StarWind Software, Inc. announced the fifth-generation of its flagship product StarWind 5.0, an iSCSI SAN software platform which turns any industry-standard x86 or x64 Windows server into a fail-safe, fault-tolerant storage that will be continuously available even in the event of failure.



With this new release, StarWind redefines high availability storage by offering this enterprise-class technology, which was previously only available in high-end storage products, to small and midsize companies at an affordable price. This combination of true active-active high availability and affordable price is unprecedented.

StarWind's true active-active high availability (HA) architecture provides continuous and non-disruptive access to storage in the event of failure by synchronously mirroring data between two active storage appliances, or nodes, in real time. This technology is important to IT professionals because it eliminates a single point of failure. If a disk, power or even an entire storage node fails, the redundant storage node will take over and will continue actively operating without any disruption, ensuring that storage is available and accessible on the network.

"We are thrilled to announce the availability of StarWind 5 which is on track to deliver reliability, performance and ease-of-use," said Zorian Rotenberg, President and CEO of StarWind Software. "With this new release, we are making enterprise-class high availability storage truly affordable to small and midsize companies."

"The new StarWind with automatic failover and failback makes data on networked storage continuously available and it really simplifies storage management," said Taylor Strong, Systems Specialist at Oklahoma State University. "We can now have a cost-effective fault-tolerant SAN."

Greg Shields, a VMware vExpert and a Microsoft MVP, says: "With the introduction of StarWind 5.0, VMware and Hyper-V users can have the reliability, performance and data availability they need at an affordable price."

StarWind 5.0 Key Features:

• Synchronous Mirroring with Automatic Failover: mirrors data in real time across a storage cluster, ensuring that storage is continuously available in the event of failure.
• Failback with Fast Synchronization: re-synchronizes data back to the original storage node and restores it to a previous live state before failure.
• Remote Replication across a WAN: replicates data to a remote location. allowing multi-site disaster recovery in the event of a disaster at the primary site.
• CDP & Snapshots: captures instant, point-in-time volume images, allowing a user to rollback and recover an entire volume or individual files and folders.
• Server clustering: supports Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, VMware ESX and vSphere 4.0 and other applications.
• Redesigned User Interface: allows IT professionals to easily manage all storage from a central management console built on the same tree structure used in Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

"StarWind continues to show its commitment to channel partners," said Leonard Jacobs, CEO of Netsecuris, a premier managed IT services provider (MSP). "The new product delivers enterprise storage at cost-effective prices and this is exactly what our customers need."

Pricing and Availability:
StarWind HA is available immediately from StarWind and from authorized resellers in North America, Europe and Asia. Prices range from $395.00 for the basic StarWind Server iSCSI Target to $5,995, an all-inclusive license for the High Availability edition that includes 2 active-active storage nodes with unlimited capacity and with all enterprise-class features. All licenses include a 1st year of StarWind Premium Support and Maintenance.