We performed a comparison between Dell vSAN Ready Nodes and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI 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 fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."
"The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."
"It is easy to install."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."
"The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great."
"In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature."
"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."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"It should reclaim white spaces after big files are deleted."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes must be flexible since it is complex in designing concepts. It needs to improve stability. The product should integrate with the public cloud."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"There is room for improvement in the maintenance pricing. Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution rather than renew this one."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"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."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
"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 web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th in HCI with 14 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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