Migration VM
  • Web Interface
  • Starwind Appliance
  • Linux commands
  • Networks in Starwind iSCSI
Good Solution
Data scalability is the best feature in StarWind.
Never went out of availability with StarWind.
It improves the overall performance.
  • VMware
  • HP
  • Veeam
It was done by [the] Starwind Support team.
  • No
  • No
  • No
Yes
  • File import/export
No
Easy
Not sure
They have explained the product details whenever required by our team.
I have called them a few times after sales and they supported my issue.
Price and support.
No
No
  • Not Upgraded
  • Performance Improvement
Yes
Free to Paid
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