Meku Mechatronische Systeme GmbH ensures stable production IT operations by replacing an aging hardware SAN with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Meku Mechatronische Systeme GmbH operated its IT infrastructure on VMware ESXi with a local hardware SAN and a software SAN from StorMagic. The hardware SAN was out of support, spare parts were expensive, and the manufacturer announced the end of delivery for critical components such as mainboards. The system enforced strong vendor lock-in, allowing only certified disks and controllers instead of standard HDDs, SSDs, or NVMe devices. This made upgrades costly and inflexible.

Other solutions were evaluated, but StorMagic and VMware vSAN were too expensive, while Open-E and TrueNAS did not meet performance needs.

StarWind VSAN has worked fine without any issues for a year now. We can deliver more performance to the users than initially planned.

Thomas Beibl, IT Administrator

SOLUTION

Meku Mechatronische Systeme GmbH chose StarWind VSAN because it replaced the legacy SAN and removed hardware dependency. The company could use standard off-the-shelf components sourced from local partners with flexible service contracts. Recommended Intel and Mellanox networking was affordable and widely available, even as refurbished hardware, allowing spare parts to be kept on-site at low cost. With direct assistance from StarWind support, the full environment was tested and deployed within a few hours.

The solution has been running reliably for over a year, delivering higher performance than planned. The company saved around €12K compared to StorMagic or VMware vSAN, €20K versus Dell EqualLogic SAN, and €25K versus NetApp, and plans to expand the setup further.