StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Reviews

The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-v for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution. Its works with all hypervisors on the market today.

My use case saw it removing SAN architecture in favor of hyper-converged storage directly attached to my hosts, in testing the speed of which is comparable to any other storage solutions available.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization footprint whilst reducing my overall physical server footprint.

It has removed the need for large shared storage that is not directly attached to the virtual hosts make it a deal to deal with, it also self heals in the event of any major incident or down time, along with the 24/7 support and the most knowledgably staff when needed.

It has allowed me to expand my virtualization foot print whilst reducing my overall physical server foot print.

This solution has allowed me to remove other storage solutions reduce physical footprint of equipment as well as power usage.

The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great. 

The support staff knows the product inside out and any issues that were thrown up they knew how to resolve immediately.

The ongoing maintenance and monitoring are key to the product catalog and allow for smooth and seamless ongoing use. 

It is helping reduce out-of-hours calls and it also helps with identifying predicted failure patterns, to assist in the very most uptime of production servers 365 days a year and 24/7.

Not much can be improved, to be honest. The solution is clean, quick to install, and has had no issues since the day we started using it. The features are improving every version level, however, I cannot think of anything I would really require to change at this moment in time.

It also offers an exclusive version of StarWind Virtual SAN which can be installed on just a few nodes in a much bigger cluster. There’s absolutely no need to enable it and pay license fees for all of the nodes. 

Some vendors will currently ask you to pay for all nodes in a cluster. StarWind Virtual SAN does best breed of scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

I've used the solution for six months.

I have done vigorous testing prior to live install and the stability of the system is excellent.

The scalability is amazing as it allows for a scale-out and scale-up approaches combined in a single cluster.

Every time I have called, I have gotten the person I need along with an answer to my questions.

Positive

I just used a SAN Storage solution. I switched for reduced physical servers and power consumption.

The initial setup was a breeze. StarWind support did it all for me.

The StarWind in-house team did it all for me and I would rate them ten out of ten.

Currently I do not have any ROI figures.

StarWind can help identify exactly what you need and help identify the best hardware for the best price.

We looked at Dell Equal Logic SAN Storage solutions.

We use the solution as a high availability failover cluster in our data center.

StarWind HCA is much more reliable than our original failover cluster solution. Not even just by being more modern hardware, the virtual SAN allowed us to dramatically decrease our footprint and power consumption in our data center and is much simpler to manage. 

Any issues we've had along the way have been Windows issues as opposed to problems with the StarWind vSAN software.

Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own. Bumps along the way have been resolved with the help of StarWind's fantastic support, and, as previously mentioned, pretty much any and all issues we've had have been Windows issues as opposed to their software, which their support has been happy to help troubleshoot and is refreshing to see

The proactive monitoring is nice. Knowing that they're watching for issues simultaneously with us. 

However, the response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred. Any disruption is felt immediately by the users, so we're already troubleshooting within a few minutes, and we reach out to support if needed before the proactive alert comes through to us.  

We've used the solution between three and four years.

We use this as our primary data center computing and storage cluster for small/medium businesses. The StarWind HCA serves our domain, email, SQL,  storage, files, and other miscellaneous analytics and automation needs.  

We run VMware on our nodes and we host Windows and Linux VMs. This cluster is a priority-one infrastructure component, it cannot fail or go down. We require quick compute as well as high I/O to support VDI users as well as general server type needs. This cluster serves the core of our business.

StarWind HCA has improved our business by ways of reduced management overhead, increased compute and storage performance, reduced rack space requirements, reduced rack power usage, and improved redundancy.  

The reduced management and improved redundancy are probably the most important as it directly increases the time staff can focus on other tasks  Simply put, StarWind HCA "just works". Furthermore, having ProActive Support as a "second set of eyes" allows us to catch issues without constant "babysitting".

We find the improved redundancy, two identical nodes that can focus independently, as well as reduced management both highly valuable.  

The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure.  This allows us to handle updates or physical server maintenance without a degradation in performance.  

We also appreciate the lack of management needed to handle sync between nodes or just general housekeeping, the nodes just run and work! 

The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification. Sometimes the documents reference old versions which are unhelpful. Other documents were written and seem to be translated into English so the writing is not clear. 

I would also appreciate some more technical documents on how the HCA appliances function, how sync occurs, the use of PowerShell on Linux systems, and some other details. None of this would stop me from recommending StarWind though since you rarely need to review documentation.

I've used the solution for almost one year.

The stability has been great. We have not had the HCA system fail whatsoever. Minor issues are handled gracefully.

We see no issues with scalability. I doubt we will outgrow the system, although we do always like it faster. You can add more storage, more RAM, and more nodes as needed.

