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HPE Hyper Converged vs StarWind Storage 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE Hyper Converged
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
HCI (12th)
StarWind Storage Appliance
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (14th), All-Flash Storage (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. HPE Hyper Converged is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
StarWind Storage Appliance, on the other hand, focuses on NAS, holds 1.0% mindshare, up 0.7% since last year.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Hyper Converged3.1%
VxRail16.1%
VMware vSAN14.0%
Other66.8%
HCI
NAS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Storage Appliance1.0%
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)16.2%
Dell PowerStore11.4%
Other71.4%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

GosayeErko - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The HA, which means I have a copy of the VMs always available, and the moment a VM is down, the system tries to power it on again."
"What I really like about this program, is that it needs little space and it works really fast, so it saves us time."
"The most beneficial feature is the life cycle management."
"If you were comparing this solution to VMware, it has more features, and it's very fast on the recovery."
"Hyper-convergence is the most valuable aspect of the solution. We can avoid downtime when there's maintenance or updates needed. Also, we have homogenous hardware, so we have a lot of trust in the solution's reliability."
"Reasonably priced and easy to manage for small to medium size companies that don't have an IT department."
"The most valuable features are resiliency and data protection."
"The HPE Hyper Converged solution is used in a hybrid cloud configuration. We assess the disk space and partition additional capacity."
"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."
"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."
"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."
"The integration is excellent."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."
"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."
 

Cons

"The solution is not very stable."
"The solution can be improved on the management side. More management features should be added to future releases."
"Some improvement is required in the availability of the data and performance. The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
"In my country, the biggest issue is probably pricing."
"A software-only version of the solution, without the hardware, would be nice."
"If the solution could further compress the data, it would use less storage."
"Currently, the HPE HCI is based on the VMware solution, and many clients are skipping VMware due to its changed licensing method."
"The solution would be better served if it integrated with other solutions better."
"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."
"StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."
"I would rate the price at seven out of ten. There are no additional licensing fees, but it would be cheaper to go with a dHCI solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"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."
"The price per value compared to other solutions, like Nutanix and SimpliVity. (We made the deal before approval of HPE SimpliVity deal)."
"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."
"The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"
"It costs about 50,000 euros."
"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."
"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."
"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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 without licensing for years. Currently, licensing is required for VMs and CPU cores. ...
What needs improvement with HPE Hyper Converged?
It is very complicated to migrate to another domain. When we have one domain and want to move to another domain, we need to destroy the cluster on the HPE Hyper Converged system, and we need to cha...
What do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?
I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
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