We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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 support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"It also provides a seamless and efficient solution for personal storage requirements, showcasing the versatility and scalability of my Virtual SAN configuration."
"It has improved our organization in terms of its uptime as our main cluster has never been offline due to a SAN failure."
"It is extremely stable."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"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."
"The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to continue our business needs and have higher visibility. It has definitely increased our business productivity levels."
"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."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"When we do to do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodes"
"The solutions best feature is that it is easy to use."
"vSAN can help customers save on storage system costs, and also save on the human cost."
"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is you do not have to use additional hardware for storage. The operation of VMware vSAN does not take a lot of effort. If you have VMware technology on your site, then it's easy for the operational support of the system."
"The implementation is simple, it was very straightforward. It took us approximately three weeks because it was installed in four locations."
"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is."
"The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"The documentation could be better."
"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."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"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."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
"Updates need improvement."
"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."
"The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses."
"Its price could be improved. It is too expensive for our clients."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets. We have many servers, and the built-in functions, such as rate configuration, are a bit complex."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it going forward."
"When designing the implementation for vSAN, I have noticed that it requires a minimum of six nodes, and this creates a problem when it comes to maintenance. If, out of the six nodes, I put one node in maintenance mode, then vSAN does not create other VM components."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. VMware vSAN report.
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