Red Road Networks LLC achieves near-zero downtime and cuts both capital and maintenance costs by creating a failover cluster with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), the client company of Red Road Networks LLC operated its IT infrastructure on a single Microsoft Hyper-V host with direct-attached storage (DAS). This setup offered no clustering or redundancy, leaving the business vulnerable to both planned and unplanned outages. To improve uptime, the company invested in a second Hyper-V host. However, without StarWind, achieving high availability would have required purchasing a costly SAN for shared storage – an investment of around $10,000. Having previously worked with StarWind and trusting its reliability, Red Road Networks chose its solution once again.

We worked with StarWind years ago and have trust in them. There appears to be no other competing solution. With StarWind VSAN, everything works flawlessly.

Chris Porosky, Founder and Systems Architect

SOLUTION

Red Road Networks LLC chose StarWind VSAN to create a fully redundant 2-node Hyper-V failover cluster. Now the client company’s setup uses two Dell PowerEdge T440 servers, each equipped with dual 10Gb NICs connected via DAC cables for lowlatency communication. This architecture not only eliminated the need for an expensive SAN but also minimized maintenance requirements. The new system works flawlessly, ensuring nearzero downtime while reducing both capital and operational expenses. The company also plans to replicate this solution for other clients seeking the same level of uptime and efficiency.