We performed a comparison between Scale Computing HC3 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.
"The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"The StarWind tech support is extremely helpful, especially during the initial setup."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"The most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Scale Computing HC3 is if one of the devices fails, you won't even notice, the service maintains operation. The customers don't have to waste two, or three days on delays. Additionally, you do not have to waste time with recovery software, it is a lot easier."
"I like that Scale Computing HCR is slimmed down and gives me the features I need and not features that I don't need."
"The product's initial setup phase is too easy."
"vSAN has just one datastore. so customers do not need to think where to put their VMs, how to design the physical disk RAID, the LUN size, the LUN mapping, etc. when they use NetApp/EMC/HDS or other storage systems."
"It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability."
"Storage is expandable with no extra cost."
"vSAN is very integrated."
"The most valuable feature is the simplification of storage. We no longer need to deal with Fibre Channel and the external storage arrays."
"In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
"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."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"Updating the software can be a bit tricky."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"Scale Computing HC3 said in an announcement they were going to integrate with a backup service which would be good. If they could do this it would be beneficial."
"On the fly, you cannot do anything on Scale Computing HC3, though it is a very rarely needed area."
"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"The product could use a better control center."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"I've had so many issues with the sales team when I was looking to make some improvements, and improve the performance. They would create so many excuses to force me to buy new nodes all the time and not let me add more memory to each node."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"The server files are larger than before."
"Because of virtual storage, the system reaches reserve storage for its functions. It also consumes a certain amount of storage, which then results in the creation of a fault tolerance for the system. All of this adds to a lot of capacity being consumed in terms of storage for each drive for vSan. I find this to be one drawback of using vSan."
"The UI could certainly be better. The inside into what's actually going on with vSAN would be nice to know."
"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."
"Ease of administration is one area where vSAN could be improved."
"Licensing costs are a little too high for smaller sized companies."
"The price can be reduced. Small businesses cannot afford this solution."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 21st in HCI with 8 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 226 reviews. Scale Computing HC3 is rated 7.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Scale Computing HC3 writes "A reliable stripped-down solution that comes with excellent support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Scale Computing HC3 is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Scale Computing HC3 vs. VMware vSAN report.
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