High-Availability Storage with DataCore & StarWind vSAN
Software-based high availability for your storage – on existing or freely chosen hardware, with no physical SAN appliance.
Who is it for?
Companies that want to keep using existing or freely chosen server hardware for a resilient storage system, instead of buying a turnkey appliance.
A storage system is often the least visible but most critical part of your IT: if it fails, every server and application relying on it grinds to a halt – no matter how well the servers themselves are protected.
- Does your entire infrastructure depend on a single storage system with no redundancy?
- If your storage failed, would you have to restore from backup – and how long would that take?
- Would you rather invest in a physical SAN appliance, or keep using your existing server hardware?
Storage high availability without a physical SAN appliance
With DataCore SANsymphony or StarWind vSAN, we set up a software-based high-availability solution for your storage – on your existing or freely chosen server hardware, with no additional physical SAN appliance required. Both products continuously mirror data synchronously between two or more servers: if one fails, your storage remains available without interruption via the remaining node.
Two products, one manufacturer
DataCore acquired StarWind in May 2025 – both are now sibling products from the same manufacturer with different positioning. StarWind vSAN is specifically built for smaller two-node clusters and remote sites, and stands out for comparatively simple setup. DataCore SANsymphony is geared more toward larger, central environments, with storage virtualization across multiple, even heterogeneous, storage systems. We choose the right product for your environment's size together with you.
Flexible instead of vendor-locked
Since the solution runs on your existing or freely chosen hardware, you're not tied to a specific server or SAN vendor. This pays off especially if you want to keep using existing hardware, or if a turnkey appliance like TERRA XALER isn't the right fit for you. For a comparison of all paths to high availability – including the appliance option and a Proxmox/Ceph option – see our overview page High Availability for Servers & Storage.
