We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."
"Their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly."
"The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."
"The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment."
"Data locality provides super-fast data access and ultra-low latency."
"The management interface of this solution is great."
"Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks."
"Hyperconverged Infrastructure is the most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure."
"In general, being able to patch and not having to pay for SanDisk is the best thing about hyper-converged."
"Acropolis' main advantages are high performance and availability."
"Ease of deployment"
"The virtualization environment is now much easier to manage and maintain, there is only one vendor to call in case of issues and one single console to manage everything."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."
"The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."
"We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."
"With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you."
"The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"It is a CentOS-based operating system, but CentOS releases security patches almost every week or every other week. However, Nutanix releases their upgrade at three or four month intervals. According to my organization's SLA, if a critical patch is released during that time, then I need to implement the patches within 30 days. If it is a standard patch, then I need to patch it within 60 days. Since that is my SLA, I cannot meet my SLA for security because Nutanix will not release the upgrade within these 30 days. Between the critical patch release and the Nutanix release, my customers say they are vulnerable and I am accepting the risk while the SLA is breached."
"I would like to see more Kubernetes and container-related workflows and multiple cloud-partner management. I would also like to see how they will synergize all these AI/ML functionalities that are available on other platforms."
"Pricing and varieties of options could be better."
"In Thailand, there really isn't a cloud version of Nutanx available to us."
"The only problem is that not many operating systems are supported on the AOS hypervisor. They need to probably increase the support on multiple operating systems. As of now, a very limited number of operating systems and patch levels are supported on AOS."
"We could always use a performance upgrade, or simplified management."
"Compatible with third party hardware, but it's still very limited."
"The latency needs improvement"
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."
"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."
"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers."
"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 194 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Dell PowerFlex, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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