--- title: StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews meta_title: 'StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 201 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how StarWind Virtual SAN works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 201 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-16' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews **Vendor:** StarWind, Inc. **Category:** [Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Solutions ](https://www.g2.com/categories/hyperconverged-infrastructure-hci-solutions) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 201 ## About StarWind Virtual SAN StarWind is the pioneer of hyperconvergence and storage virtualization, offering customizable SDS and turnkey (software+hardware) solutions to optimize underlying storage capacity use, ensure fault tolerance, achieve IT infrastructure resilience and increase customer ROI. StarWind has over 150 employees and caters to more than 400,000 customers worldwide. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) eliminates any need for physical storage by mirroring internal hard disks and flash between hypervisor servers. Thanks to its unique features, StarWind VSAN can be deployed on or integrated in any existing IT infrastructure. By acquiring a single solution, you will get a robust fault-tolerant storage pool, constant application uptime and endless scalability options with just 2 nodes. Key Features: - Allows to achieve high availability - Eliminates any downtime even if 1 or more nodes fail - Ties the cluster into a single storage pool - Overcomes HCLs and has no restrictions on sockets or features - Offers flexible scalability, up and out - Easy management through a web console or thick client ## StarWind Virtual SAN Reviews ### 1. Using StarWind for 10 years and still love it! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael J. G. | Network Operations Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** 3-Way (Active-Active-Active) true High-Availibility. Flexible, Scaleable, Reliable & Cost Effective. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** No IPv6 support No linux installer (they do have a linux VM) **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Distributed storage for our Virtualization environment as well as SAN & Disaster Recovery. ### 2. Works well with XEN **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2023 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Once setup was complete, has been very stable **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Setup was a bit complicated and cumbersome **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Makes managing storage across multiple hosts easy. ### 3. Good SAN for JBOD chassis and HyperV integration **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin K. | Software Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I like that it integrates well with HyperV and was convenient to use with Fiber Channel JBOD Enclosures. After the setup was finished it was running smoothly. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Requires setup with powershell scripting **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Only service I could find that was free, integrated with HyperV, fiberchannel and ensured good performance and disk failure safety. ### 4. StarWind VSAN works! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan K. | Chief Information Officer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The VSAN just works. Being new to the organization and to StarWind, I found the system easy and intuitive. The support, community, and KB articles online work to make this a great product. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Nothing! I honestly haven't found anything that I don't care for. If I had to pick something, perhaps more recent video tutorials would fit the bill here. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our electronic medical record runs on a 2-node hyper-converged cluster, with StarWind running it. This helps increase our uptime, fault tolerance and reliability for the EMR. ### 5. Great product with great support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neil W. | Senior Network Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Support Ease of configuration Flexibility of configuration **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Some areas of documentation seem limited Monitoring Console could do with a bit of a tidy **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use StarWind Virtual SAN in a dynamic Lab environment. Used by multiple systems within the Lab. Used with varried OSes (Windows, Linux (Redhat, Ubuntu, etc). Allows Labs to be setup, tested, demonstrated then archived for future use. ### 6. StarWind SAN **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Georgeadis A. | Virtualized solutions engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The solutions that I have tried and used are really great, very easy to configure, they just make your job much easier. You don't need to be an expert to configure and manage it. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I think license management in VMware environments is a problem for now. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** It really is very simple, it is very intuitive for configuration and monitoring. ### 7. Great Product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick C. | IT Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I like that I was able to purchase refurbished hardware that works perfectly in my environment, saving money and saving unnecessary spending on new hardware **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The only negative I can think of has not even happened yet. One time calling in for support, the technician was pretty hard to understand, with the accent he had. I would fear that if there were a significant issue, he would have to talk me through step by step, and I would not understand the steps he was telling me. But, with the few times we have needed support, they could remote in and do everything they needed to. