HPE Hyper Converged vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE Hyper Converged 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.
To learn more, read our detailed HPE Hyper Converged vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases.""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.""I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN.""In our case, the cost and high availability are the two most important factors which we were looking for in a solution.""The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure.""The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was pretty easy, and the configuration was done in no time.""We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage.""This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"It is a scalable solution.""Hyper Converge is easier to manage and performs better than traditional infrastructure.""It is a scalable solution.""One of the solution's strong points is the deduplication capabilities of SimpliVity.""It is easy to manage; the administration is simpler. It saves a lot of rack space in the data center because you can consolidate 20 servers into three to five nodes. The client will be able to benefit from power savings and cost savings as well.""The solution has good backup resolution updates.""We like the fact that the hyper-converged infrastructure provides a simple to grow, easy to configure platform.""What I really like about this program, is that it needs little space and it works really fast, so it saves us time."

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"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong.""We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network.""The hardware footprint is perfect. It fits in our rack perfectly, and we were able to condense a lot of physical servers we had. It has greatly eliminated the excess stuff in our server rack...""Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable.""Product functionality and performance are wonderful.""The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward.""The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great.""We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pros →

Cons
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful.""It runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear.""Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes.""The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation.""There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time.""For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper.""It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery.""I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"One problem I've had is that I was trying to do a move and it was not working. I was given an error and a message asking me to shut down the machine first and then move it to another host.""Scalability requires using additional nodes.""One of the things that can be improved is that today, is supporting VMware, maybe as a hypervisor. But it would be good to have an open kind of platform for other hypervisors, maybe. Like Nutanix is doing, it's very open.""The price can be improved. We would like to see support for some open source virtualization technology like for example KVM.""We've had to do a power cycle to bring it all the way down, bring it back up for power outages, A/C shut-downs of our DC office, but it hasn't presented a problem.""The solution is not very stable.""Its technical support services could be faster.""Installation and setup could be easier."

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"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.""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 critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be...""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.""I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side.""We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019.""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 only issues are when Hyper V itself has limitations and I'd love to see support or enhancement in the area of direct-attached GPU cards."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
  • "The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
  • "The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
  • "The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper."
  • "With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."
  • "The price per value compared to other solutions, like Nutanix and SimpliVity. (We made the deal before approval of HPE SimpliVity deal)."
  • "Pricing with Dell EMC is double the price which I paid for HPE. However, in the end, Dell EMC is double in performance. This is not an apple to apple comparison though, as I have a four node from Dell EMC and a three node."
  • "It is an expensive solution, however. If they could adjust the pricing, that would be helpful."
  • "The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
  • "The solution is expensive - not only the hardware costs but server costs too. And the more you scale, the more expensive it gets."
  • "There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • More HPE Hyper Converged Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."
  • "Its cost was reasonable."
  • "This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
  • "When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
  • "The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
  • "I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
  • "The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
  • "We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
  • More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines… more »
    Top Answer:The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own… more »
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the… more »
    Top Answer:Most likely, it's a perpetual license. Our customers do not prefer subscription-based solutions, so we typically offer… more »
    Top Answer:In my country, the biggest issue is probably pricing.
    Top Answer:StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature.
    Top Answer:Keep in mind that StarWind VMs for the vSAN will take up 24GB of memory per host. If you do decide to go with StarWind… more »
    Top Answer:I honestly don't have anything to complain about. Nothing is perfect, though, over the past three years, there were two… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    HPE Hyper Converged solutions combine intuitive software with the reliability of a world class platform to deliver cloud-like simplicity to your business.

    Now, IT can become an internal service provider to end-users by quickly delivering the resources they need for application development and consumption. With HPE Hyper Converged systems companies can operate with cloud efficiency to simplify IT operations with one comprehensive control panel to deploy, monitor, analyze and update – with a single generalist; consume with cloud flexibility to deliver a cloud-like experience, with multi-tenant workspaces that eliminate stranded resources and flexes on demand; and deploy at cloud speed to empower developers and lines-of-business with a self-service portal that can instantly compose and recompose VMs in minutes. Built-in enterprise grade features, such as performance and resiliency enable HPE Hyper Converged systems to easily handle a wide variety of virtualized workloads, including general purpose virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and cloud.

    For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA. 

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    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
    Sears Home and Franchise Business
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company22%
    Computer Software Company17%
    University6%
    Agriculture6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Government10%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Construction Company12%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Transportation Company8%
    Real Estate/Law Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise47%
    Buyer's Guide
    HPE Hyper Converged vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Hyper Converged vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 10th in HCI with 33 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of HPE Hyper Converged writes " Ensures end-to-end data security with redundancy measures and provides visibility into the system but node expansion challenges". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our HPE Hyper Converged vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.

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    We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.