We performed a comparison between Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and StarWind Virtual SAN 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."The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."
"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"The management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."
"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"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."
"There is a general lack of documentation, especially up-to-date documentation to get started."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."
"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
"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."
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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is ranked 9th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 8 reviews while StarWind Virtual SAN is ranked 1st in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 183 reviews. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is rated 7.2, while StarWind Virtual SAN is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct writes "The initial setup is straightforward, but the solution has strict compatibility methods". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Virtual SAN writes "Excellent support, great performance, and good redundancy". Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is most compared with VMware vSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage, DataCore SANsymphony, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, whereas StarWind Virtual SAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage, DataCore SANsymphony and HPE SimpliVity. See our Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StarWind Virtual SAN report.
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