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had two stand-alone hosts and was replicating back and forth, so I had "updated" copies of each VM, on each host, in case of disaster. It was a slow, bulky, cheap DR plan, but it was a plan. Starwinds allows me to have fully synchronized VM's available during a planned or unplanned outage. I can also do all my maintenance on each host during the business day, and the end-users don't even notice it. Host updates are applied quickly, and a loss of a single host will not have near the impact on my organization as it would before. ### 8. the solution for ROBO **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luca B. | Cardio Solution Architect EMEA, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** i've experienced Starwind VSAN on two installations. the product himself is doing exactly what is promising, and in this time is not so obvious. well documented and with practical example. the performances are those that are claimed in their website. The sales chain is efficient and well prepared, the implementation was done directly by Starwind personnel and was straight forward. service is more than efficient, ready to help, highly skilled. and all this with a fraction of the cost of the competitor. strongly recommended **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** for my direct experience all the aspect are fine, from sales to service. just a little concerning for the pricong model change on VMware hypervisor **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** mainly the scope we was implementing VSAN was to eliminate the single point of failure represented by a normal shared storage in a vmware cluster, and tghis without having to use an enterprise graded storage that is in another range of cost ### 9. Think you cannot afford a SAN? Call StarWind. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Claude H. | IT Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Price and hardware requirments flexibility. Support, incredible fast response to support requests such as size increase of VSAN or assistance connecting to a new VMware device. If your skills are not perfect with the product StarWind support does not care and always comes through with a succesful outcome. Speed of implementation. Security, simple windows server to host the StarWind software, easy to secure. Reliability, have had zero failures of the product because of the product itself. It just runs like a never stopping clock. Perfection. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I do not have a dislike. I am not kidding the software was installed and just works. Whats not to like? **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Price, you can get into a small sized redundant VSAN sub 5k with used equipment. Support, you do not need to be an expert on the setup. Starwind does everything, guiding you on each step if its a physical step or logged in remote to do it themselves. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** My company was in desperate need of a SAN for our VCSA VMware environment. I was going to purchase VMware's VSAN but the price of the new up hardware was making the purchase approval by managment an issue. With StarWind I was able to get an ultra-reliable VSAN running on gen8 HPE hardware with no problem. ### 10. Excellent tool for assisting in migrations and maintenance of VMs. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adriano T. | Analista de dados, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 21, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Excellent tool, I recommend it to everyone, I used it a lot for migrating VMs to other servers, simple and easy to use, you can trust it. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** could release the pro version for testing. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** At the moment, I don't have any problems. ### 11. StarWind VSAN, Cost effective Virtual SAN solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** One of the things that I like is the ability to be deployed and used without a witness for small environments (2 hosts). **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Not being promoted or showed, to be more attractive and implemented **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** there is no need for a witness in small environments, hardware agnostic is excellent; you continue working with the one you know and love and deploy it on top. ### 12. StarWind Virtual SAN review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lim E. | Information Technology Security Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** the software is easy to configure and user friendly. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** some failover test case not working. e.g lan cable disconnect. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** StarWind Virtual SAN save cost as it only need 2 nodes for failover cluster. ### 13. Good performance and stability in relative low price **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grzegorz M. | Właściciel, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 19, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** StarWind Virtual SAN is for me easy to underatsnd, to configure and to use. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** In path Server/Configuration/Event Notifications/Action we could configure an e-mail address. But unfortunately there was no place to write login and password of sender. So this only colud be use in internal company e-mail server. All public e-mail servers require that the sender logs in. But in last update this problem is solved and now I can use public e-mail addresses. so now there is nothing to dislike. