Product Bulletin

StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V:

Free vs. Paid Edition
Easy Upgrade

StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V Free is a reliable and fault-tolerant SAN solution
that requires ZERO software investments and ensures a 50%* reduction on
hardware expenses!

To enjoy all the advantages

of a paid version of StarWind
Native SAN for Hyper-V you
need to simply activate a
purchased license key.

StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V Free Edition makes high availability and
clustering technologies absolutely affordable to virtualization professionals and
fans! It requires neither software expenses nor hardware purchases.

The license can be applied

to the storage created with
StarWind Free. The storage
capacity and the number of
servers will be defined by
the software edition that you
purchased.

Effective & proven storage architecture

The main distinction of this storage solution lies in its proven Hyper-V-native
architecture. It enables the SAN software to run directly on the parent partition
of a hypervisor server! Therefore, StarWind Native SAN Free does not require a
dedicated storage server and effectively utilizes the existing IT resources.
Such storage architecture provides 50% higher performance due to the reduction
of network requests by half and 50% less latency (compared to a classic SAN).
Best value for virtualization professionals
A big WIN for the budget:

StarWind Native SAN for

Hyper-V Free edition is all
in one easy-to-use tool
completely for FREE!

ZERO software investments

Hardware requirements reduced by 50% (compared to a classic SAN)
Unlimited storage capacity**
Reduced storage space consumption by means of data deduplication

A big WIN for data protection:

High availability and the proven recoverability of data
Simple management and total compatibility with Hyper-V
High performance
Limitations of StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V Free:

NO asynchronous WAN-replication
NO SPTI
NO SAN/NAS cluster file share
HA storage capacity is limited to 128 GB**
Basic technical support only via community forums, with indefinite
response time

View the chart below to compare the capabilities of free and paid editions of
StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V.

* If compared to classic SAN configurations.

** Unlimited for a single-node device. The HA device is limited to 128 GB.
2012, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Bulletin

Features and
capabilities

Native SAN for

Hyper-V Free

Native SAN for

Hyper-V Paid

Details

Storage capacity

Unlimited
(except for HA
storage, which is
limited to 128 GB)

1 TB - Unlimited

Depending on your storage requirements, you can

create as large storage as you need for keeping
your data. A free edition of Native SAN limits HA
storage capacity to 128 GB (the storage capacity of
other devices is unlimited).

Cache size

512 MB

Unlimited

The cache size of Native SAN Free is limited to 512

MB while the cache size of a paid edition is limited
only by available physical memory of your servers.

StarWind Management Console

Both free and paid licenses provide Management

Console that allows easy and intuitive
management of the StarWind storage.

Centralized
management

# of servers per license

2 or 3

Native SAN Free license covers only 2 storage

servers while a paid license covers 2 or 3 servers.

# of concurrent iSCSI
connections

Unlimited

Both free and paid editions provide an unlimited

number of concurrent iSCSI connections.

# of Ethernet ports

Unlimited

Both free and paid editions provide unlimited

number of Ethernet ports.

# of served
disk drives

Unlimited

Both versions provide an unlimited number of

served disk drives.

Limited

Full

Basic Support

Standard or
Premium Support
Plan

Technical support

Active-Active
High Availability

Basic technical support for the Free Edition is

provided through the open public community
Forum on a best effort basis.
The paid editions include one year of Standard
Technical Support, providing support assistance
through a forum, phone, and email with a response
time of 4-12 hours. The Standard Technical Support
can be upgraded to Premium for an additional fee.

Provides HA shared storage with active-active

(active) failover and failback with the fast
synchronization of your data.

2012, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Bulletin

Features and
capabilities

Native SAN for

Hyper-V Free

Native SAN for

Hyper-V Paid

Details

Asynchronous
WAN-replication

Enhances your DR plan and creates a copy of your

data on a remote site that you may use for disaster
recovery.

NAS/SAN
cluster file share

StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V builds

multiprotocol centralized storage that manages
both file-based (NAS) and block-level (SAN) data.

Disk bridge
(export of physical hard
drives via iSCSI)

Disk bridge completes the emulation of the SCSI

layer that allows for any type of hard drives (PATA/
SATA/RAID) to be used by remote initiator clients.

SPTI
(export of physical devices
via iSCSI)

SPTI is an API that provides the ability to connect

to a server and export, via an iSCSI network, any
physical SCSI-device (hard disk, tape, or optical
drive, etc.).

Image file
(file-based virtual disk)

Image file plug-in enables the creation of virtual

iSCSI hard drives within a regular disk file.

CDP/Snapshots

Captures block level changes of a volume state

at any point in time with an unlimited number of
rollback points.

Thin provisioning

Allocates an exact amount of disk space that is

required at the current moment for writing data to
storage.

High speed caching

Significantly accelerates the storage I/O

performance by using the system memory instead
of waiting for disks to read and write blocks.

Monitoring &
notification services

Provides various services for the monitoring of

processes that take place in a SAN and notifies
about relevant events.

Data deduplication

Eliminates the duplicated data blocks from the

files that are sent to storage thus reducing the disk
space requirements.

2012, StarWind Software Inc. All rights reserved.