We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and StarWind Storage 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 customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer."
"The fact that there is only one interface to deploy a complete solution for maximum storage is fantastic."
"The technology of Nutanix Acropolis AOS is the most valuable feature. You don't need multiple screens to manage."
"Being able to upgrade our entire cluster with the click of a button during business hours with zero downtime has made managing our infrastructure so easy."
"In addition to the hyper-converged infrastructure, most of our clients are pleased with Acropolis' built-in replication in terms of the DR setup. Our clients also like Prism Central's advanced management and analytics, and many find Nutanix Flow and playbooks incredibly useful."
"There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes."
"Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks."
"The solution is easy to use and the pricing is affordable."
"A lot of features are there, but for us, on the server administration side, creating a clone of the VM is valuable because many times, we have to deploy security patches. For deploying these patches, it helps to have a clone so that if something goes wrong, we can discard that VM and put back the clone VM. That is a very cool feature."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature 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."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"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."
"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."
"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."
"The integration is excellent."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost effective point" Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems it has always done exactly what it set out to do, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"The documentation could be better."
"When we have issues with the solution, they tend to be around networking."
"I feel like the flow chart and the automated processes have some room for improvement. They're nearly there, and the rest is fine. They've improved a lot over the past few years."
"We would like to see it support other systems outside of the compute stack from which it was built."
"One of the improvements I would like to have is related to naming. It is getting confusing because they are using three-letter acronyms, which are more or less misleading. What I do not like is that they changed names and reused names. They had a meaning in the past and they are still using the names for something similar."
"I'm sure there are a lot of things that could be improved, but I'm actually very satisfied with this product. There may be some possibilities to move the virtual server dismounting points or to move the server from one group to another, but I can't think of any special improvements or update features."
"The name of the solutions offered by Nutanix does not indicate what the tool does."
"The reporting section of the dashboard could be improved to include more detailed reporting about the servers."
"The new features are not free. You need to pay for each feature."
"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."
"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."
"The dashboard features are not in the free version."
"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."
"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."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in HCI with 192 reviews while StarWind Storage Appliance is ranked 10th in NAS with 9 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while StarWind Storage Appliance is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". 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". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, VMware vSphere and Hyper-V, whereas StarWind Storage Appliance is most compared with FreeNAS, StoneFly VSO NAS, VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. StarWind Storage Appliance report.
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