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Commvault Distributed Storage [EOL] vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th), File and Object Storage (8th)
Commvault Distributed Stora...
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th), HCI (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
AmarpreetSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
It helped us earn more customers by improving productivity and reducing implementation time
Commvault is user-friendly and easy to implement. The initial setup is straightforward, and it's also easy to maintain with only one person. The deployment time depends on the size of the environment. A small-scale deployment takes three days to a week, but it may take time in a larger environment. Normally, we use a push mechanism where we create an environment and a backup and then push all the clients from the backup itself.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."
"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"The solution provides many controllers."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."
"Some customers have chosen this solution for its features, benefits, and user-friendly interface."
"Commvault is a user-friendly tool, so most people are happy to adopt this solution."
"We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."
"We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself."
"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."
"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
 

Cons

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."
"The solution does not support some cloud SaaS applications and has room for improvement with better integration to the storage array."
"NAS backups and BNP protocol backups could be improved. We require some more advanced features. I would also like some features that would enable us to deploy faster, like an orchestrator or something."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"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."
"A desired feature or service is the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with the hyper-converged software."
"Updates need improvement."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"The product is very expensive."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price could be cheaper."
"The price is a little high."
"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."
"The solution offers a yearly license and it is expensive."
"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
No data available
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Hedvig
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Pittsburg State University, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB)
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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