We performed a comparison between Scale Computing HC3 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."StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"It has allowed us to save a lot of time and money by letting us create a vSAN within a Windows VM on the environment it controls."
"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"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.""
"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"I like that Scale Computing HCR is slimmed down and gives me the features I need and not features that I don't need."
"The most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase is too easy."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"The most valuable features are its performance, simplicity, and synchronicity with vSphere."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"Storage policies are used to perform operations in the VMs. This feature allows you to create storage policies for VMs to get performance, high availability, I/O policies, etc."
"The simplicity, as well as the integration with virtualization."
"I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability."
"To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware."
"The performance has exceeded our expectations and exceeded our traditional converged infrastructure."
"Since the storage space is local to the hosts, it reduces the overall response time and improves the performance."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
"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."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could benefit from better integration with other tools and technologies, such as backup and disaster recovery solutions."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"On the fly, you cannot do anything on Scale Computing HC3, though it is a very rarely needed area."
"The product could use a better control center."
"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."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"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."
"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."
"This is quite an expensive solution."
"This solution would benefit from better collaboration with Cisco for driver updates."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"The monitoring feature in VMware vSAN could be better."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 19th in HCI with 8 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 226 reviews. Scale Computing HC3 is rated 7.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. 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 VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Scale Computing HC3 is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Scale Computing HC3 vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
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.