"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."
"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 biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"They offer top-tier support."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"We've had no issues with scaling the solution."
"This product has very good performance when it comes to virtualization storage and works well with solutions such as SAP HANA, Exadata, Hadoop, and Big Data Analytics."
"Stretched Cluster is one of the big features that we use across multiple data centers."
"Being able to deploy multiple applications with virtual servers is the most valuable for us. The capacity of the system is quite constant so it's got some of the good features."
"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."
"The solution has high performance."
"The scalability of the solution is most valuable."
"VMware vSAN is an easy to use and easy to manage storage solution. Deploying and upgrading are easy. Technical support is very good."
"VMware vSAN is easy to configure, with basic functionality and the customer can maintain the solution."
"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."
"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
"If there was one thing we could request, it would be the ability to shrink volumes. For example, we want to be able to decrease in the size of the volume."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"We've had some issues around the licensing."
"It would be great to get earlier access to beta builds because we have to develop providers on our own. The APIs and enablers for custom automation could also be improved."
"The installation is complex."
"Its price could be improved. It is too expensive for our clients."
"One area that could be improved is the management feature."
"Hardware load balancing is available on the enterprise version of the solution, however, it's extremely expensive and therefore out of our budget."
"As no product is 100% perfect, the price for VMware vSAN could still be improved, though it is good when compared to some of its competitors."
"I think it needs to be more cost-effective. I would also say that even though the capacity is good, there is also room for improvement there. Also, they could improve the security of the system."
"On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful."
"When you upgrade the vSAN, there are some issues like lost data and problems with the log. The log disappears. When you upgrade the solution, you must have several logs, so if you have some problems, you can check the log server to find them."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
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Dell PowerFlex is ranked 13th in Hyper-Converged (HCI) with 3 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in Hyper-Converged (HCI) with 87 reviews. Dell PowerFlex is rated 7.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Dell PowerFlex writes "Stable with good technical support and the capability to scale". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". Dell PowerFlex is most compared with VxRail, Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series, Nutanix Acropolis AOS, HPE SimpliVity and Rubrik, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Dell PowerFlex vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best Hyper-Converged (HCI) vendors.
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