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HPE Alletra dHCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

HPE Alletra dHCI
Ranking in HCI
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 4.8%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Antonin Pavlik - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless upgrades with one-click feature while new server deployment needs a smoother process
I have a data center, and all the servers are connected to HPE Alletra dHCI. I use it for data management with VMware running on the servers The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers…
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

"The solution is useful for taking storage snapshots, has high performance, and the CASL architecture is good for optimizing workloads."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI has the most valuable features for performance, resilience, and scalability."
"So far, the solution's performance is very good."
"The solution works well."
"HPE Alletra dHCI was good because we could have the vVols, which we are using for our production server, with the snapshots."
"The technical support services are good."
"The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers easily."
"Very good in-line compression."
"The StarWind command centre is a very handy tool to have. It allows less skilled staff to have a view and manage our virtual machines."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
 

Cons

"Nimble Storage's integration with the management software could be better."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI currently is promoting only VMware as a hypervisor, whereas if they can look into other OSs, such as KVM or Red Hat, it would be an improvement."
"This year 2022, we have the possibility to include new kinds of storage with a high disk availability, such as Alletra 6000 and Alletra 9000. Those are the new storage available. If we would like to improve the quality and the capability and the high availability of these products, we can choose between different costs. This is another benefit from this HPE Nimble Storage dHCI solution of hyper-converged."
"Their documentation needs to be simpler to read yet more detailed so it's easy to compare models and easier for clients to pick."
"Companies in small countries face problems with spare parts."
"The solution must be hypervisor-agnostic."
"The solution could improve by providing better file-level restoration and DVX system options."
"Sometimes the technical support would get back to us in two hours, but other times it would take them two or even three days to respond."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"The monitoring and reporting console can be improved in the sense that it can have more information on it."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"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."
"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."
"The management console could use a facelift."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is costly."
"The solution’s pricing was very good."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is much cheaper than the competition and has value proposition. Customers can see an ROI in three months. There are no additional costs, and VMware licenses can be reutilized."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is cheap."
"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."
"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."
"The prices are very high."
"I think it's priced right and it's extremely intelligent."
"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"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."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
Pricing is rated at six, which is normal. The price is appropriate for the capabilities and features that the customers receive.
What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?
I would like the HPE Alletra dHCI to provide options to install products separately. When extending or when servers are already present, normal Alletra systems are more suitable. dHCI projects ofte...
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 clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our inf...
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 Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
 

Also Known As

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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