East Iowa Machine Company (EIMCo) improves operational efficiency by creating a highly available clustered storage environment with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), East Iowa Machine Company (EIMCo) operated a single server for file sharing on Microsoft Hyper-V. This architecture created a single point of failure. Planned reboots and updates caused unavoidable downtime, disrupting access to critical data.

The company required high availability but could not justify the cost of a full-scale datacenter solution. The existing setup lacked redundancy and could not ensure continuous file services, making it difficult to meet uptime requirements with the available resources.

Our new cluster setup running StarWind has been a solid improvement in uptime and has solved our immediate needs. To date, the StarWind product has exceeded our initial expectations, and it’s nice to know we can expand its use with very little effort.

Scott Kurimski, Director of Information Technology

SOLUTION

EIMCo deployed StarWind VSAN to build a two-node cluster on Hyper-V. StarWind enabled highly available storage by synchronizing local disks between nodes, eliminating the need for shared storage or Datacenter licensing.

The new cluster ensures continuous file access during maintenance or node failure. The deployment was completed in a few days and reduced costs by about $20K compared to alternative hardware. The solution improved uptime, simplified management, and provided a scalable foundation for future expansion, including a potential second cluster.