Overview
What is StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.
Exploring StarWind Virtual SAN as an iscsi Server Solution
StarWind vSAN - Highly available, redundant storage!
StarWind Virtual SAN - Easy, Resilient, and Cost Effective
Needed a SAN - StarWind fit the bill
It's a Winner!! for us
The right sized storage solution for our business
StarWind Virtual SAN, reliable and easy to use.
StarWind Virtual SAN Review
Simple, effective, and reliable
StarWind Virtual SAN user review
Great product and nice and reliable team behind! Very professional
Great Hyperconverged solution for the price and stellar support.
True 2-node VSAN, perfect for SMB!
Starwind vSAN 2 thumbs up
Awards
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Reviewer Pros & Cons
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 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
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(145)Attribute Ratings
- 8.6Likelihood to Renew14 ratings
- 9.1Availability2 ratings
- 9.1Performance2 ratings
- 9.1Usability10 ratings
- 9.5Support Rating120 ratings
- 8.8Implementation Rating8 ratings
- 9.1Configurability2 ratings
- 7.3Product Scalability2 ratings
- 9.1Ease of integration1 rating
- 9.1Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 9.1Vendor post-sale1 rating
Reviews
(1-25 of 141)- 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
- Scalable storage and easy implementation, even on the free version through powershell scripts. Rollout took under one day with 2 days of synchronization of 70TB over 25GBits
- 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. Though with the recent update, this got improved by a lot and as mentioned before, the Forum support is superb.
- Lower time to market
- Lower costs as compared to high-end hardware-based SAN systems
- Validated stability, scalability and performance
- Native support for HyperV, VMWare and KVM
- One point for improvement is to increase the performance capabilities of the Windows-based executable, as compared to its Linux Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) equivalent.
- Another point for improvement would be to incorporate a more granular Role-based access control system (RBAC) natively inside the software to allow for more granular administration.
- Yet another point would be to achieve tighter integration and automation with cloud-based platforms, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- High availability file shares with high-availability quorum.
- Redundancy and availability of VMs hosted on multiple hosts.
- Flexibility to host vSAN independently from old-school physical SAN LUNs.
- StarWind vSAN should include higher storage limits per license tier.
- The free trial should come with more features to really ensure a proper deployment can be evaluated before committing to purchasing.
- StarWind should look into officially supporting nested configurations; such as vSANs within a VM.
- Resiliency using the built-in replication features
- Ease of management using the Web UI or Management Software on Windows
- Performance is very good.
- Support queries had to be submitted via email, it would be nice to have a phone option
- Some of the documents/articles on the website contained info that was slightly contradictory to what support had told us. I think the documents may have been a little outdated
Needed a SAN - StarWind fit the bill
- Replication of data between 2 server rooms
- 24/7 Support
- Remote help when needed.
- No real improvement required.
It's a Winner!! for us
- 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
The right sized storage solution for our business
- High availability
- Storage Performance
- Direct hardware passthrough
- NMVe storage
- Virtual appliance password security
- Taking full advantage of NVMe storage performance
StarWind Virtual SAN, reliable and easy to use.
- 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
StarWind Virtual SAN Review
- 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
Simple, effective, and reliable
- It is simple to setup and manage
- It is very reliable
- There are no areas that need improvement for our use - it just works.
StarWind Virtual SAN user review
- 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
- Data recovery
- Cost-efficient
- Scalable
- Compatibility with broadcom network adapters
Only one point is not so nice. The vendor does not recommend to use broadcom network adapters. We currently cannot find other negative points.
We leverage StarWind as the base of a Hyper-V Cluster at several clients. It provides immediate high availability, excellent performance for the dollar spent. Our technicians get to use the tools that they are already familiar with like Hyper-V manager.
- Support is stellar. better than most
- Usage of existing Tools
- Proactive monitoring and alerting to issues that come up
- Improve supply chain availability
- Diversity of hardware providers
- a smaller entry level solution for branches or small offices
True 2-node VSAN, perfect for SMB!
- True 2-node VSAN
- Redundancy
- Stability
- Ease of use
- SMB-friendly pricing
- Documentation
Starwind vSAN 2 thumbs up
- Customer support
- Failover by using HCI
- Expanding storage easily
- Deduplication
- Encryption
- High latency stretched DR
- Scalability
- Resiliency
- Affordability
- Command Center availability with VMware
- More proactive touch points
- Recommendations based on monitoring, proactively
- High availabilty
- High performance
- Easy to administer
- More guidance/examples/suggestions on how to conduct the free evalutation with ur system
- High-availability storage using local disk
- Easy-of-use setup and managing of the storage
- Very cost effective compared to alternatives
- Better and updated documentation on how the CLI works
- A GUI update would be nice, especially how to navigate the GUI
- Initial deployment guides for the free version are lacking
- 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
- Improve compliance & risk management
- Create internal/operational efficiencies
- Unrivaled Performance on Minimalist Terms
- The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is petty complex for does who are new with the product.
- It does not have local support partner in my country.
Enterprise grade software for SMB pricing.
- Ease of Use
- Product Support
- Minimal Maintenance
- Reliability
- Deduplication
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.
- Cost-effective
- Easy to deploy
- Good support
- Documentation could be more succinct
- Support is sometimes difficult to understand verbally
However, this vSAN is meant squarely for the small to medium business market. As tempting as it might be, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
- Performance Efficient
- Cost Effective
- Easy to Deploy
- Management GUI
- Documentation
- 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.
Great VSAN solution for limited budget
- shared storage for hyperconverged infra
- great support
- documentation sometimes a bit confused