StarWind Virtual SAN is a native, hardware-free virtual machine storage solution centered on the Windows hypervisor. It creates a high-performance, tolerant storage solution fully designed for storage virtualization workloads by mirroring existing servers and RAM between participating storage cluster nodes. The mirrored storage facility is then connected to all cluster nodes and treated by hypervisors and clustered applications as local storage only.

Fault tolerance is achieved through multipath access to all storage nodes. StarWind Virtual SAN offers superior performance compared to any dedicated SAN solution, as it runs locally on the hypervisor and all I/O is handled by RAM, SSD cache, and local disks.

The cost of ownership

The cost of ownership is reduced by at least half, which translates to both operating and capital expenses. StarWind Virtual SAN completely eliminates the need for shared physical storage, associated infrastructure deployment, and maintenance activities, thereby reducing hardware purchase costs and service charges.

Simplicity

Simplicity is a key feature. It runs as a native component of the hypervisor, so it doesn't require any storage or network organization or UNIX administration skills. A typical system administrator with minimal Hyper-V or Windows experience can install, configure, and maintain Virtual SAN operations.

Performance

Virtual SAN is a natural part of the hypervisor. The result is excellent performance and unified management using hypervisor-specific management tools. The software works with all major virtualization platforms, running on Hyper-V and Windows as a native application, and on vSphere or Xen nested within a VM. Non-virtualized clusters typically deployed for intensive use on SQL Server and Exchange installations are also fully supported. StarWind Virtual SAN can also run on a dedicated set of hosts, creating a separate storage tier for consumer use. While a hyperconverged landscape is an industry trend right now, differentiating the compute and storage layers makes sense if you need to grow solely in capacity.

The software implements optimal space reduction technologies for VMs and flash, such as inline mirroring and compression. The result enables greater usability of all flash configurations, increases I/O performance as more data can be identified to fill larger, near-duplicate caches, and also extends flash memory lifespan as the number of write operations is drastically reduced.

Unlike open-source software-defined storage, the solution runs within the hypervisor and was developed entirely in-house. Unlike proprietary SAN and NAS hardware, the application can run bare metal, is perpetually licensed, and offers no hardware locks.