We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and VxRail 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.
"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."
"It's quite easy to install."
"StarWind vSAN is easy to deploy and administer."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."
"The sales process is easy."
"The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."
"It makes for easier deployments through automation and improved accessibility."
"I can roll out the system in thirty minutes and the customer can work with it."
"The support has been excellent, especially if you compare it to IBM."
"VxRail has high performance and has great efficiency. There is a single place for us to manage all of our virtual machines. The ability to right-size instead of overcommit VMs is a large benefit."
"The low latency and response times and having a virtualized environment within a single computer are valuable. I have no physical elements, and I can optimize or balance my data depending on the sales volume that I have in a specific store."
"The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."
"The most valuable feature in the VxRail solution is the software that binds the management portal and its ease of use of managing the environment. The guys don't have to worry about getting multiple solutions specialist. You can have one person looking at and managing the whole environment."
"The most valuable feature for me in this latest release has been the ability to add a compute or storage node. In the previous release, if I wanted to add only the compute mode, I need to buy a full node, including both compute and storage. That is no longer the case; I can upgrade whatever I want one based on my demand."
"It would help us if the vendor continues to release software updates for earlier versions of the Windows operating systems."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"The setup and documentation for the installation with the free version could definitely be improved."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."
"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."
"Most meetings are done via Zoom, and I'm sure you could switch to a text based conversation if needed as they seem like a very accommodating team. It's not something I would worry about if you are a potential client."
"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
"Updates need improvement."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
"We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future."
"What I find very valuable is VxRail's life cycle management. The life cycle management takes care of everything from firmware to the actual upgrading of the hypervisor and keeps everything up to level."
"The way that the VxRail is licensed could be improved."
"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."
"While VxRail offers compatibility with AMD processors, its capabilities in this area could benefit from further development."
"We would like to see integrating with Nutanix. Currently, we are working on integrating the two to see if there is any value in doing so."
"My customers want more storage for university databases."
"It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad. They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 120 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while VxRail is rated 8.6. 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 VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. VxRail report.
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