Item: StarWind Virtual SAN
Rating: 10
Author: Derek Clarke

Overall Satisfaction with StarWind Virtual SAN

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a seasoned MSP leader, I recognize the significance of dependable and high-speed shared storage for our VMware vSphere Essentials setup, particularly for implementing vMotion and High Availability capabilities. After evaluating the exorbitant costs of external storage alternatives, we decided to leverage a vSAN solution to minimize expenses. Our setup comprises a 3-server VMware vSphere Essentials Plus solution equipped with 8 x SSDs and no HDDs for on-server storage. The solution connects to a 1GB network for production, but we also have 10GB network connections that allow for direct connectivity between servers, further enhancing performance. To ensure seamless integration and centralized management of our resources, we chose StarWind's vSAN solution implemented as a hyper-converged solution, enabling all components to run on the VMware vSphere solution.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ease of Use
Product Support
Minimal Maintenance
Reliability

Cons

Deduplication

Return on Investment

Excellent ROI
Reduced support cost

Support Rating

Their support team is dedicated to providing top-notch customer service and is always available to help with any questions or issues that may arise. Their expertise and responsiveness have proven invaluable in ensuring the smooth operation of our virtualized environment. With such excellent support, we feel confident in our ability to utilize this product to its fullest potential, and we highly recommend it to others.

Alternatives Considered

HPE Nimble Storage, PowerProtect DD and EMC VNX (Discontinued)

While they may have more robust enterprise grade features like duplication, the price point of Nimble and DD makes it a very tough sell in a cost concious environment. Starwind provides us with great reliability and enough features to make it an easy sell.

Key Insights

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Based on my knowledge of StarWind Virtual SAN, I can suggest the following scenarios where it is well suited:
Small to medium-sized businesses: StarWind Virtual SAN is an affordable and easy-to-deploy solution for businesses with limited IT resources. It provides high availability and fault tolerance for mission-critical applications.
Hyper-converged infrastructure: StarWind Virtual SAN is ideal for organizations that are looking for a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solution. It eliminates the need for a separate storage area network (SAN) by converging compute and storage resources into a single server.
Remote and branch offices: StarWind Virtual SAN is a good fit for organizations with remote and branch offices. It allows for centralized management and monitoring of storage resources, while providing local access to data.

On the other hand, there may be scenarios where StarWind Virtual SAN is less appropriate. For instance:
Large enterprises with complex IT infrastructures: While StarWind Virtual SAN can scale to support large environments, it may not be the most suitable solution for complex IT infrastructures that require advanced features such as storage tiering, QoS, or advanced deduplication.

Comments

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Enterprise grade software for SMB pricing.