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Blue Machinery ensures uninterrupted access to its critical systems by deploying a high-availability storage cluster with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

November 18, 2025
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Peter Lidbetter
IT Director. Has over 18 years of experience managing infrastructure, Active Directory, and Windows Server environments.
IT Director. Has over 18 years of experience managing infrastructure, Active Directory, and Windows Server environments.

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Blue Machinery operated a small Hyper-V environment on standalone servers. The setup lacked a central storage system, meaning there was no failover or high availability (HA). If one of the servers went down, all workloads hosted on it stopped running, which created unacceptable downtime risks for the company’s operations. Building a traditional SAN-based cluster was considered, but it would have required new hardware, additional licensing, and complex configuration.

The team needed a simple, affordable, and reliable way to achieve true HA using their existing infrastructure.

Implementing StarWind was not really about the money saved. The main thing is knowing that if a host fails, the business does not go down with it. That peace of mind is worth the cost savings alone. The StarWind support has always been first-class as well.

Peter Lidbetter, IT Director

SOLUTION

Blue Machinery chose StarWind VSAN because it turned the local storage of each Hyper-V host into shared storage, synchronizing data between the two servers in real time. This created a mirrored, highly available storage pool that both hosts could access. Now, if one host fails, the other automatically takes over, keeping all workloads online without interruption.

The new two-node StarWind setup delivers full HA and fault tolerance while eliminating the need for a physical SAN. It meets all performance and reliability requirements, giving the company peace of mind and dependable uptime backed by excellent StarWind support.

About the Company
Blue Machinery is a UK-based supplier of materials processing and handling equipment, serving industries such as Quarrying & Demolition, Recycling & Energy, Construction, Scrap, Ports & Rail, and Forestry & Arboriculture.
Region
EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)
Country
Great Britain
Industry
Construction
Product
StarWind Virtual SAN
Inspired by Peter Lidbetter’s success? Want to improve business continuity for your business-critical apps and services?
Dmytro Malynka StarWind Virtual SAN Product Manager
We’ve got you covered! StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) is specifically designed to provide highly-available shared storage for Hyper-V, vSphere, and KVM clusters. With StarWind VSAN, simplicity is key: utilize the local disks of your hypervisor hosts and create shared HA storage for your VMs. Interested in learning more? Book a short StarWind VSAN demo now and see it in action!