We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"The StarWind tech support is extremely helpful, especially during the initial setup."
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
"StarWind vSAN was very easy to integrate into our system and ran flawlessly during our entire use time."
"StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
"Acropolis has a great interface and lots of management features packaged with it at an affordable price."
"One of the most valuable features of Nutanix is that it's easy to use. I love this solution—it's easy to maintain and update, and I think it's almost perfect."
"The cloud features in-site offering, which I found to be very interesting."
"Single-click upgrades are the most valuable feature. In the sector in which we work, it is tough to have downtime and arrange firmware upgrades."
"The ease of deployment is very good."
"In terms of scalability, adding a number of nodes, I find that it will not be any issues."
"It gives us a single dashboard to control multiple sites and multiple zones. It helps to do things on a single platform and data sharing is quite easy. The network and the security are easy to manage."
"The scalability is great."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."
"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 solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."
"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..."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"Sometimes documentation on their site can be out of date."
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"The file services that they also provide need some more features, like on the Windows file server."
"Pricing and varieties of options could be better."
"The compatibility and integration of Nutanix Acropolis AOS could be improved. For example, we have a WAF application firewall and it does not work on this solution. Not all the OS's run on AOS. You need to have a newer version of an operating system if you want Nutanix to perfectly run all the different options."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure can be improved in terms of the sizing of the solution."
"The software-defined networking should be improved. It is quite substandard as compared to the VMware variant. The software-defined networking is quite limited, and we usually use other products to do that. We're aware that Nutanix is working on that and will be coming out with better solutions, and we can't wait because to do a fully software-defined architecture, the abstraction layer needs not only software-defined storage, which you have, but also the software-defined networking piece."
"Setup can be a little difficult"
"One of the very important things that I would like to see in Nutanix, but I'm not sure if it's in the roadmap or not, is to have some kind of caching optimization at remote sites, to build active-active data centers more easily."
"There is a lot of functionality in Prism Central, but sometimes you want to see those features in Prism Element."
"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"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."
"The only issues are when Hyper V itself has limitations and I'd love to see support or enhancement in the area of direct-attached GPU cards."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."
More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Pricing and Cost Advice →
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is ranked 2nd in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 194 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) writes "A powerful solution with easy deployment, upgrades, and management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, VMware vSphere, HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail, StorMagic SvSAN and HPE SimpliVity. See our Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.
We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
