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."StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."
"In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature."
"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."
"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The most compelling aspect of VxRail lies in its unwavering guarantee of sustained performance for my systems, regardless of their geographical distribution."
"The solution is really stable."
"VxRail has given us a lot of tools in a one-stop-shop environment."
"The most valuable feature is that it is VMware-embedded. VxRail HCI is on VMware, and we can use VMware vCenter and vSphere. Our infrastructure consists of servers and VMware, and by using VxRail, our experience and familiarity have not changed because VxRail HCI is on VMware."
"This solution optimizes our clients' resources."
"RecoverPoint give us peace of mind knowing any corruption or server issue can be rectified very quickly, making sure the business impact is minimal."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it allows everything to be integrated into a single model, comprised of hardware and software."
"This is a good solution if you want to deploy an ACI Environment but don't have all the necessary resources."
"I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"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."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"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."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."
"The management console could use a facelift."
"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
"Not much can be improved, to be honest."
"They should add automation and activation going forward."
"It might offer better integration with other products."
"Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately."
"The UI could be a little more informative."
"I would like to have a unified platform where I, for example, can manage my 50 stores from a single portal in VxRail and be able to apply all the updates at once. I want to unify them into a centralized console."
"Integration could be improved."
"The most important thing that I want to be included in this solution is the VMware license. Its deployment time can be quicker so that instead of 40 minutes, it takes 10 minutes."
"There is limited support for SAP HANA with this solution."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 119 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 Red Hat Ceph Storage, 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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