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."StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"
"It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” accessible by all hosts. StarWind cuts down virtualization cost and complexity by eliminating the need for a physical shared storage (SAN). -StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured . we get technical support from star wind team when implementation software and after setup if we face any issue."
"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"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."
"Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"The sales process is easy."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is stable."
"The vSAN features we've found most helpful are live application migrations and storage policies. It has storage, policies, application, and DRS policies. Automation is there."
"We can scale it very easily for a test environment. We were able to segment our DMZ so it wasn't connected to anything, which we really liked."
"While we haven't made major changes to our disaster recovery and business continuity processes yet, moving towards stretch vSAN across sites will simplify and expedite our DR processes in the future."
"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."
"I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability."
"It helped us survive power outages in one of our data centers, then continued to function without a hitch."
"The most valuable feature is the fast performance."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"While it is possible to implement disk encryption in StarWind using Windows Bitlocker, such a solution can be a little tricky to manage."
"The reconnection of the attached drives upon a reboot could be improved."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"A desired feature or service is the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with the hyper-converged software."
"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale."
"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers."
"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"As a software-based product, it requires a lot of system resources."
"The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI."
"We are facing some problems with updates with the VMware vSAN. When we upgraded from version 6.5 to 7, we have been faced with many problems. They have been deploying many hotfixes for this version, and they need to continue to improve this version."
"I would like to see a little bit more documentation on the initial setup, and a little bit more explanation on the expandability: How to extend out your vSAN much more simply through the console because, a lot of the time, you have to do it through the command line."
"The server files are larger than before."
"This product is very expensive."
"The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it."
"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."
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 226 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 HPE SimpliVity, 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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