Service from initial questions and review, to demo, to purchase, and post-purchase support has been great.

Positive

We previously used standard computing plus a SAN system. We switched to reduce our rack space requirements and improve redundancy.

The setup was very simple. Support helped every step along the way.

This was done in-house. We have some technical knowledge. Again, support was very helpful.

ROI is hard to measure, however, so far, it has paid for itself in reduced management and improved redundancy.

The pricing is very competitive, especially with ProActive support since you gain a "second set of eyes" on the system to monitor for errors which allow staff to not focus on the StarWind cluster all the time.

We evaluated VMware vSAN, however, the cost was too high.

We are a small school with 700 users. We replaced an eight-year-old HP system (two HP DL360 G7s and an HP StorageWorks X1600) with a two-node HCA cluster.

Our two goals were to improve performance and add high availability. Even before implementation, the StarWind team analyzed our current workload to determine which HCA would be appropriate for us. This allowed us to make a decision based on data rather than guesswork.

Performance has been excellent, and we have really noticed a big improvement from our old system. Our other goal, improving fault tolerance, was immediately realized with the installation of the second HCA node. We have been running flawlessly since day one with zero downtime. The second node also allows us to perform maintenance without having to take servers offline.

The management interface is really easy to use. Updates are much less painful, and the proactive support is fantastic. New command center is a nice addition.

We are happy with the product, and my only suggestion would be a better process for an unplanned power outage.

Four years

We have been pleased so far. Zero downtime. 

It meets the needs of smaller organizations. I think they are upfront that the HCA solution is not tailored towards large organizations.

They have proactive support which prior to using StarWind, was a new concept for us. It's incredible. We spend less time troubleshooting and more time on other important tasks. 

Positive

We used an HP StorageWorks X1600 for our shared storage with two HP DL360 G7s as our hosts. We switched due to performance issues (slow backups) and to increase fault tolerance since we only had one shared storage device.

So simple. The StarWind team does most of the initial configuration, and we finished on site. We were up and running in two days.  

75% vendor team and 25% in-house. Expertise was top notch which is to be expected since it's their product.

N/A.

Do your research. You will find that nothing compares to the value you get with the HCA appliance. If you have a limited budget, the decision is an easy one.

Yes. We evaluated Nutanix, HPE, Dell, NetApp, Scale.

We have been running Starwind for four years now and it's still rock solid and one of the best decisions we've made. 

We are using Starwind HCA for a Hyper V failover cluster at our community college. We use our virtual environment to run nearly all operations at our school. It has slowly grown while replacing old physical hardware with virtual machines. It runs all email, file shares, SQL databases, IT management, PR display devices, and network security software we use to protect our environment. It replaced more expensive and difficult to maintain hardware that was not able to perform all tasks Starwind is able to.

It was much more affordable to replace our aging virtual environment with Starwind HCA than traditional hardware. We needed to come up with a budget-friendly solution to replace our old hardware. The support costs were skyrocketing on the old hardware and the performance was severely lacking. Using Starwind allowed us to replace our existing hardware with much faster hosts - and we benefitted especially from the all-flash storage which gave us a significant performance bump compared to our old environment. Overall, it has been a great implementation. 

The hardware is nothing special, just Dell servers, but the real value is in the software and support. Support is knowledgeable and quick to respond to any issues we have. They helped us configure it from the beginning and were there for us through the few issues we had during the initial configuration.

We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable.  They can identify the issue and guide us to fix it without downtime.

We would like more complete documentation to manage on your own without support - even though they are great to work with. Sometimes I like to have a better knowledge on my own in case an extreme situation happens that needs to be fixed immediately. 

The management console could use a facelift. It appears to do everything needed, but sometimes it is not clear what various options are or do which could be tied back to the documentation. A complete single pane of glass for monitoring would be helpful to self-solve issues without involving support and logs.

I've been using the solution for two years.

The solution is very stable as long as you realize there can be possible split-brain issues with sync if multiple nodes lose power at the same time. This is where the nodes do not know which is the more up to date so they are not sure which way to sync. Support can help resolve the issues should they happen.

Ours is a 3 node, but appears to scale much larger as needed.

Technical support is quick to respond and proactive with our additional support.

Positive

 We used a traditional host and separate SAN for shared storage costs, which were too high to replace.

The initial setup is easy with Starwind support.

The vendor team configured our environment without issue.

Pricing is all in one. It is nice to bundle everything together for budgeting purposes.

We also looked at Dell HCL, however, it was more expensive and complicated.

We used this solution to upgrade a bunch of old stand-alone servers to a cluster. There were at least eight different servers, some up to ten years old, running production loads on Hyper-V. Since everything worked, it was hard to get budget approval. Finally, we got someone to listen and we were able to get momentum on this project.

