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HPE Hyper Converged vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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 Hyper Converged
Ranking in HCI
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
204
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Hyper Converged is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.1%
HPE Hyper Converged3.0%
Other94.9%
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.
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs
The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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."
"We like the fact that the hyper-converged infrastructure provides a simple to grow, easy to configure platform."
"The solution has good backup resolution updates."
"The features of HPE Hyper Converged that are most effective and beneficial are its simplicity as well as its scalability."
"It scales very well."
"Reasonably priced and easy to manage for small to medium size companies that don't have an IT department."
"Hyper Converge is easier to manage and performs better than traditional infrastructure."
"There are multiple advantages. Typically, being an all-flash storage, which is available through either SimpliVity or dHCI, the performance is much better because the IOPS goes high, so it's more powerful in terms of performance. Secondly, if I'm talking of SimpliVity Hyper Convergence solution from HPE, unlike the competition, even if three hard drives fail, you are still running the solution."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."
"The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"StarWind was a great price to performance ratio and it had a great support team behind it that helped me configure the solution and also size it to the customer's needs for them not to overpay for it and not get something that was not useful for them."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
 

Cons

"One of the things that can be improved is that today, is supporting VMware, maybe as a hypervisor. But it would be good to have an open kind of platform for other hypervisors, maybe. Like Nutanix is doing, it's very open."
"This solution is very costly."
"The software version on the HC380s we are using is version 1. It does not support spanned vCenter which we use since we have multiple sites."
"Providing local technical support and improving the price are areas this service needs to consider improving."
"A software-only version of the solution, without the hardware, would be nice."
"Data protection and optimization: It is really weak. They do not offer deduplication or compression."
"Currently, the HPE HCI is based on the VMware solution, and many clients are skipping VMware due to its changed licensing method."
"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 change the IP sub-network and IP service."
"I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"The documentation could be better."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes..."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."
"The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
"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 price per value compared to other solutions, like Nutanix and SimpliVity. (We made the deal before approval of HPE SimpliVity deal)."
"The solutions cost us a lot."
"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."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

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 Business165
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

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?
The initial setup of HPE Hyper Converged requires study and a comprehensive understanding of virtualization. The second step is to follow instructions step by step, as it can be complex to understa...
What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost. I did most of the setup, so there wasn't really any cost there. The professiona...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little bit unclear. However, when I worked through those issues with their professional...
 

Also Known As

HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Hyper Converged vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.