We performed a comparison between Scale Computing HC3 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."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 ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"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 available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"The most valuable feature of Scale Computing HC3 is if one of the devices fails, you won't even notice, the service maintains operation. The customers don't have to waste two, or three days on delays. Additionally, you do not have to waste time with recovery software, it is a lot easier."
"I like that Scale Computing HCR is slimmed down and gives me the features I need and not features that I don't need."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"The most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"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."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"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 StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"The product could use a better control center."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"I've had so many issues with the sales team when I was looking to make some improvements, and improve the performance. They would create so many excuses to force me to buy new nodes all the time and not let me add more memory to each node."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"Scale Computing HC3 said in an announcement they were going to integrate with a backup service which would be good. If they could do this it would be beneficial."
"One area for improvement of the solution is that I had to get Windows, which I really didn't want because of the extra maintenance or overhead, as well as viruses, etc. It's going to take time for them to get their Linux to that point. They already have Linux but it's not as mature and they don't really support it on HCAs. They have it for individuals who want to use it on their servers, but not on HCAs."
"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..."
"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."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 21st in HCI with 7 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. Scale Computing HC3 is rated 7.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Scale Computing HC3 writes "A reliable stripped-down solution that comes with excellent support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Scale Computing HC3 is most compared with VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and HPE SimpliVity, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Scale Computing HC3 vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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