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company exists since 1991. Among others we also run a business of alarm monitoring central station. Because of this alarm monitoring central station we need fully redundant system of data collecting and processing. Even a single minutes of interruption in signal receiving and/or processing could cause very big problem. Several years ago we used cluster of 2 windows servers with shared storage system on a single SAN. On theme was working clustered SQL server with database mirroring. Every part of system was redundant except of SAN. It was almost satisfying. This time we did not use VMs except for testing purpose. Everey cluster server system we know needs shared storage system. Cluster server system could be fully redundant, but this redundancy is worth nothing without redundant storage system. (Actually I heard newest windows server supports solution similar to starwind, but I’m not sure). We had a single SAN system. As a single, SAN was not redundant. But we needed redundant storage system. We always were afraid that once upon a time our SAN will stop to work… We off course had backups, but it was not enough. What we needed was the system with no data loss in case of issue and with no interruption (or only several seconds of interruption) in data processing. We were looking for relative simple and not very expensive solution. Actually I don’t know why StarWind. I was looking for solution using Google. StarWind was first system I found that gave me a hope. When I did some tests with StarWind I stopped to look for anything more. Now we have redundant storage system, so our cluster system is fully redundant. As we bought two 2-nodes Starwind V-san licenses (one for Electronics Box and other one for Monitoring Łódzki) we have now 2 clusters of two nodes Windows Hyper-V servers with StarWind V-san working as hosts. Both clusters are in different locations (same city but couple of miles far one to another). Both locations are connected with rented 100 Mb/s optical fiber connection. On the host clusters are running several clustered VMs. Among VMs we have 2 nodes SQL cluster with Always On High Availability. As disaster recovery VMs running on one of locations are replicated on another one. ### 14. Great product , SAN works fast. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 17, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** They provide good support and their response is quick, Interface is admin friendly. SAN works fast, even with HDDs . Not much maintenance is needed, just install and run updates sometimes. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** As I've mentioned above, their support is quick, but it is a little expensive in my opinion. I really recommend working with their support when you first build a Virtual SAN. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Well , there is no need for us to buy a separate physical shared storage, we can just use storage on hypervisor servers instead, you can also save on MS licenses. ### 15. Starwind VSAN proves on-premise IT is alive and well! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris P. | Systems Architect, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Very easy to configure and manage. Starwind support is with you every step of the way. The product delivers on its promises, allowing less hardware needed to maintain in the server room. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** There are a few configuration settings that are kind of vague as explained in the documentation. The defaults worked out for us but at least they are there for certain environments that could need tweaking. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Try out their free fully functional trial to see if it will meet your needs to cost effectively simplify IT while improving uptime. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a shared nothing storage environment for a Hyper-V 2 node Failover Cluster using two off the shelf Dell Powerdge T440 servers and a couple 10Gb dual nics. We love solving problems virtually with software instead of using more hardware. ### 16. Reduced Operation Cost with StarWind VSAN **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick C. | IT Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Support is great. The solution was shipped, preconfigured. All I had to do was unbox it, plug it in, turn it on, and move the vm's over after hours. Since then, it has been wonderful. Support has always been able to help with any issues that have arisen. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** There is nothing I really dislike. The only thing I can think of is that it is pretty a pretty complex system. I was able to manage it more myself, but at the same time, their support staff is so knowledgeable, it frees my time up to do other things. It is nice to trust that they will be able to help with everything I need. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have found a cost-effective solution to provide high availability for all my vm's. I have improved my DR plan/useability. I can now do maintenance on either host, during the day, without the users ever knowing. ### 17. Efficient And Stable With Great Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liam W. | Technical Helpdesk Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 30, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** vSAN allows us to provide more options to our clients to make their networks more resilient without forking out the price of a physical SAN. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Although it is a more affordable option than a physical SAN, it is still quite expensive for some of our smaller clients. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** If a one stop virtual SAN is what you're after, look no further! **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** They enable us to create failover clusters for our smaller 2 host clients that usually would only have replication but no live migration. ### 18. Starwind Virtual SAN provides robust SAN features using existing hardware **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Greg F. | CTO, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 24, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The biggest plus was that it allowed us to implement SAN services on a reduced hardware budget. We configured a pair of matched servers with vendor supplied disk drives and created a fully redundant storage array between the servers. The VMware hosts are providing high availability failover if either host fails. Not needing to spend a huge amount for a dedicated solutions was a big benefit and the system is easily expandable if we need to add storage. Their support team has been excellent in helping us throughout the project process. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The only difficulty we ran into was with the documentation. While deploying the solution in our test environment, we encountered several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us. Starwind provided excellent pre-sales support and scheduled several meetings between our IT staff and their team to review the configuration and answer questions. This support helped in deploying the software in our test environment and improved our understanding of the product. Support was always willing to help with any issues that we were confused over and continued to follow up with us after the project went into production. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** The biggest benefit we received is that it allowed us to build SAN services on a reduced hardware budget. We deployed a pair of matched servers with vendor sourced hard drives and created a fully redundant storage array between the servers. Our VM hosts will now provide high availability failover to protect against hardware failure. Eliminating the need for dedicated SAN hardware was great and the system is easily expandable if we need to make changes. Their support team has been excellent in helping us throughout the project process. ### 19. The best support and a great product **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Leisure, Travel & Tourism | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Fast and reliable storage and outstanding support. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Relies on a virtual machine for management instead of integration. Not the end of the world. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We went from active-passive model from an active-passive one. This has resulted in us being in a much better position. It has allowed us to meet business continuity needs. ### 20. Great experience- 5 years up and running flawlessly. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Market Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** It just works. I have never looked back after running my entire company on one small virtual SAN. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Not much. I haven't had any problems. They are working on improving the console interface but I still like it. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am always up. Updates, patches and reboots no longer require any downtime. ### 21. StarWind great ROI **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Buddy W. | Director Of Technical Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 29, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I like the ability to use any hardware with their software. This allows me to design how powerful I need it, but also lets me shop for the best deals. It also allows me to have no hardware contracts. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Really there is not to dislike, it is very lightweight software that does its purpose. The only thing I would like to see is maybe some additional reporting via email or hardware snapshots supported by veeam. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Well we have replaced all other hardware based SAN systems, and therefore do not have our expensive support contracts. We are also able to grow our systems as needed. ### 22. StarWind Virtual SAN review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The vendor assists you with deployment to make sure you are deploying according to vendor best practices. The price is very appealing compared to other virtual SAN products out there. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The only thing I dislike is the lack of webUI to check status. The utility is an installed program and has a learning curve for those non-technical folks who may want to use it. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** HPE StoreVirtual is no longer available to buy or support. StorMagic, which is the HPE vendor replacement, is pricey. Starwind helped solve the problem for a typical SMB to make the jump to a hyperconverged environment. ### 23. Best Virtual San for the Value **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Food Production | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 13, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Value for money Easy to Manage Agnostic Software **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Some security features missing. The alerting should be improved **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** We have been runing Starwind Vurtual San in a production enviroment since 2009 with vmware. We run all types of software on top of Starwind (Diferent types of Database, factory software, security software, ERP...). **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Datacenter Uptime Datacenter Availability Meets low budget requirements ### 24. Great VSA solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** easy deployment and great support for installations, has a free version to test before purchasing **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** SMTP make the management services to crash if not well configured **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** working good and fast on RAID 5 with write cache enabled, imagine with RAID 0 or RAID 6 , fast Vsan storage **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** using vsan storage for the whole datacenter ### 25. StarWind Virtual SAN Provided an effective and cost-effective solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bob B. | Chief Operating Officer (COO), Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The support team helped us through the implementation - they were extremely knowledgeable. Everything worked as expected and then some. The cost of this solution versus a hardware appliance was significant. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** nothing .. they exceeded all expectations. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Upgrading an out-of-date architecture -- including migration from VMware to Hyper-V. Windows 2012R2 to Windows 2019. Replacing VNXe3100. ### 26. Efficient And Cost Effective Solution **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pierre-Yves L. | Application Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Software was easy to install, support is top notch and overall solution proved to be much more cost effective than the competition **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Slightly complex architecture Tooling spread across web UI + desktop client Requires a lot of network interfaces **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Definitely a viable alternative to competitors product **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hyperconverging vSphere nodes storage without spending a fortune ### 27. amazing product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** efficient, stable and easy to use, ... all this quality reduce maintenance/configuration time **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I can not think of anything that I dislike about the product. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing HA storage for very attractive price ### 28. StarWind virtual SAN - huge bang for the buck **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** It is simple and runs on standard hardware. It is reliable and has great support. It does what it is supposed to do without the angst I felt with the previous EMC solution when it wouldn't work properly and support had a hard time figuring out why. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** No real downsides for my environment. For large environments, its use of standard server hardware might not be sufficient. Ours runs on Windows, although there is now a Linux version **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have three Starwind SANs which are providing shared storage for our VMWare ESXi hosts. We switched from FC to iSCSI with their install and are seeing great cost savings from not having to support FC anymore. ### 29. Starwind SAN review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 28, 2022 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** After sales support, ease of implementation, cost effective **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Nothing so far, this product has worked as advertised and expected. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** this product has been implemented to provide backup redundancy for our site. ### 30. StarWind vSAN Post-Install Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Chemicals | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Great customer service before purchase, during setup, and after purchase. The system is very easy to use, it just takes a little time to understand how the system works if you come from a NAS or SAN setup. Performance is good, customizability of hardware is great (and great guidance from the StarWind staff), reliability and resiliency to failures has been perfect, and there is very little maintenance. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Some of the documentation could be clearer (how the software is designed, power loss graceful shutdown, and testing). **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were going through a hardware refresh for running vSphere. We wanted a system with higher performance and reduced single points of failure. Starwind vSAN provides us with reduced hardware (only server nodes, no separate storage or storage switches needed) reducing racking complexity (i.e.: running wiring), reduced single points of failure (no more single SAN as a failure point), better performance by providing storage in a "Direct Attached" method, and easier maintenance since there is no longer any storage or storage related networking to deal with. ### 31. Best HA Solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alan S. | President, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 18, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Firstly, I be remiss if I didn't comment on their excellent support. Forget about the nightmare of language barriers or support staff not up to the task. Every support tech we spoke with was very capable of handling the issue. Secondly, their product is rock solid and flexible. It also allows you to build with your own hardware, or opt for an appliance. Did I mention flexible? **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I honestly have no complaints whatsoever. A+ company. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Compare the Appliances and also consider building your own custom solution with Virtual SAN. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were solving th eproblems and complexities of delivering reliable HA with our platform. The benefits are CUstom built hardware for our unique requirements and a cost factor that provided the best ROI of all the solutions considered... by thousands of dollars. ### 32. Hyper-V high availability without the SAN price tag **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeff T. | IT Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 15, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** After implementation, we haven't had to touch it. It's rock solid and saved us a ton of money. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** It would be helpful if StarWind provided clearer and more detailed documentation with explanations of how it can be configured in various scenarios, including advantages and disadvantages of each. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We retired an old standalone VMware server with a highly available Hyper-V cluster for a low price. ### 33. Great product, great support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shawn D. | Sysadmin, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The ease of installation. Starwind engineers take care of the operation from start to finish. They know what they are doing and work quickly. The technology is great; it's very aware of itself and can alert when there is an issue. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I haven't come across anything yet. We have been using the software for almost a year, and it has been very reliable. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problem solved is creating a cluster without having to use a SAN. The benefit is using existing hardware to maximize its potential. ### 34. Solif product for cost **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pusker G. | Director OF IT, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 01, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Its a Solid Product. Easy to use and they have a good support team. