If you are an experienced administrator, the setup is straightforward. Even if you have some difficulties in some parts, they have many guides and services that will support you.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, with tons of help and guidance from the support staff. I opted to do some of the configurations myself, however, the support staff would have done most of it for me if I needed that.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There are no issues at all. It is great working with the team.

The initial setup was super easy.

The setup was simple. They will set up your nodes ahead of time. Then, they walk you through the rest of the process.

On-boarding was heavily guided. Once racked, powered on, and joined to the domain, they helped with the rest.

The initial setup was extremely easy and their support team was assisting through the whole process.

High-availability is a little bit complex in general. They made it as easy as it could be. I worked with their tech support and they walked me through everything. I felt that it was pretty simple, overall.

Technically, in terms of the deployment, we got the two hosts in, racked them, got them hooked up to the network. That took a couple of days. Then they came on. They had Windows Server 2016 already installed on both boxes, so I activated the data center version. From there, I got on the phone with them and they walked me through the rest of it. That took a couple of hours for configuring stuff and making sure everything was good. From their side, it was pretty quick. The boxes arrived pretty quickly after I ordered them. Overall, it was pretty fast. It didn't take long to get them going.

From there, I had to build out my VMs on top of the host and do all the installs for the software product that we're putting together.

In terms of deployment and maintenance, it's just one person. I'm the only one doing it right now.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We got the units in, we plugged them in, and set them up. They had given us a map of how everything should be connected, which I had no difficulty understanding. 

They then followed up with a more formal implementation day, where they did some of the final setup on the two units. It was a GoToMeeting type of set up and they remoted in and finished configuring the host.

I do wish that they had done the setup in advance so that we could have run them right away. I thought they would be a fully turnkey kind of product, so I was a little surprised to see that there was an extra set up when we got them in. But it was nothing too time-intensive.

The software configuration took about an hour. The hardware was done by them before we even received the product. It did take a couple of days before we could actually get them booked to finish the installation. That was my main complaint, not so much the actual time it took the technician to do the rest of it.

It could be done by one person, but two are helpful for the initial racking. And for day-to-day maintenance, now that it's deployed, we definitely need just one full-time person.

It was straightforward to set up as the support team got us up and running very quickly.

The setup is fairly straightforward and issues were sorted quickly.

The solution is mostly straightforward, however, we had to have help a few times.  

The solution was very straightforward and we felt fully supported by the Starwind team.

The initial setup was very straightforward. Some areas were complex and involved StarWind support coming in and making sure everything was configured correctly. This service is included in the implementation of their solution.

The setup was done with the help of StarWind. There were a few things that needed to be considered and unfortunately were not communicated by StarWind.

The initial setup was straightforward, however, it helps to have a good amount of experience for a smooth transition. Expert level is not required. That said, admin experience in a virtual environment is very helpful. 

The initial setup was complex. That said, support walks you through every step. I could never have set it up right on my own. 

The setup was easy. The hardware came pre-configured, and support did the rest of the network-specific setup after we had the hardware installed. It was the best experience I've had with a vendor.

It was straightforward and not complex at all to set up. It did take a little bit of time for the setup, however, we never ran into any issues. 

Initial setup was very straightforward with the engineers providing great support to get it implemented.

HCAs came pre-configured and only required minimum input on our end to get up and running.

It was very simple to set up, and the system came pre-configured.

The initial setup was both straightforward and complex, but their support handled everything.

Its was very easy and straightforward. StarWind will ask you information about your switches, uplinks, IP addresses, domain name etc so they can configure the solution

The initial setup was very straightforward. StarWind offered plenty of documentation on their product to give us an idea of what would be needed to integrate their appliances into our environment. 

We ran into issues when migrating virtual workloads from older hardware over to the new appliances, however, their support staff helped us manage that complexity.

Hosts came preconfigured and required a short phone call with support to set up.

The setup is straightforward with handholding from support every step of the way.

Its initial setup was complex, but that is why we had support from StarWind look after it.

