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 solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."
"Being hardware agnostic is a must and definitely scored points for us."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is the flexibility of the nodes. Additionally, if there are any critical issues they update us through emails. The issues are taken care of remotely on the system."
"It is easy to install."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"The tool's most valuable feature is high availability."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The most valuable feature is the set of user tools that are available."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions."
"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."
"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."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"I would like to see some additional, and possibly clearer, implementation videos with some slower and possibly more detailed descriptions of what the various steps of implementation are for someone who is unfamiliar with high availability and failover clustering in Windows."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is complex."
"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."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"There is room for improvement in the maintenance pricing. Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution rather than renew this one."
"Upgrades are carried out manually."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"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."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is ranked 12th 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 Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX, 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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