Cost effective shared storage for customers with an investment in direct attached storage
August 03, 2021
Cost effective shared storage for customers with an investment in direct attached storage
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with StarWind Virtual SAN
Two years ago we purchased the VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and created a server virtualisation platform with direct attached storage. We found this to be a cost-effective solution that met many of our needs at the time. We started placing more of our workloads on this platform and reached a point where features such as vMotion and High Availability were becoming mandatory. We knew that the vMotion and High Availability features could be enabled with a simple license change to the VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Kit. However, for these features to work we needed to implement shared storage.
StarWind Virtual SAN was the missing piece that allowed us to implement this shared storage; we didn't have to purchase any new hardware.
We use this virtualisation infrastructure for all our on-premises workloads except for a couple of legacy systems and file sharing. We operate the solution 24x7 and have not had any operational issues.
StarWind Virtual SAN was the missing piece that allowed us to implement this shared storage; we didn't have to purchase any new hardware.
We use this virtualisation infrastructure for all our on-premises workloads except for a couple of legacy systems and file sharing. We operate the solution 24x7 and have not had any operational issues.
- Excellent pre/post sales support. We felt like we could approach the company with any issue.
- After implementation the solution has been very low-touch, meaning that we don't need to devote valuable resources towards keeping the solution running. This is ideal for the SMB/SME market.
- StarWind have been in the business for many years and their focus is on storage solutions. This provided us with reassurance that the solution will continue to exist and be supported in the future.
- We scheduled an interactive validation/tuning session before we went live. We found this to be very valuable and it proved to us how much the company is invested in their product.
- Some of the technical documentation needs to be revised so it becomes clearer how the solution works. If you are planning to implement the solution yourself, then a dry run is strongly recommended.
- The solution provided a better ROI than competitive solutions. More importantly it provided us with critical functionality regarding the availability of our server virtualisation platform.
Being hypervisor agnostic was not applicable to our needs. We had an existing VMware vSphere solution for which we needed to implement shared storage.
We found it very easy to perform knowledge transfer about the solution to our peers after implementation. The management console makes it easy to quickly see if the solution is working and also provides needed functionality such as email alerting.
We evaluated and received pricing for the native vSAN solution from VMware. We also looked at the discontinued solution from HPE.
StarWind easily provided the best ROI. It also provided a mature solution from a company that is focused on storage solutions. Technically, the solution from StarWind also provided more design flexibility.
StarWind easily provided the best ROI. It also provided a mature solution from a company that is focused on storage solutions. Technically, the solution from StarWind also provided more design flexibility.
Do you think StarWind Virtual SAN delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with StarWind Virtual SAN's feature set?
Yes
Did StarWind Virtual SAN live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of StarWind Virtual SAN go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy StarWind Virtual SAN again?
Yes