HPE Hyper Converged vs Sunlight comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
StarWind Logo
5,311 views|1,782 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Logo
3,791 views|3,296 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Sunlight.io Logo
286 views|120 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.
To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: April 2024).
769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable.""It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly.""Before VSAN, hypervisor configuration changes and updates resulted in VM outages. Now, downtime is dramatically reduced.""Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working.""We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown.""StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases.""The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well.""The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"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.""It's a very complete product with residencies to protect data and secure it end-to-end. It includes storage, computing, and networking, offering a fully ten-key solution.""What I really like about this program, is that it needs little space and it works really fast, so it saves us time.""If you were comparing this solution to VMware, it has more features, and it's very fast on the recovery.""The most valuable feature was its time to delivery.""Reasonably priced and easy to manage for small to medium size companies that don't have an IT department.""One of the solution's strong points is the deduplication capabilities of SimpliVity.""HPE Hyper Converged is stable."

More HPE Hyper Converged Pros →

"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training.""The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."

More Sunlight Pros →

Cons
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition).""There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa.""It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows.""StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct.""With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs.""Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline.""Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience.""You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"The price can be improved. We would like to see support for some open source virtualization technology like for example KVM.""Could be more secure and more economical.""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.""Scalability requires using additional nodes.""One problem I've had is that I was trying to do a move and it was not working. I was given an error and a message asking me to shut down the machine first and then move it to another host.""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.""Data protection and optimization: It is really weak. They do not offer deduplication or compression.""This solution is very costly."

More HPE Hyper Converged Cons →

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix.""My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."

More Sunlight Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
  • "The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
  • "The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
  • "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."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It could be cheaper, everything could be cheaper."
  • "With this solution, I buy everything together, pre-packaged, pre-installed, and in just 15 minutes, it's installed."
  • "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."
  • "It is an expensive solution, however. If they could adjust the pricing, that would be helpful."
  • "The solution is too expensive for our customers. The pricing should be lower."
  • "The solution is expensive - not only the hardware costs but server costs too. And the more you scale, the more expensive it gets."
  • "There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • More HPE Hyper Converged Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
  • More Sunlight Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
    769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines… more »
    Top Answer:I would highly advise new users to consult the StarWind technical team beforehand. Also, consider the paid version if… more »
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's most valuable features are scalability, easy migration, easy recovery, and flexible backup possibilities.
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer:The solution's pricing for the hardware and support could be reduced.
    Top Answer:The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more… more »
    Top Answer:It lacks the bells and whistles that are typically associated with Amazon Services or Nutanix. It is still a work in… more »
    Top Answer:We offer virtual desktops. We use our own proprietary technology using Sunlight. Sunlight works very well for people who… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    HPE Hyper Converged 380, HPE Hyper Converged 250, HPE Hyper Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    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.

    Sunlight is a complete HCI stack that can be deployed on-premise on standard data center hardware, in AWS and on resource-constrained far-edge devices.

    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    North Lindsey College, FireWhat?, HudsonAlpha
    Lavazza, Infraspace
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company22%
    Computer Software Company17%
    University6%
    Agriculture6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Government10%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Real Estate/Law Firm23%
    Comms Service Provider22%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Insurance Company15%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise32%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2024.
    769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HPE Hyper Converged is ranked 11th in HCI with 34 reviews while Sunlight is ranked 29th in HCI with 2 reviews. HPE Hyper Converged is rated 8.2, while Sunlight is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of HPE Hyper Converged writes " Ensures end-to-end data security with redundancy measures and provides visibility into the system but node expansion challenges". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sunlight writes "Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support". HPE Hyper Converged is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex and HPE Alletra dHCI, whereas Sunlight is most compared with VMware vSAN.

    See our list of best HCI vendors.

    We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.