We performed a comparison between Dell vSAN Ready Nodes and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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 configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"StarWind allows us to move virtual machines from one physical host to another, which greatly reduces the downtime required for maintenance."
"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"They offer top-tier support."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"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."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"We have the ProActive Premium Support and it has reduced our monitoring efforts. It has been very useful. They have been able to detect things such as when there's an issue with the cluster or they're getting some kind of weird reading that I have no idea about. They're really quick to let me know about it and even set up a schedule to address it. I've been very happy with their level of support on that."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"There should be publicly available tutorials on YouTube or other platforms that help the users to integrate this solution with other platforms, for example."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"New versions of this solution should be tested more thoroughly before the release as we had a few problems with one version due to a bug."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is complex."
"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"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."
"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."
"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."
"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."
"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."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"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."
"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..."
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Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th in HCI with 14 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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