We got the three-node cluster in, and moving everything over was easy with no downtime to the approximately 400 users. Now that everything is on a cluster, the redundancy helps IT sleep at night. We have had to do some maintenance and there has been no interruption. 

Our environment went from a hodge-podge of Hyper-V servers of various ages and capacities to a simple-to-manage three-node cluster. The three nodes are interconnected, so we didn't even have to invest in additional network infrastructure.

There is redundancy, so if one node has an issue, the users have no idea and everything stays functional! There is a noted increase in speed both on the production loads as well as the backup (Veeam) being much easier to manage and running significantly faster.

Power consumption is down, so there was less need for UPS capacity and cooling as well. 

The configuration we purchased was built on Hyper-V, so there was no additional training for staff. The rest of the management tools are on Windows, so anyone with a little bit of IT background should be able to figure it out.

The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment. Support has been stellar and we're notified of an issue before we even knew about it. We worked with support to get parts replaced and delivered the next business day and there was no downtime to the users!

I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side. Since we have a decent amount of storage on our cluster, 80TB, knowing what our IOPS and typical usage is would be handy. There are times where something 'feels' slow so it would be nice what was happening on the storage side.

I do wish that if we needed more compute capacity, that we could do it without needing to invest in a lot of network equipment. That is hardly StarWind's fault, but just something to think about. 

We have been using the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for between six and nine months.

If we had smaller needs, the amount of expansion would have been more. We went fairly large since we only get money once in a blue moon. There is some additional storage scalability, although not a ton.

We can add plenty of RAM. If we wanted more CPU then sure, those could be replaced! 

We had one issue with a part failing, and we were informed by support before we even knew. The part and on-site engineer was dispatched. It was a redundant part, so there was no impact on anything. Nice to know they are all over it!

Nothing in the HCA realm, just stand-alone Hyper-V machines. 

The initial setup was very easy. Support ran through everything remotely and we were up in a few hours. It was nothing we probably could not have done ourselves, but it was nice to have an expert do it and have it up. 

We implemented purely in-house.

We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process. If anything, we were difficult with changing what we wanted to include on the HCA all the time. Sales rolled with us without any issue. 

We did look at moving hypervisors and HCA platforms but passed because the amount of change to management would have been a lot for the current staff.

We are very happy and the number of incidents and stress has been greatly reduced. 

We are an MSP that offers IT services to SMB companies in our area. We wanted to branch out and start offering hosting services in the form of offsite backup and server. To achieve this we needed a highly available cluster of servers. We started off designing a typical cluster/SAN setup but decided that we wanted the simplicity of hyper-converged architecture instead. In researching HCA we found that StarWind offered exactly that as well of proactive monitoring support for the cluster. Having an extra set of eyes on the health of the equipment was a huge selling point.

StarWind has given us the ability to have a failover cluster without the complications of a SAN network. We are able to offer extra services to our customers that we haven't been able to in the past. Small companies can be wary of the large cloud providers so having a StarWind HCA cluster we were able to give our customers the ability to grow into the cloud while also staying with a company they have worked with and known for years. With StarWind's proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health.

The most valuable feature is its Proactive support. They monitor the health of the cluster and hardware and reach out if they see anything out of the norm. They will then work with us through the entire resolution process whether it be a hardware issue or an issue with the StarWind vSAN services. If the issue turns out to be hardware related they will then work with the hardware manufacturer and get any replacement parts needed. Their techs are also very knowledgeable and have always been able to resolve any issues without any kind of long drawn out escalation process no matter the time of day.  

Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale.  Currently, all of their tech support is located in eastern Europe so if you have any issues understanding thick accents it may be a little frustrating. With that being said they have never got frustrated with me asking them to repeat themselves, they've always been very patient.

We've been using it in full production for about seven months.

Stability has been good. We've had one issue with the StarWind service locking up causing full sync to be performed. During this sync, there wasn't any noticeable performance impact by our users.

If you provide your own switches instead of doing their direct connect option you should be able to scale this solution very well. If you go direct connect you are limited to 3 nodes.  Adding additional storage should be easy if you have available hard drive bays.

Tech support has been fantastic. Always willing to help no matter what time of day/night.  I've never had to have an issue escalated as the first contact tech has always been able to solve any issues/questions.

This is my first venture into the HCA world.

StarWind performed most of the initial setup for us. We racked the equipment and then they remoted in and configured everything. We did not have any existing VMs to migrate so it was a simple setup.

Cost is very reasonable and shouldn't catch anyone off guard if you've looked at other HCA devices.

We also looked at Nutanix, HP Simplivity, VxRails, and Scale.