We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and VxRail 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 instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"The product gave us a cost-effective way to deploy a highly available server environment."
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"Having the ability to migrate machines live in our environment was made possible by this software."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"The solution provides great performance for the price it is listed with."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"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 StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."
"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."
"We have seen ROI using this solution. It has simplified the work of the staff that we have which allows us to do more work with the same number of people, without having to incrementally grow the staff. The reliability of the product has been exceptional."
"Cost-effective and easy to install."
"VxRail's technical support is very good."
"It has a valuable deduplication feature."
"It's very easy to upgrade."
"This is a good solution for medium-sized installations especially when it will be coupled with VMware."
"You don't have to worry too much about the hardware and you don't have to work on integrating a storage device. We instead have this as an all-in-one solution and everything is available as a box."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality."
"Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome."
"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"They recommend RAID10 for HDD, which reduces the usable storage capacity."
"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."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"Most meetings are done via Zoom, and I'm sure you could switch to a text based conversation if needed as they seem like a very accommodating team. It's not something I would worry about if you are a potential client."
"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"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..."
"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."
"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."
"It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware."
"I would like better integration with VCF from VMware, which is the Cloud Foundation tool set, so we can easily provision servers very quickly."
"The licensing is a bit too costly."
"You have to buy a new server if you want to scale up."
"What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
"We used an integrator team for the implementation of the solution. The one person who takes care of the maintenance of VxRail, such as upgrading the software. The upgrading takes too long. We have many nodes which takes a long time, they need to improve the speed of the upgrades"
"VxRail is a closed system with an out-of-the -box solution approach, it has basic 3 layers, Hardware, Network, Storage, Software, (Virtualizing) Applications. Release notes and improvement tips, patches from the back office, the business units, should be frequent and up to the patches which are coming from different vendors as far as the operating system application and also the technology itself is concerned."
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 117 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, StorMagic SvSAN and HPE SimpliVity, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. VxRail report.
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