We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity 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."It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"The product's core feature of virtualizing our storage is by far the most valuable."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"I like the expandability of the solution. We can effortlessly grow the storage and resources without downtime."
"The simple management comes in handy since a standard VMware admin can manage it."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"Technical support is perfect. They explain to us the solution in a very clear and simple way. When we call them, they know the right answer and get the right person automatically."
"Our clients are very comfortable with the single management of the complete stack. The creation of VM systems is also very fast."
"We have not had any problem with customer support at SimpliVity."
"I like SimpliVity because it can be adapted for small clients or the biggest ones. It's flexible."
"The most valuable feature is that the product has an inborn backup."
"The sales process is easy."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"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."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"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."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"We had one call with technical support which was not completely answered to our satisfaction. We did not receive the right answer."
"I would like them to add more connection capability, a hub and spoke model, to improve the number of connections that it can handle."
"Its performance can be faster."
"The ease of new deployments could be improved."
"The life-cycle management can be improved."
"The interface is good but takes some time to get used to."
"The initial setup is not that easy."
"Our customers are always looking or a discount on the product."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking 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."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"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."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be..."
"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."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
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HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex and VxRail. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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