We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity 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.
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."
"In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"It is extremely stable."
"The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"The feature that I like the most is the backup feature embedded inside the HPE SimpliVity. When we have any activity, within five minutes, we have a backup. It also has PDR for performing disaster recovery."
"In terms of HPE SimpliVity's most valuable features, its backup integration is a good thing. Its performance is very good as is the whole integration."
"SimpliVity helps us to manage and has made deduplication work really well."
"The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us."
"We can backup with more frequency and minimize RPO and RTO."
"HPE SimpliVity is a very valuable and effective solution. It's also a scalable solution. As the customer requirements and application requirements increase, it can scale to accommodate them."
"The main thing is its performance. In terms of performance, it is a lot better than VMware. Obviously, technology is changing a lot all the time. We were on just VMware with a separate attached array. The performance was kind of a step backward from just running separate servers. Now, the performance is much better, and we can take snapshots and backups of really big servers in just a matter of seconds. We can even restore them in a matter of seconds."
"A very small package but with lots of memory and CPU."
"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"With StarWind's Proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure..."
"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 GUI deserves a little love."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"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."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"The centric management could be simplified or more user-friendly."
"HPE SimpliVity should cost less."
"I would like to see it be a truly hybrid-cloud solution where I could take my on-prem SimpliVity environment and have replication to a cloud install."
"The ease of new deployments could be improved."
"I would love it if the solution would auto data balance within the cluster. It is possible, and eventually, it will be likely that certain nodes within the same cluster will hold more data than the other nodes."
"Bottleneck is the main issue."
"The product is expensive."
"SimpliVity has very limited options for the virtualization layer."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."
"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..."
"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."
"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."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex and VxRail. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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