HPE Hyper Converged vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

The compared Hewlett Packard Enterprise and StarWind solutions aren't in the same category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #10 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 3.2% mindshare in the category. StarWind is ranked #16 in N , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

HPE Hyper Converged

Read 37 HPE Hyper Converged reviews

2,091 Views
1,644 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

StarWind Storage Appliance

Read 10 StarWind Storage Appliance reviews

221 Views
132 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HPE Hyper Converged

StarWind Storage Appliance

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE Hyper Converged and StarWind Storage Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

July 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

HCI (10th)

StarWind Storage Appliance

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NAS (16th), 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 3.2%, up 3.0% compared to last year.
StarWind Storage Appliance, on the other hand, focuses on NAS, holds 0.8% mindshare, down 0.8% since last year.

HCI

NAS

Featured Reviews

GosayeErko

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.

Read full review

Kishore CA

Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The hyper-converged system is easy to set up."

"The most valuable features of this solution are fast deployment, security, and it is easy to upgrade."

"The features of HPE Hyper Converged that are most effective and beneficial are its simplicity as well as its scalability."

"One of the good features would be the fast backup solution Hyper Converged offers, which is more efficient compared to other vendors."

"It is a scalable solution."

"No concerns or issues with stability."

"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."

More HPE Hyper Converged pros

"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."

"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."

"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."

"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."

"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."

"The integration is excellent."

"They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us."

"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."

More StarWind Storage Appliance pros

Cons

"Currently, the HPE HCI is based on the VMware solution, and many clients are skipping VMware due to its changed licensing method."

"I would like to see improvement in the hardware underneath it. Currently, it's a Gen9 DL380. One day, there will be a Gen10 DL380 and maybe they will have bigger or smaller sizes."

"Data protection and optimization: It is really weak. They do not offer deduplication or compression."

"Installation and setup could be easier."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"The solution needs to add a module or plugin of vCenter for clear monitoring and insights."

"In my country, the biggest issue is probably pricing."

"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."

More HPE Hyper Converged cons

"The dashboard features are not in the free version."

"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."

"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."

"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."

"StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one."

More StarWind Storage Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."

"There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"The price per value compared to other solutions, like Nutanix and SimpliVity. (We made the deal before approval of HPE SimpliVity deal)."

"The solution is expensive - not only the hardware costs but server costs too. And the more you scale, the more expensive it gets."

"If I'm comparing with Dell, HPE Hyper Converged is definitely cheaper in my experience."

"It is an expensive solution, however. If they could adjust the pricing, that would be helpful."

"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."

More HPE Hyper Converged pricing and cost advice

"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"

"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."

"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."

"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."

"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."

"It costs about 50,000 euros."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

13%

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Hyper Converged?

The pricing is competitive. Initially, I misunderstood and rated it as higher, but on a scale of one to ten where one is cheap, I would rate it as a four.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Hyper Converged?

I haven't had issues personally. I've heard from other people that maybe there could be some improvements around technical support.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Storage Appliance?

I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?

StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.

See all answers

Comparisons

VxRail vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 33% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 18% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs HPE Hyper Converged

Compared 6% of the time

More HPE Hyper Converged Competitors

FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 33% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 18% of the time

Scality RING vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 17% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 14% of the time

More StarWind Storage Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Hyper Converged

June 2025

Download HPE Hyper Converged product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Storage Appliance

June 2025

Download StarWind Storage Appliance product report

Also Known As

HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS

No data available

Overview

HPE Hyper Converged solutions combine intuitive software with the reliability of a world class platform to deliver cloud-like simplicity to your business.

Now, IT can become an internal service provider to end-users by quickly delivering the resources they need for application development and consumption. With HPE Hyper Converged systems companies can operate with cloud efficiency to simplify IT operations with one comprehensive control panel to deploy, monitor, analyze and update – with a single generalist; consume with cloud flexibility to deliver a cloud-like experience, with multi-tenant workspaces that eliminate stranded resources and flexes on demand; and deploy at cloud speed to empower developers and lines-of-business with a self-service portal that can instantly compose and recompose VMs in minutes. Built-in enterprise grade features, such as performance and resiliency enable HPE Hyper Converged systems to easily handle a wide variety of virtualized workloads, including general purpose virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and cloud.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out.

StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup.

StarWind

Sample Customers

North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: July 2025.

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