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."It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way."
"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"The most valuable feature is the managed service, which has been an important part of monitoring our critical infrastructure."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"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."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"The ability to have a disaster recovery option for our end-users by being able to use VDI and the vSANs, and the ability to do replication across multiple data centers, are valuable to us."
"We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."
"The most important feature to me, in my role, is cost. In the renewal cycle for storage, it was about a 40 percent saving compared to going to an all-flash array, which is what we first looked at doing. Secondly, performance: we need clinical data access in five seconds and need to do everything we can to retain that metric. Thirdly, I was really pleasantly surprised during the data migration across to vSAN, that it happened almost instantly whereas, in the past, migrating from array to array was an arduous and fraught process."
"It helped us survive power outages in one of our data centers, then continued to function without a hitch."
"Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."
"VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive."
"The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect."
"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration."
"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."
"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."
"One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting."
"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."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"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."
"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."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
"The updating process could be easier."
"Integration could be better."
"The solution must provide better customization."
"We often run out of space but we have enough capacity for memory and CPU. It's difficult to find the balance between storage and memory CPU."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components."
"Its price could be improved. It is too expensive for our clients."
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 Red Hat Ceph Storage, 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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