The setup was very quick. After purchasing the hardware, before it was shipped there was a form to fill out to specify IP addresses, server OS version, and some other settings so that StarWind could set up the hardware and have it nearly configured when it arrived at our location. There was an initial quick-start guide that I had to go through after it arrived. It was about ten steps and included cabling the hardware, logging in, setting a password, and joining it to the domain. Then there was about an hour-long call with StarWind Support to do the final configuration of creating the cluster. They configured a couple of things and sent us on our way to start moving virtual machines over.

Altogether, there was about an hour or so of pre-call stuff, and then maybe a little more than an hour on the phone. The software and the operating system came pre-installed. There were just a couple of configuration checks and things that they needed to do to finalize everything.

It was mostly just me involved in the setup. I had some help installing it physically, but it only takes one person to do the install.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward right out of the box with little help needed from StarWind Support. We were able to get it all up and running in two to five hours.

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

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The solution offers an easy setup. Support was there to hold hands as needed every step of the way, with a dedicated contact point who took us through the entire process. She was great!

The implementation was fairly simple.

I had a really big, heavy pair of Dell EMC server boxes delivered to my workplace. I had to schedule some time to go physically into the data center, which is hosted two miles away from my office. The entire installation procedure was really a matter of unbox, throw the rails in, throw the servers on the rails. Each server then needed two power cords and two SFP connections between the servers themselves. And, bare minimum, they need one management connection to whatever your local Cat 5 switch is. That was it. That was really all that that needed to be configured, hardware-wise. 

Once those were up and running, we spent maybe 45 minutes just getting the initial Hyper-V configuration done, and I was off and running. I was able to create and migrate VMs at will. No downtime, no reconfiguration, and literally nothing else.

All together it took about two hours for completely setting up the hardware and getting Hyper-V ready to create guests.

We didn't have an implementation plan. Physically, we had room in our racks and spaces for the power supplies and the cables. The only planning was that I gave StarWind a half-day's heads-up that I was going to get everything installed. They were on the phone and on a remote support session at pretty much the minute that I was ready to do the software side of things.

I enlisted some help to get things physically installed. Once that was done, it was just me and one StarWind engineer. We had to be on the phone for about an hour in total over that entire process. It was just me and that one person. They seem to have their process petty down pat. He was flying through the configuration and I was just sitting in the back seat watching.

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

The initial setup is straightforward, although it is a little fiddly and tricky to follow. It's best to implement this when you can't be interrupted.

The setup of the actual hardware was straightforward. Adding it to the existing network was complex. It would have taken me maybe a week of work to get the end result, instead having my hand held through the whole process was invaluable. It saved me a lot of time.

There was lots of different sessions involved with the deployment. If you put them altogether, it took probably a day as we had to stop and break. I had to go do other things and Boris also had to do other things, so we did the deployment in bits. 

The implementation strategy was loose. As long as it was off hours, so I could switch a bunch of machines off, that was essentially it. As long as I had this approved from Boris, that was our strategy. I looked at what resources we needed on which virtual machines. Then, I made the decision on what to transfer over, moving the most important things over.

The initial setup is really easy. StarWind handles it.

There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started.

Because of the way we are funded, I could spend the money only once. I have to write a business case for everything we do and I put all the costs in that business case. What I can't do is go off and buy a load of additional stuff because I should have added it to the business case. So the agreement was that the cabling for our infrastructure would be supplied with the StarWind but, unfortunately, they just couldn't do that. They supplied the wrong cables and the wrong number of cables. In the end, I had to go and buy all the equipment myself to do it, because they just didn't seem to be able to deal with it. I think the problem was with the UK side, with whomever they outsource the setup and installation to in the UK. If it had been a solution where they'd had to come onsite and install it, it would have been an absolute mess.

We were quoted three to four weeks for the deployment time but, in the end, it took about six or seven weeks.

