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."The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"They offer top-tier support."
"The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."
"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 most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"The solution is scalable."
"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 initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The product's initial setup phase is too easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"It helped us survive power outages in one of our data centers, then continued to function without a hitch."
"The technical support is good."
"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."
"We find it easy to deliver this solution."
"It is easy to find information out there, not only from searching the web, but even the times I have engaged VMware support."
"VMware vSAN is easy to implement in a VMware environment and it is not expensive."
"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."
"The valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"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."
"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."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"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."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"The monitoring feature in VMware vSAN could be better."
"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."
"When you upgrade the vSAN, there are some issues like lost data and problems with the log. The log disappears. When you upgrade the solution, you must have several logs, so if you have some problems, you can check the log server to find them."
"I would like to see more comprehensive lifecycle management. The current path and process for upgrading or updating the firmware, as well as the storage controller software to interact with that firmware, is fairly manual and not very well documented. A little more time and effort spent on the documentation of the lifecycle management for vSan would be really great."
"I would like more integration with the hardware when it comes to disc types and supporting the newer types of storage."
"The solution must provide better customization."
"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."
"I would like to see it be more hardware-agnostic. Other than that, the only other complication is - and it has gotten better with the newer versions - that lately, once you're running an all-flash, if you need to grow or scale down your infrastructure, it's a long process. You need to evacuate all data and make sure you have enough space on the host, then add more hosts or take out hosts. That process is a little bit complex. You cannot scale as needed or shrink as needed."
Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 19th in HCI with 8 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 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.
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