We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and VMware vSAN 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.
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"Their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"High-availability is what I bought it for."
"In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"We had very good access to technical support."
"vSAN is integrated into VMware."
"The most valuable features of VMware vSAN are that it receives updates frequently, has good compression, optimized storage, and they provide webinars on what is new. Additionally, the integration with third-party products is good and it is easy to manage."
"Adding new nodes and expanding vSAN forward is simple and non-disruptive for a lot of our customers."
"Flexibility, growth, and expansion are probably the more important features for us. As our environment grows, the more users come on, the more VDI workstations that we need, we can easily expand either horizontally or vertically with the environment"
"vSAN provides default HA configurations, where if any host goes down, the VM moves around within the host. Even though the disks are local, the VMs moves around with the vSAN disk and vSAN provides a high availability on its own."
"Easy to deploy and manage."
"Very easy to implement in any existing environment."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."
"An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration."
"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"The monitoring and reporting console can be improved in the sense that it can have more information on it."
"We'd like an easier setup for Windows updates on the Hyper-V servers so you don't have to use a script to ensure auto-updating is done."
"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."
"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."
"Not much can be improved, to be honest."
"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 thing I have run into is that I did want to add more hard drives into the host, so that we could look at doing a RAID 10, and the hard drive prices were pretty expensive... that's pretty nit-picky and I don't think it has anything to do with StarWind itself. I think it's more on whomever they work with for their hardware."
"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
"It doesn't seem like it gives the performance that an actual SAN would give for heavy IOPS, read/writes."
"The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it."
"There is room for improvement in vSAN's ability to debug. When it's not working well, debugging becomes quite challenging. Identifying issues when it's lagging or not functioning properly can be difficult."
"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."
"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."
"he list of hardware supported should be increased in the future."
"I would love for this product to be cheaper and easier to configure."
"This solution is not great for large file shares/object/rich media repository."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. 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 VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. VMware vSAN report.
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