We performed a comparison between Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 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.
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"With an uptime of 384 days, StarWind has improved overall server reliability."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"The management interface on the software is very simple. It is insanely simple compared to most SANs. The interface is also powerful when used to complete tasks that an IT administrator needs to complete."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is file sharing."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"We have the ProActive Premium Support and it has reduced our monitoring efforts. It has been very useful. They have been able to detect things such as when there's an issue with the cluster or they're getting some kind of weird reading that I have no idea about. They're really quick to let me know about it and even set up a schedule to address it. I've been very happy with their level of support on that."
"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."
"It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime."
"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."
"The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy."
"It would help us if the vendor continues to release software updates for earlier versions of the Windows operating systems."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."
"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"The documentation could be better."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"The Dell VxRail solution is based on vSAN Ready Nodes, but the Dell VxRail is fully automated. It would be helpful if this automation feature could be added to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. For example, we need to install VMware ESXi, and manually expand the cluster."
"Compatibility with other hardware nodes needs to be improved."
"Scalability is an area that could be improved. We are looking at a maximum of 32 nodes now in a cluster, but going to 64 or 128 would be a major advantage."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is complex."
"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"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."
"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work."
"It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 11th in HCI with 14 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes writes "Offers good performance and is easy to use". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, Dell PowerFlex and Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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