StarWind Virtual SAN Review

Before, we used a cluster of two Windows servers with shared storage system on a single SAN. One of them was a working clustered SQL server with database mirroring. Every part of the system was redundant except for SAN.

It was almost satisfying.

Every cluster server system we know needs shared storage system. The cluster could be fully redundant, but this redundancy is worth nothing without a redundant storage system.

We had a single SAN system. As a single system, SAN was not redundant. But we needed a redundant storage system. We always were afraid that once upon a time our SAN will stop to work.

We, of course, had backups, but it was not enough.

What we needed was the system with no data loss in case of issues and with no interruption (or only several seconds of interruption) in data processing.

We were looking for a relatively simple and not very expensive solution.

Why have we selected StarWind among other storage solutions? Actually, I don’t know why. Simply, I was looking for a solution using Google. StarWind was the first system I found that gave me hope. When I did some tests with StarWind, I stopped looking for anything more.

Now we have a redundant storage system, so our cluster system is fully redundant. We now have two clusters of two nodes Windows Hyper-V servers with StarWind VSAN working as hosts.

• It was really very easy to implement, but without support, I couldn't optimize the system, and StarWind gave me technical support on a very good level.
• A good price is also considerable.

I would like to have an easy way of automatic notification about issues, even when I'm away. The system has the possibility to send e-mails, but only in an internal mail system. Simply there is no possiblity the e-mail sender to log on smtp server. Several years ago some smtp server didn't require user to log on. But now it's impossible to send e-mail without login on. So if I had my own company internal e-mail server I could use it. Otherwise not. It's not enough for me.

OK.

It's OK.

Support is on a high level.

I've used SAN hardware before with no redundancy.

It was easy. But to achieve optimal performance, I needed support.

In-house.

No idea.

No idea.

I didn't. StarWind was the first solution I found, and after the first tests, I stopped looking at other solutions.

No.