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Not that i can think of. Overall we are very happy with the purchase **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** High avaibility. ### 35. The best Customer Support. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vaclav F. | IT manager / system administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** StarWind = great support. We solved all the challenges. The StarWind Virtual SAN definitely delivers everything we expected from the cluster all-flash solution for very reasonable price. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Please be very careful about the hardware you are going to use. It has to be 100% reliable with good support. The software solution is totally dependent on it and you will be able to stress it to it's limits. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Please be very careful about the hardware you are going to use. It has to be 100% reliable with good support. The software solution is totally dependent on it and you will be able to stress it to it's limits. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used old slow storage from Dell. We had to change it. We wanted to go all-flash but with reasonable budget. We did not want to be HW vendor-locked. StarWind Virtual SAN fits perfectly. I know this company since it provided SW iSCSI solution for my Windows Server 2003 farm and it is so log time ago :-). With StarWind solution we gained not just the product but the partner. Their Customer Support is just perfect. ### 36. Starwind VSAN is a good product with excellent support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David B. | Senior Systems Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I like the fact that Starwind VSAN is hypervisor agnostic and has excellent tech and customer support. The GUI is fairly straightforward and easy to use. Their tech support helped me to solve a major issue that I had, without losing any data, **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Starwind VSAN requires manual intervention any time one of the server nodes needs to be shut down. The shared storage has to be put into maintenance mode, which takes it offline. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Make sure to follow Starwind's best practices when setting up the network and virtual disks. You can start with the free version to see if the performance meets your needs. The paid version with a GUI really does make administration easier, and their tech and customer support are excellent. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed some faster shared storage than what our older hardware SAN offered, This works excellently for the new VMs we needed for running our new vital signs capturing software. Starwind VSAN saved us money since we didn't have to purchase a new hardware SAN. It works well within our Hyper-V environment. ### 37. Versatile Product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ben G. | S, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** ease of implementation. The product was extremely easy to download and install. once installed i was able to create a virtual tape library in just a matter of clicks. Setting up iscsi was straight forward. I use this product in conjunction with Veeam. To get Veeam to see the tape library was very straightforward and now I have backup to tape running. In addition to just have local virtual tapes, Starwind can integrate directly with a cloud provider Wasabi. Now I have backup to disk, tape and cloud. 3-2-1 backup rule is satisfied. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** cant find a downside really. i like this product **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** I use this product for a virtual tape library. if you are looking to backup to tape and/or add cloud storage for backups, highly consider this product. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have satisfied the 3-2-1 backup concept. My VTL server is air gapped and it ships tapes offsite. we have DR in place now ### 38. StarWind helped us solve all our project needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaiah J. | IT Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Their onboarding process connected us with a technician who helped get us going quickly and in a best-practice manner that was incredibly helpful to us. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** We really have not had any complaints. The system is intuitive, and once set up, we have not had any production issues. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** StarWind met our need for shared storage for our Hyper-Visors within the budget limitations we had. The replication allows us a form of "back-up" with copies of our data on multiple servers in our environment allowing for faster restore than going to long-term backups too. ### 39. StarWind vSAN was the right choice for us **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan H. | IT Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** StarWinds was a cost-saving storage option. Support is top-notch and extremely helpful. I love having the vSAN as local storage to free up rack space. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Having a vSAN was a learning curve for me over a physical SAN. While minor, I was not expecting the hardware changes on my host. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** StarWinds is providing me with full redundancy for my storage network connections. Forced with either a high-cost, full-redundant SAN or an affordable vSAN from StarWinds was a logical choice. ### 40. Flexible and practical VSAN solution. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michal C. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Easy integration. A cluster can be built from two servers. Great and fast support. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Nothing. Everything is very good, including support. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** StartWind VSAN allows us to build high availability and realtime replication (even between 2 servers). It offers multiple scaling and replication capabilities, and includes health and performance monitoring tools. For this reason, we can build highly available services for our company, which are currently essential for the activities of each company. Such a model of implementation allows to maintain the company's production continuity and to maintain constant access to data processed by the company. ### 41. Excellent Value and Stellar Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bern F. | Security and Systems Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 26, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** We have been able to improve our internal uptime goals and saved thousands during the purchasing and setup process. The ability of the 2 and 3 node configurations to run without expensive networking hardware is huge advantage for small clusters. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Nothing comes to mind. We've had no issues so far. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Give it serious consideration before considering an expensive SAN purchase. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** StarWind vSAN offers unbeatable pricing for small clusters running on standard server hardware. There was no reliable production ready alternatives at this price point when we were researching for our new Windows failover cluster implementations. ### 42. VSAN - Excellent product and support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** TRAIANO . | Technology Solutions, Support & Training, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 06, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** What I like best about this product is the ability to seamlessly failover to another cluster node while allowing our hyper-v machines to keep serving our employees needs. I has helped with recovery as well by allowing use to quickly recover as needed from other clusters. Migration from Hyper-V local to clustered was pretty smooth as well **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** I dislike the high price, but it is understandable for its reliability and support. I also did no care much for lack of notifications, however we were promised that their newer revision will include such things. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are solving our need for high availability and better use of 10g network along with our high speed NVMEs ### 43. Excellent Performance and Customer Service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 16, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The performance from our traditional NAS iscsi has been amazing. We are a small shop so this has been a great upgrade from our traditonal shared storage and our users have reported noticeable speed improvements. I'm also loving the resiliency it has added to our system. The last thing I want to mention is that the install experience was great. The tech I worked with, Max, was very accommodating with scheduling and provided some great suggestions to get the most from the system. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** If I was going to install this myself it would have been a bit overwhelming I think. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** I think it's a slam dunk if you have been scared off by VMWare pricing. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were looking to increase the speed and resiliency in our VMWare environment and Starwind Vsan accomplishes both of those objectives. ### 44. High Availability that works for VM Storage! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** With Starwind VSAN, we are able to totally change how the existing SAN infrastructure is utilized. Before there was a very expensive SAN sitting at a secondary location literally service no purpose for production. It would only ever be used if there was a site failure or SAN failure. But with this new solution, both our SANs are actively used to provide storage for production VMs, basically turning our two SANs into a RAID1! **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** If I could think of any cons to mention, I'd list them. But I honestly can't think of any. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Previous to Starwind VSAN, one SAN replicated all volumes to an offsite SAN through a direct L2 fiber connection every 5 minutes. The downside here was that if there was a DR scenario, data loss of up to 5 minutes was possible, and the process of mapping existing VMs to replicated iSCSI volumes would have been very tedious. Additionally, a SAN failure would inevitably result in downtime for running VMs in addition to data loss. Now with Starwind VSAN, data replication is realtime, not on a schedule. ### 45. Great replacement for the traditional SAN **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Giedrius G. | IT Department Manager/Senior IT Administrator/Helpdesk Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2021 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Runs great, quick to setup and the support is great. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Nothing really comes to mind, have been using it for ~6 months and had only once issue because of the hardware failure where StarWind VSAN did not start correctly on one of the nodes in the cluster, the issue was resolved by support in few minutes. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Remove traditional SAN which gave us a single point of failure and reducing costs which were lower than buying new SAN, SSDs etc. ### 46. Happy Customer from Higher Education Institution **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marcel Y. