We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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 iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."
"The price was right."
"Some of the most valuable features of Nutanix Acropolis are that it's free from Nutanix and it's very stable."
"The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane."
"Nutanix does a superb job with technical support."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its software Move, which we use to migrate virtual info from another platform to the Nutanix platform."
"Scaling is very easy and no limitations are set."
"This is a very flexible solution that you are able to run however you want."
"It has been stable so far."
"A great feature involves real-time hardware changes."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime."
"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."
"The hardware footprint is perfect. It fits in our rack perfectly, and we were able to condense a lot of physical servers we had. It has greatly eliminated the excess stuff in our server rack..."
"We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself."
"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong."
"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."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost effective point" Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems it has always done exactly what it set out to do, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"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."
"Deployment could be more user-friendly - currently, it requires certain skills with the network and nodes."
"The solution doesn't support older systems, which can be a problem for some organizations who wish to implement it. It became a problem for us due to the fact that some of our systems are older."
"One thing to keep in mind is that only experts can use it. It has to be in the proper hands, instead of going to XYZ people just for some cost savings. So lift-and-shift and migrations might be tricky, because it is not like a VMware."
"Nutanix now supports four hypervisors but they are not all at feature parity."
"With some projects that we are deploying, there are errors that arise when adding nodes."
"Make it easier to manage."
"I think some of the tasks that must be done using CLI could be added to the web interface."
"Usually, there are separate administration teams that take care of servers, but in our organization, servers are usually looked after by the application owner. However, the application owners cannot reinstall the software, OS, and other things. That only aligns with the role of the HCI administrator. If these rights can be provided, it will be very easy."
"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
"The management console could use a facelift."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"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."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 194 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Dell PowerFlex, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.
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