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.

StarWind is a trusted partner to a whole host of successful retailers around the globe. Our solutions easily support all the mission-critical services between HQ and Edge locations, granting superb performance, resiliency, and scalability to retail IT. We’ve got a lot of useful new information for the industry and offers in-store to share with new audiences.

Register in the link to attend Tech for Retail and learn how to make your retail business’ IT infrastructure resilient and future-ready from StarWind Engineers themselves.

COFED, a Congolese public institution, required a shared storage solution to ensure continuous business operations and data integrity. The institution experienced many problems in case its single data center broke down. The work stopped for several hours or even a day while waiting for the data restoration. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), COFED creates a 2-node high availability (HA) storage cluster, achieves 24/7 business operations, and ensures zero downtime.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Microsoft announced Azure Basic Load Balancer (LB) end-of-life from September 30, 2025. Anyone using that tool will have to migrate to the new Azure Standard LB. There are several prerequisites to be made, as well as associated downtime during migration. The new format of the tool is also for-pay.

Read the guide by Florent Appointare, a Microsoft Engineer, on which steps to take to easily migrate from Azure Basic LB to Standard LB.

Synergium, an international translation and localization company, needed to ensure 24/7 operation of its translation services. However, its SAN implementation represented a single point of failure (SPOF) putting in jeopardy smooth IT infrastructure functioning. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), Synergium creates an HA storage cluster, eliminates a SPOF issue, and builds a fault-tolerant environment allowing for up-to-the-minute translation technology adoption.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Microsoft recently announced Windows Hello for Business Hybrid Cloud Kerberos Trust to help with the complexity of passwordless authentication. It is commonly thought passwords are the weakest link in a company’s cybersecurity posture. While Azure has seen various aspects of passwordless authentication, Windows has been lacking.

Read the article by Brandon Lee, a virtualization expert, on how Microsoft approaches passwordless authentication in Windows Hello for hybrid cloud with Kerberos trust.

Being a small rural hospital in the U.S., Northwest Regional Health had an extremely thin IT budget. However, it was forced to purchase new $100,000+ hardware every 5-6 years within its existing IT infrastructure. It was a very heavy cost, plus all DIY support articles were locked behind a service contract. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), Northwest Regional Health deploys an HA cluster and gets a sizeable performance increase, while saving $85000 on its capital expenditures (CapEx).

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

While VMware has been overhauling and stepping up in all arias of its vSphere environment over the last decade, it’s been sort of looking over its hypervisor. The recent VMware ESXi 8.0 has seen some new introductions here and there. Most notably, improvements are seen in its installation, configuration, and user interface (UI).

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a virtualization expert, on what’s new to note in the latest installment of VMware ESXI 8.0.

RealTime Services, a U.S. company providing accounting and financial outsourcing services, had problems with licensing rented servers and slow storage operations. Whenever they wanted to increase their IT infrastructure performance, the competitor company tried to add another 1-2 years to the contract to extend the license. Using StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), RealTime Services move to hyperconvergence, achieve ultimate flexibility and performance, and save about $1,500 each month on its IT operational expenses (OpEx).

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Veeam Backup & Recovery v11 now includes the option to backup data to Google Cloud Storage. This provides more flexibility to users who wish to choose Google over Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, or other public cloud vendors. Such a feature offers further user-friendliness while still abiding by the 3-2-1 backup rule.

Read the new guide by Paolo Valsecchi, a virtualization expert, on what steps to take to store your backup data to Google Cloud Storage via Veeam B&R 11.

Windows 11 2H22 includes several new elements that make its installation into vSphere 8 and then the creation of a VMware Golden Image much easier. Before that, the OS missed some drivers that required more juggling to make things work. Now, it includes the VMware PVSCSI and VMXNET3 drivers and other stuff to fix previous issues.

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a virtualization expert, on the tips for creating a VMware Golden Image for your Windows 11 in your vSphere 8.0.