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 12, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Very easy to deploy; only require 2 nodes to run with HA; good value for features and performance; option to use RAM as a storage cache **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** None for now, did not face any critical issue for our main purposes **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** So far we found vSAN solution is very easy to deploy, especially for the first timer, and some existing servers. It has competitive license cost, good support and allow us to have vSAN and HA with only 2 nodes (small footprint). **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a higher education institution (university), we're very concerned with the investment cost for our infrastructure. We're using a VMware solution for our server and desktop virtualization environment (small scale). The challenge is always about storage performance, and our server's vendor suggests a SAN solution for our virtualization environment, but those hardware-based (traditional) SAN were so expensive for us. Until we did a little research, and comparison, then decided to use Starwind vSAN solution as leverage for our storage infrastructure. Their solution allows us to leverage our old server becoming SAN storage and at the same time with HA features for reliability. Previously, our configuration was limited in DAS (Direct Attached Storage), now we have HA and vmotion on our infrastructure environment. Starwind vSAN is also very easy to deploy, I was one the lecturer for server virtualization class, and feel confident to introduce Starwind vSAN to our students. ### 47. A perfect solution for those looking for an alternative to a traditional SAN! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristijan S. | Lead System Administrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Ease of deployment! Takes less than an hour for a simple deployment scenario! **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Haven't encountered issues with it so far! **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** If you're looking for an alternative to a traditional SAN, this is the way to go. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cost and operational efficiency. Relatively cost effective compared to a traditional SAN and easy to operate and maintain. Set it and forget it. ### 48. StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mart V. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Easy to use and affordable share storage solution that are hardware agnostic, works with two nodes, reduces complexity and takes less administration time. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** iSIR is experimental. No  security and bug fixes without active support agreement. **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** It's kind of software you setup and forget.. it just works. Also it provides redundant and highly available storage with two nodes - nice for SMB-s. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Highly available storage for our VMware vSphere environment. Less complex system compared traditional storage, less administration time. ### 49. Highly reliable and cost effective **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tyler C. | CTO - Partner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 14, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The ability to use off the shelf components to build a highly available flexible software defined SAN is amazing. **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** The lack of deduplication inside of CSVs **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** We had numerous reliability problems with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct that we were able to solve using our existing hardware capital by deploying StarWinds. ### 50. Cost efective virtual san **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 05, 2020 **What do you like best about StarWind Virtual SAN?** It easy to setup and operate, very reliable and with good performances **What do you dislike about StarWind Virtual SAN?** Not really much, its works just fine without any issues **Recommendations to others considering StarWind Virtual SAN:** Its really nice alternative to costly SAN solutions, it flexibble and you can get it as a software only and deploy it on your hardware or as a ready made appliance, their support is really good. **What problems is StarWind Virtual SAN solving and how is that benefiting you?** Consolidation of multiple storage system into one Active-Active System, cost reduction, performance improvement ## StarWind Virtual SAN Discussions - [Is StarWind Free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-starwind-free) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is virtual SAN in Hyper-V?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-virtual-san-in-hyper-v) - 1 comment - [How does StarWind virtual SAN work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-does-starwind-virtual-san-work) - 1 comment - [View StarWind Virtual SAN pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/starwind-virtual-san/reviews?page=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-21+19%3A24%3A27+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=4f68b4b3-c7d3-4a96-8cf3-ee67ff982ec9&secure%5Btoken%5D=8c982e49e6f292dbd343e6136300c78140f66eace01e09168c807024b2f51b7a&format=llm_user) ## StarWind Virtual SAN Integrations - [Microsoft Windows Server 2019 with HyperV](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-windows-server-2019-with-hyperv/reviews) - [Proxmox VE](https://www.g2.com/products/proxmox-ve/reviews) - [VMware vSphere](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsphere/reviews) - [Windows Server](https://www.g2.com/products/tidal-media-inc-windows-server/reviews) ## StarWind Virtual SAN Features **Core Functions** - Server Virtualization - Storage Virtualization - Network Virtualization **General Functionality** - Dynamic Scaling - High Availability - Data Security - Backup and Recovery **Configuration** - Appliance Independence - Hardware Integration **Agentic AI - Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) Solutions** - Autonomous Task Execution - Adaptive Learning - Decision Making ## Top StarWind Virtual SAN Alternatives - [Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)](https://www.g2.com/products/nutanix-cloud-infrastructure-nci/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (291 reviews) - [SC// HyperCore Virtualization Suite](https://www.g2.com/products/sc-hypercore-virtualization-suite/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (322 reviews) - [VMware vSAN](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsan/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (210 reviews)