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HPE Hyper Converged vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Hyper Converged is 2.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 9.4%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.4%
HPE Hyper Converged2.9%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.5%
Other86.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

GosayeErko - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at BIOS Engineering
Infrastructure management simplifies for clients with integrated interface and enhanced resource utilization
Currently, the HPE HCI is based on the VMware solution, and most clients are skipping VMware because VMware has changed its licensing method. If HPE starts to use its own hypervisor for its HCI solutions, it will be the best solution. We push a different vendor for the backup and replication, so we only use the HCI, then we use Veeam for the backup and replication section.
OB
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
Infrastructure efficiency has improved significantly with quick server provisioning, though physical to virtual migrations need a streamlined in-house tool
From my experience with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), there is one area that needs improvement. When moving a critical infrastructure from a physical machine to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), we currently have to use a third-party tool to convert the physical machine to a VM. We have to use VMware converter to perform this conversion before moving it to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
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

"HPE Hyper Converged is excellent because it can avoid the usage of storage area network."
"It is a stable solution...Those who want flexibility, ease of use, and a simple support system can opt for HPE."
"The performance is good compared to the cost of the solution."
"For HPE Hyper Converged 380, the added value is not having to buy multiple elements – servers, hard disks, memories, CPU, cables, and software – because you have to unpack it, install it, and update the firmware."
"I like the fact that it's taken us from approximately 23 servers down to three ProLiant servers running the StoreVirtual VSA, with a big reduction in our electricity consumption, dramatically lower cooling requirements in our server room, and fantastic reliability."
"The most valuable feature is the in-built backup system. The backup speed is also excellent."
"The provisioning is very fast. It’s not a problem for us to achieve the goals of the client."
"We like the fact that the hyper-converged infrastructure provides a simple to grow, easy to configure platform."
"The solution is easy to use and the pricing is affordable."
"Being able to upgrade our entire cluster with the click of a button during business hours with zero downtime has made managing our infrastructure so easy."
"It is 100% stable. It's the most stable infrastructure that we have."
"We've seen a return on investment. Hundred percent."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is easy to use, integrates with other hardware configurations, and is simple to manage."
"The HCI environment itself is very intuitive. Everything is centralized under one solution. And, they also have fast server built in in addition to a network analyzer."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS makes it easy to use and manage projects and it has a good reputation."
"If you want to build a hybrid cloud, and have a good balance between cost and performance, then Nutanix is good option."
"The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-V for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution, allowing me to expand my virtualization footprint while reducing my overall physical server footprint."
"It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on."
"The sales process is easy."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
"We have the ProActive Premium Support and it has reduced our monitoring efforts. It has been very useful. They have been able to detect things such as when there's an issue with the cluster or they're getting some kind of weird reading that I have no idea about. They're really quick to let me know about it and even set up a schedule to address it. I've been very happy with their level of support on that."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"The HCA appliance replaced aging hardware, formerly cluster-in-a-box solutions, at a savings of over $20,000.00 and provided increased performance and more redundancy."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be improved. It's quite an expensive solution."
"This solution is very costly."
"Because it's so well integrated, you can't get away from it. You can't replace one part without the whole tool going down."
"The solution is not very stable."
"The product must provide more storage capability."
"Installation and setup could be easier."
"We've had to do a power cycle to bring it all the way down, bring it back up for power outages, A/C shut-downs of our DC office, but it hasn't presented a problem."
"Providing local technical support and improving the price are areas this service needs to consider improving."
"I feel like the flow chart and the automated processes have some room for improvement. They're nearly there, and the rest is fine."
"Nutanix now supports four hypervisors but they are not all at feature parity."
"In the licensing, it needs to be clear about features because it is not clear whether Flow is integrated or not."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's cloud platform management software could be improved so that I can manage my load between the cloud and on-premises."
"AHV is a great hypervisor but still limited compared to VMware. AHV is the one product they must improve."
"This is a pricey solution considering it's essentially a fork lift upgrade but the features, redundancy, and performance made it the most attractive solution for us."
"The product could be improved with more security."
"For the company process, the price is too high. We need to purchase add-ons for the extra key and extra terabyte."
"We'd like an easier setup for Windows updates on the Hyper-V servers so you don't have to use a script to ensure auto-updating is done."
"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."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solutions cost us a lot."
"We have a very good return on investment due to data savings through compression and deduplication methods. It simplifies IT management and enhances security, including the end-to-end security of the IT data engine. The product is complete, simple, and provides visibility."
"HPE Hyper Converged is an affordable solution."
"Pricing with Dell EMC is double the price which I paid for HPE. However, in the end, Dell EMC is double in performance. This is not an apple to apple comparison though, as I have a four node from Dell EMC and a three node."
"If I'm comparing with Dell, HPE Hyper Converged is definitely cheaper in my experience."
"It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper."
"It is an expensive solution, however. If they could adjust the pricing, that would be helpful."
"The product's pricing is very competitive because HPE provides a buyback policy to users...Users can make either monthly or yearly payments towards the licensing cause of the solution."
"The price of the license for Nutanix Acropolis AOS is less expensive than the competition. There is a favorable cost saving. Having only the need to deal with a single vendor, the management of the customer's entire stack is cost-effective."
"When we purchase a new physical server or a couple of physical servers into our cluster, we always purchase it with Nutanix licensing. We are receiving the license from Nutanix directly and not from the vendor. In the way we're dealing, with the licenses it is a bit costly for us but as the company is getting larger, day by day or year by year, those licensing costs become lower each time for us. We are purchasing the licenses for three years for some of our clusters and for some others for five-year licenses and the licenses are still costly. We have good discounts for the licenses, but it is still expensive."
"Licensing depends on the features needed."
"The license is quite clear to me. It's much clearer than what we had with our previous virtualization environment. The licensing is not complex to understand."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS price includes no additional costs for features."
"Nutanix price is high because it bundles all the components into single deals rather than allowing you to select the features that you want/will use."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is affordable, it has good value. The final price depends a lot on the hardware used, it's an appliance in the end. Whether you use HPE as the hardware vendor or Supermicro as the hardware vendor, it really depends on what hardware is used which is the main cost."
"The pricing is fair for the package."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"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."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"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."
"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."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
14%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise77
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HPE Hyper Converged?
The solution's most valuable features are scalability, easy migration, easy recovery, and flexible backup possibilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Hyper Converged?
The product is intermediate in price, neither expensive nor cheap. We are talking about an on-premises solution witho...
What needs improvement with HPE Hyper Converged?
The initial setup of HPE Hyper Converged requires study and a comprehensive understanding of virtualization. The seco...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...
What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?
NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products...
Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it...
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

HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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