We performed a comparison between Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and StarWind Storage Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."The user interface for this application is amazing."
"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"Scalability is easy and simple."
"We are providing this solution for the customer or converting the customer from a traditional environment to a hyper-converged environment which consolidates all management and support on a single port. This is the main benefit of using the hyper-converged versus the traditional."
"Overall, the solution is extremely easy, flexible and secure."
"The software defines networking, storage, and processing."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It's very easy to use and quite a mature product."
"The technical support has been helpful. We are always able to get through to the right person."
"It is a complete package. For any kind of on-premises hyper-converged solution, we usually have to separate networks, but Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is a complete solution. It has its own network and storage. The storage part is the most valuable feature."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."
"The integration is excellent."
"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."
"They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us."
"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."
"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"You have to get the same servers with the same storage; they need to be identical. However, in vSAN or in VMware we don't have to do that. We can just add storage and manage it in the same server."
"We need to be able to scale out and not just up. When you want to scale up or scale out, you are quite limited."
"Deployment on-prem was quite difficult."
"The primary improvements should be made in the cluster storage controller VMs so that they don't break the upgrade process."
"The initial setup is very complex because there were some issues. It is not clear to how set up this solution."
"Technical support is very good. Not excellent, but good. There's still not enough data available on the web. For example, for the integration to VMware, I had a case recently and I searched for more information but didn't find any."
"The initial setup could be faster, due to the prerequisites."
"Lacks some integration and documentation could be improved."
"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."
"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes."
"The dashboard features are not in the free version."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is ranked 8th in HCI with 90 reviews while StarWind Storage Appliance is ranked 10th in NAS with 9 reviews. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is rated 8.0, while StarWind Storage Appliance is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series writes "A fast and easy deployment that allows secure access to our medical applications ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Storage Appliance writes "Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes". Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex and HPE SimpliVity, whereas StarWind Storage Appliance is most compared with FreeNAS, StoneFly VSO NAS, StorMagic SvSAN and VMware vSAN.
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