Finally, StarWind Virtual Storage Appliance is available on Linux allowing you to save costs on Windows licensing. Being hypervisor-agnostic, StarWind VSA easily integrates into any IT infrastructure as a fully pre-configured virtual machine ready for deployment and operation. It simply installs in any existing environment requiring no specialized SAN skills and is managed using StarWind Web console or thick client allowing to control the entire storage infrastructure from a centralized console.
Join our Tap Room Meeting on April 27 11 am PT / 2 pm ET to see all benefits of the StarWind Linux-based VSA.
Register now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/dedicated-live-demo-session

StarWind Virtual SAN Free allows deploying a 2-node cluster providing a highly available storage for your virtual machines to Hyper-V or ESXi hypervisor for free. When deploying multi VSAN Free nodes, the data is synchronized across the network between the nodes. StarWind VSAN Free can be deployed in a hyperconverged model where VSAN Free is installed on hypervisor nodes or in a disaggregated model with separated compute and storage resources. StarWind VSAN Free management capabilities include PowerShell, with StarWind Management console available as a 30-day trial.

Read the full article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant at Lyon to learn how to deploy a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5 on Windows Server 2016 Core Edition.

StarWind gets closer to Linux users by providing them with special Linux-based Virtual Storage Appliance version combining the underlying OS and preinstalled StarWind Virtual SAN, allowing to save money on Windows Licensing when it’s unnecessary.
StarWind VSA is compatible with any hypervisor, be it Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, Xen or KVM and can be managed via a Web Management Console while additionally containing a StarWind vCenter plugin allowing to manage the product directly from vCenter Server.

Read the full article by Vladan Seget, IT and Virtualization consultant to learn more about StarWind Virtual SAN on Linux

AlwaysOn Basic Availability Groups (BAG) supported in SQL Server Standard Edition and AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG) introduced in SQL Server Enterprise Edition were designed to create a replicated environment with improved failover capabilities. However, the two types provide different capabilities while also requiring different licensing costs.

Read the full article by Shashank Singh, Microsoft MVP, and SQL Server Architect to learn more about BAG and AG cost and functionality differences.

Migrating your VMs from one hypervisor to another may be quite a complicated task if there’s no decent virtual machine converter at hand. Fortunately, there are various V2V tools allowing to turn this process into a simple thing. But, when choosing a V2V converter, there are several factors you should take into consideration.

Read the full article to learn how to choose a V2V converter that will become a perfect fit for your needs.

StarWind is currently working on the new product - a flexible and customizable web-based platform which will allow users get the full control over their IT infrastructures from a single HTML5 graphical interface including S2D, Failover Clustering and Hyper-V. More information to be found in a nearby thread: https://mangolassi.it/topic/14114/help-starwind-to-pick-the-name-for-the-upcoming-product

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance utilizes Local Reconstruction Codes, Replication, and Grid Architecture to provide an ultimate fault tolerance rate while delivering sustained high performance. With StarWind HCA, the whole infrastructure remains operational even after multiple disk or node failures. In case a failure occurs, applications are automatically recovered to working cluster disks or nodes, allowing to easily withstand a failure of more than 50% of the cluster nodes.

Watch our video to learn how to get uncompromised resiliency with StarWind HCA
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/get-uncompromised-fault-tolerance-of-it-infrastructure-with-starwind-hyperconverged-appliance

With PowerShell, automatic deployment of Hyper-V VMs in Windows Server 2016 becomes a piece of cake
No doubts, commercial software for automatic VM deployment is great, but it may be too expensive comparing to the goals that need to be achieved. That’s where PowerShell kicks in. With PowerShell commands, the creation and configuration of Hyper-V virtual machines in Windows Server 2016 become a fairly simple thing. But, what is more important, you can create a script which deploys VMs of the same configuration automatically.

Read the full article by Boris Yurchenko, a Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to automate your VMs deployment with PowerShell in Windows Server 2016.

Installing an HTTPS certificate is just a tip of the iceberg. This certificate has a huge number of options that usually are hidden deep inside config files. Actually, these tiny details allow distinguishing a site that can be rendered vulnerable via HTTPS downgrade attack and the one that is really secure.

