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."Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great."
"We went from "no way DB applications would have good performance" to "Wow! We can now actually have a DB running and have some VMs running at the same time.""
"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."
"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."
"The software is easy to setup and manage, and the support is excellent."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"The sales process is easy."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"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."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment."
"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."
"IOPS is comparatively best to run VDI solution."
"vSAN is easy for deploying and maintenance, so some customers can do service themselves."
"vSAN is scalable for us. If any additional capacity needs to be included, we just add to the host and configure the vSAN cluster."
"We have found the solution to be very scalable."
"The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward."
"VMware vSAN is an easy to use and easy to manage storage solution. Deploying and upgrading are easy. Technical support is very good."
"We had very good access to technical support."
"The valuable feature of the solution is the total hyperconverged facility."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"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."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"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."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
"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."
"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 pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"I would like compression and deduplication to be offered for offloading hardware, instead of doing it with software. That would be nice."
"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."
"This product is very expensive."
"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."
"Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it."
"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."
"Enterprise customers get discounts on the solution's licensing pricing, but it is too expensive for SMB customers."
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 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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