We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and StorMagic SvSAN 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."I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"The software is easy to setup and manage, and the support is excellent."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"The support is the most valuable feature. The support has been amazing. It's around the clock. One of our hard disks accidentally ejected without me knowing or being onsite. They called and told me about it before I had a chance to see it myself."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network."
"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 option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure..."
"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 also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
"The most valuable feature of StorMagic SvSAN is its high availability. We have not had any downtime or data loss. Business continuity is highly important."
"StorMagic SvSAN is a very effective solution and the interface is good."
"StorMagic SvSAN's best feature is that it is platform agnostic."
"This synchronization is easy with StorMagic, and we can establish availability between servers."
"We compared two solutions for this use case, but we went with StorMagic because it had more capabilities than the others. It's also more reliable, especially in production environments that require availability and sustainability."
"It gives zero downtime and it works with two nodes rather than three nodes, unlike other solutions."
"It helps us prevent any data loss while working with the failover clusters."
"What I found most valuable in StorMagic SvSAN is integration. As a software-defined storage solution, it's also very easy to use and it's the trend in the market today. StorMagic SvSAN also made the customer happy because the customer could use his existing hardware with it. The customer had rack-mounted storage, so he didn't want to purchase a dedicated hardware for storage purposes. He just upgraded his hard disk drives."
"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"Having more support plan options would be nice."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"The truth is that the operation and support offered is good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."
"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."
"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
"The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."
"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale."
"In the next release, StorMagic SvSAN should include multi-node clusters, which would allow storage spaces to be used more efficiently."
"If we want to want to replicate the VM to the cloud, or off-site, it does not allow it because of asynchronous. There is no option available."
"There are two features missing: there's no REST API functionality, and there is no date duplication in it."
"The deployment of StorMagic SvSAN is very small. However, you need some time to do it. It's important to make a test deployment before the real deployment."
"In terms of what could be improved in StorMagic SvSAN, I don't have a major issue with it, but its user interface should be more customer-oriented."
"They should enable data compression deduplication features for the platform."
"The only improvement area I can see is their licensing. For example, the memory caching feature is only available in an advanced license. Normally, it's in a standard license. It would be better if they had memory caching features in the product. Some backup features should also be in the product"
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews while StorMagic SvSAN is ranked 8th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 9 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while StorMagic SvSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StorMagic SvSAN writes "The best choice for performance and price". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas StorMagic SvSAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, DataCore SANsymphony, LINBIT SDS and StarWind Storage Appliance. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StorMagic SvSAN report.
See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.
We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.