Read the full article by Gary Williams, a virtualization, storage, and Windows systems administrator, to achieve the highest security.

StarWind team will take the floor at Storage Field Day 15 to reveal new awesome backup storage technologies: Virtual Tape Library with Cloud and Object storage and backed by ProActive Support! Our speaking slot is the first in line: March 9, 8-10 am PT, don’t miss it!

For Livestream, go to https://www.facebook.com/TechFieldDay/ or watch on http://techfieldday.com/, Livestream.com - includes the entire event.

Public cloud LLMs are powerful, but they don't always meet security and compliance needs. Learn from our detailed guide by Marius Sandbu, a cloud-native and end-user computing expert, for StarWind on how to deploy Large Language Models (LLMs) on your own infrastructure and create a private AI environment – from GPU requirements to scaling for multiple users. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dN

Energy Trust of Oregon, a U.S.-based nonprofit helping utility customers save energy and generate renewable power, struggled with cumbersome management and significant downtime risks caused by standalone servers, requiring manual virtual machine (VM) migrations during maintenance and hardware failures. The organization sought a cost-effective and resilient solution to achieve high availability (HA) for its IT infrastructure. By implementing StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Energy Trust of Oregon creates a 2-node HA cluster, enables seamless failover and simplified maintenance, eliminates the need for manual interventions, and minimizes downtime, thus ensuring uninterrupted operations. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dK

Snapshots are great for quick rollbacks. Backups are your lifeline in a disaster. Don’t rely on one when you really need the other.
Check out our new guide by Dmytro Malynka, StarWind Product Manager, to understand how they work and when to use them in your data protection plan. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dH

John Wood Community College, a U.S.-based educational institution, struggled with a complex and costly IT setup, relying on Dell servers and SAN storage that were difficult to manage and expensive to maintain. The college needed a cost-effective solution that could replace its SAN-based infrastructure with a simplified and scalable system. By deploying StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), John Wood Community College consolidates its IT infrastructure, moves to hyperconvergence, and improves performance with an all-flash, fully redundant Hyper-V cluster, thus ensuring uninterrupted academic operations. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dE

No more “Run as Administrator” - Windows 11 (24H2+) now supports sudo, just like Unix / Linux systems! This means you can execute privileged commands with ease, right from the console. Want to know how to set it up?
Check out our full guide by Karim Buzdar, IT Engineer & Linux Expert, for #StarWind. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dB

Microsoft ’s Remote Desktop client is on the way out, with end-of-support set for March 27, 2026. Check out the full guide by Brandon Lee, IT Consultant, for StarWind to learn what's changing and where to migrate. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dy

Northeast Security Bank, a U.S.-based financial institution, had an issue with its manual and time-consuming disaster recovery (DR) process, which required hours to restore virtual machines (VMs) between standalone VMware ESXi hosts. The bank needed a cost-effective, highly redundant solution to automate failover and streamline IT maintenance without disrupting operations. By deploying StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), Northeast Security Bank creates a hyperconverged IT environment, automates VM failover, and enhances redundancy, while ensuring uninterrupted banking operations. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/du

Copy-on-Write changes the game by eliminating unnecessary duplication. Need to clone a VM? Snapshot a database? CoW handles it all – efficiently.
Explore from our latest article by Ivan Ischenko, a StarWind Pre-Sales Engineer, how this simple concept leads to huge savings in time, storage, and performance. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dr

Alfa Adhesives, Inc., a U.S.-based manufacturer of industrial adhesives, relied on an aging Dell PowerEdge VRTX system with single points of failure. The company needed cost-effective shared storage to replace its end-of-life servers without the complexity and expense of traditional SAN-based solutions. By deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Alfa Adhesives, Inc. creates a fully redundant two-node system on familiar Dell hardware, ensures high availability (HA), reduces costs, and simplifies management while delivering seamless performance and ensuring operational efficiency. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/do

SMBs should be aware that VMware / Broadcom ’s new rules could be a big blow to your budget. With a 72-core minimum license requirement, you could end up paying for more than you use. And that’s not the only bad news.
Get all the details in our latest guide by Vladan Seget, a virtualization expert, for StarWind before these changes affect your costs. Read more here: https://starwind.com/s/dl