Cisco Cloud Object Storage (COS) provides distributed, resilient, high-performance storage and retrieval of binary large object (blob) data. Object storage is distributed across a cluster of hardware systems, or nodes. The storage cluster is resilient against hard drive failure within a node and against node failure within a cluster. Nodes can be added to or removed from the cluster to adjust cluster capacity as needed.
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StarWind Virtual SAN
Score 9.9 out of 10
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StarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.
Cisco Cloud Object [Storage's] primary objective is to offer a secure, standard, and professional storage space, for the content that the company has. Further, Cisco Cloud Object Storage makes the access and the [sharing] of every detail efficient and remarkable. Again, the monitoring and overseeing of the database from Cisco Cloud Object Storage is [progress] that the developer established. Finally, the application [enhances] data migration, an effective way of managing content.
For companies that have 4-5 or more servers, StarWind is a great solution to provide high availability for a low price. It can scale up very nicely for larger implementations to more like 15-20 servers with ease. Although we haven't used it for even larger environments, it's doable. What its not appropriate are really small locations that have 1-2 servers. Unfortunately no one seems to have a good HCC solution in this space.
the StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm health of the sync
The High Available nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end users noticing any downtime
Their support is proactive alerting when firmware updates are needed (including iDRAC firmware) or when there are any warnings in the event logs, and schedule a time to remediate the issue with you.
Integration with Other Platforms: Some users have reported difficulty in integrating StarWind Virtual SAN with other platforms, such as cloud environments or other storage arrays, making it less flexible for some use cases.
Lack of Advanced Features: Some users have reported that StarWind Virtual SAN lacks some advanced features, such as the ability to perform in-depth storage analysis and reporting, or the ability to manage storage tiering and data migration.
User-Friendliness: While StarWind Virtual SAN features a user-friendly interface, some users have reported that certain features are still hard to use, especially for those without a background in storage technology.
This review is my baseline experience with StarWind Virtual SAN, should something significantly change in my experience over a longer period, then I will update this review but since the feature-set of StarWind Virtual SAN has been researched to meet our on-premise needs (and StarWind fulfills them), it should be relatively steady.
Cisco Cloud Object Storage (COS) stands out in terms of scalability, reliability, and security. Even the storage plans are competitive with other cloud object storage providers. It provides great performance for unstructured data and large datasets, which are highly used in industries requiring analyses of large datasets. For an efficient user experience, it also provides content delivery for the users spanning across the globe.
It was a little complex to get my head around the initial configuration and operation of StarWind Virtual SAN but after following the guides and some assistance from support once the initial setup is complete the day to day management is very straightforward.
The solution has been tested under constant usage for 5 years now and there (knock on wood) has yet be an outage. There were instances if human error during the operation and the StarWind reliably intervened, either through a synchronization or reporting of a degredation of interfaces, e.g. the heartbeat interface.
The software delivered exceptional performance until now with very fast write and speed rates, around 900MB/s through a 10GBit connection on a virtualized fileserver. It meets our demands without any problems whatsoever and we are a very media heavy environment with TBs of raw data.
Having dealt with a bit of subpar support in my career, I can say that the support team at StarWind never drifted lower than middle-of-the-pack. They met my expectations of support from contemporary tech companies, at least, and surpassed my expectations more often than not. Nothing makes a Monday morning scramble easier than knowing that support won't add more stress than it relieves.
Overall the setup was easy, we did require some help from the technical support team but other than that, we followed all of StarWinds prerequisites and everything else just fell nicely into place with hardly any downtime. The downtime was only due to moving VMs from our previous cluster over to the new StarWind storage cluster.
While they may have more robust enterprise grade features like duplication, the price point of Nimble and DD makes it a very tough sell in a cost concious environment. Starwind provides us with great reliability and enough features to make it an easy sell.
The software is very scalable storage wise. The storage is provisioned through config files, which are created either through PowerShell scripts or the Management Console on the paid version. After that the storage is provisioned through iSCSI. In our case, in case of expansion, we would have to run the PowerShell scripts and do another full synchronization to update any remaining backup nodes, but the procedure is clear and even easier via Management Console, just expand the RAID array, punch the new capacity into the console and start the synchronization!
StarWind Virtual SAN has helped many organizations reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) for storage. This has been achieved through cost savings in areas such as hardware, power, cooling, and maintenance
Provides high-performance, low-latency storage that is optimized for virtualization, which can help improve the speed and responsiveness of applications
Provides synchronous replication, automated failover, and real-time replication monitoring, which helps ensure that data is always available and accessible