We did have an implementation strategy for this product, but it all went out the window when we didn't get the cabling right. Because it's a school, the kids were on their summer break from the end of July through until the beginning of September. We had plans to do work in that time but, in the end, we just couldn't do that work because we didn't get the StarWind in early enough to do it. Some of that was our fault. We did order the product later than we wanted because we were looking at HPE, Dell, and StarWind together. But if we hadn't had the issue with the cabling, a weeks-long issue, we would have been a lot more successful in the summer.

Because that's the only time we really get a chance to do anything big on our infrastructure, some of the work we would have done in this past September will now have to be done in August of this year.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward. Just open the box and follow the instructions, do the cabling, and you're set. And StarWind gives good implementation support. The moment it has been set up and is running, they will do a complete operational test. The moment they say, "Okay, the system is good to go," you're able to use it. It's a matter of one or two days.

The deployment plan for the company I'm currently at was to virtualize all the operating systems, to get rid of all the hardware and consolidate. They had outsourced their systems services. By putting it back on-premise and hiring two full-time equivalents, I saved 50 percent of my IT budget.

The setup was straightforward. We completed a survey which provided information to configure the appliance and they did that before shipping it to us. By the time we received it, it was very simple to physically install and get it on our network. Everything else was pretty much configured.

The most time in the process was probably due to moving and converting the virtual machines. It wasn't the nature of the product itself, it was just our workloads on it. The whole process, once we received it until we were up and running in production, took about four weeks.

Our implementation strategy was to make it a secondary environment. We transitioned from our old Hyper-V host structure to this one, one VM at a time. We had some flexibility to keep up and running in both the older and the newer environments, as we were completing the transition.

The initial setup is easy with Starwind support.

Fairly straightforward because StarWind handles most of the setup. We did handle the network setup because we added redundancy at the switch level.

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

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. 

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.

The initial setup is easy. It's not overly difficult. 

You only need one person to maintain the solution once it's up and running. Our network admin handles everything. 

Since its an all in one solution, setup was easy with their support. 

I wouldn't say the initial setup was completely straightforward but it's not too complex. I did have a lot of calls with support to help me get it up and running, but I did the majority of the cabling and some of the configuration of the VMs. They took care of many other things that I would not have known to do, but it wasn't too bad.

The deployment took about a month. I had other things I had to do; I'm always doing a lot of things. It probably took longer than it could have taken.

The implementation strategy was that I have all iSCSI. Our previous SAN had iSCSI with RJ45 switches. With the help of StarWind and Dell EMC, I was able to tie in and connect the HCAs to my SAN and see the data stores on the SAN from the HCAs. When the time came, I was able to migrate everything. I placed all the VMware hosts into one vCenter but two different clusters. I was able to simply vMotion them. Once I got the HCAs up and running, configured and set up, I was able to vMotion all the VMs from my old storage array to these HCAs.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. The only thing that wasn't straightforward was, "Oh, we've never had Supermicro before." It was a matter of getting used to, and documenting, how stuff works.

There were no instructions. We just got two boxes. There wasn't any "Welcome to your StarWind Hyperconverged Appliance." It was just two brown boxes with two servers in them.

We just racked it up and then had a phone call with them and let the guys at StarWind know when it was online. It was up and running in our environment pretty much straight away. The only problem I had were the SFP cables: "Which way up do these go? And does it go A to B, or A to A and B to B?" So that required a phone call.

The only other problem that we encountered, that protracted the migration, was that while they've got good V-to-V migration software, our old environment was 2008 R2 and it wasn't supported by the migration software. So we had to "handle" it. It was a matter of having to recreate the service. I scripted it from PowerShell myself, and did them one or two each weekend over a period of three or four weeks. They're production servers so they had to be down to do the Hyper-V conversion process. Our file server took a while. It is about a terabyte-and-a-half. It took about 11 hours to convert, but I had it scripted anyway. So once it converted, I just did a convert from source to the StarWind. That was part of the copy process. It was then just create out and boot and notify me.

For the setup it was just me involved.

The initial setup was straightforward. All was a breeze.

The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing. It's a solution that people should be able to install it on their own.