HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.7, while StarWind is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.1. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 6.5% mindshare in HCI, compared to StarWind’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

HPE SimpliVity

Read 155 HPE SimpliVity reviews

8,916 Views
8,649 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 206 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

6,844 Views
4,312 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HPE SimpliVity

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

StarWind Virtual SAN and HPE SimpliVity are major players in the software-defined storage arena. StarWind Virtual SAN holds a competitive edge due to its flexibility, hardware independence, and cost-effectiveness. HPE SimpliVity sets itself apart with its advanced features, including integrated backup and disaster recovery but often at a higher cost.

Features: StarWind Virtual SAN provides a robust software-defined storage solution that integrates easily with existing infrastructure, supports hardware independence, and offers competitive pricing. HPE SimpliVity, on the other hand, brings exceptional data virtualization, seamless integration with VMware, and impressive optimization through deduplication and backup integration in its hyper-converged infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: StarWind Virtual SAN could enhance its offerings with more comprehensive documentation and automated installation procedures to improve user experience. Meanwhile, HPE SimpliVity could benefit from improvements in cloud integration, expanded hypervisor support, and simpler licensing management to elevate user satisfaction.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Deployment for both solutions is generally smooth, but StarWind Virtual SAN gains favor for its smaller, agile support team and quicker response times. HPE SimpliVity, while thorough, can sometimes encounter delays due to its larger organizational structure.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind Virtual SAN is lauded for its cost-effective pricing model, which substantially reduces initial and ongoing costs, ensuring high ROI. Conversely, HPE SimpliVity's extensive feature set justifies its higher pricing, offering substantial value through reduced operational expenses and enhanced hardware utilization over time.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

April 2026

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

4.8

HPE SimpliVity offers varying ROI timelines, significant cost savings, reduced complexity, and easy VM expansion, reported by users.

Sentiment score

6.8

StarWind Virtual SAN significantly reduces costs and complexity, offering high performance, immediate ROI, and hardware-agnostic financial benefits.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.7

HPE SimpliVity is praised for responsive, knowledgeable support, despite minor issues with response times and documentation accessibility.

Sentiment score

7.7

StarWind Virtual SAN excels in customer service with quick, expert support available 24/7, ensuring smooth operations and client satisfaction.

The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I would rate technical support from HPE SimpliVity eight out of ten.

Mohsin Rasheed

Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.

Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.9

HPE SimpliVity offers easy scalability but may face limitations and flexibility issues in large enterprise environments.

Sentiment score

7.6

StarWind Virtual SAN excels in scalable solutions, effortlessly expanding storage and nodes to accommodate varying organizational needs.

With HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

HPE SimpliVity is scalable, as it can be scaled in terms of addition of nodes.

Mohsin Rasheed

Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.

Christian Nissia

IT Support Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.

Tyler Lejeune

Manager of Systems Administration at Monster Digital

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.5

HPE SimpliVity is highly stable and reliable, with most issues linked to external factors, earning high user ratings.

Sentiment score

8.4

StarWind Virtual SAN is reliable, with robust performance and minimal downtime, excelling even during hardware failures, upgrades, or maintenance.

From HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow.

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.

Daniel Philot

Hosting Operations Senior Analyst at Equinix Brasil

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Room For Improvement

HPE SimpliVity requires improved integration, faster updates, enhanced features, simplified interface, better support, and expanded cloud compatibility.

StarWind Virtual SAN needs user-friendly management, improved documentation, better integration, modern features, and enhanced performance tools.

In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Pricing could be an area for improvement, as there are many other options that are very cost-effective compared to HPE SimpliVity or converged solutions.

Mohsin Rasheed

Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Setup Cost

HPE SimpliVity offers cost-effective hyper-converged solutions with competitive pricing and lower total ownership costs compared to alternatives.

StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for affordability, simple licensing, ease of use, flexible upgrades, and dedicated support.

Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions.

Mohsin Rasheed

Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!

Jose Escario

Infrastructure Manager at Beacon Fronline Solutions Inc

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Valuable Features

HPE SimpliVity provides efficient data management with deduplication, backup, and recovery, enhancing performance and reducing complexity and costs.

StarWind Virtual SAN offers easy installation, exceptional support, and scalability, enhancing storage performance and ensuring continuous operation.

The greatest benefit is that customers don't need multiple hardware solutions from other vendors. Virtualization comes in a single box.

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

HPE SimpliVity is a complete solution for converged infrastructure, having its own local data store for the virtual machines and workloads.

Mohsin Rasheed

Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech

For more quotes and insights, download the HPE SimpliVity report

Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Categories and Ranking

HPE SimpliVity

Ranking in HCI

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

155

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

206

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 6.5%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	2.2%
HPE SimpliVity	6.5%
Other	91.3%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable

There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.

Read full review

Jccerong Heron

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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	80

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	166
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

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What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?

The solution's technical support is good.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?

Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market. The ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any cost.

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available. I wanted to see better understanding of...

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What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?

In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specif...

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Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 4% of the time

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StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 8% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

HPE StoreVirtual vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 3% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity

April 2026

Download HPE SimpliVity product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

April 2026

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

SimpliVity, HPE HCI

StarWind SAN & NAS

Overview

HPE SimpliVity provides businesses with advanced features such as inline deduplication, compression, and instant recovery, enabling efficient backup and scalability. Its integration with VMware and centralized management fosters ease of use, establishing a streamlined IT infrastructure.

HPE SimpliVity stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a robust infrastructure capable of handling diverse workloads. Its features like integrated backup and disaster recovery ensure quick restores and high availability. Known for its efficient use of storage and data processing capabilities, it helps reduce operational costs. This system offers a reliable framework for virtualized environments, enhancing disaster recovery processes, IT operations, and application hosting while supporting workloads such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL.

What are HPE SimpliVity's key features?

Inline Deduplication: Minimizes data redundancy, enhancing storage efficiency.
Compression: Optimizes storage, reducing space requirements.
Instant Recovery: Facilitates rapid restoration of data and applications.
Centralized Management: Simplifies IT operations with unified management.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to business growth seamlessly.

What benefits should users seek in HPE SimpliVity reviews?

Cost Reduction: Achieves savings through efficient data processing and storage utilization.
High Availability: Ensures consistent service and data accessibility.
VMware Integration: Provides compatibility and smooth operations in VMware environments.
Quick Disaster Recovery: Enables swift restoration processes for continued business operations.

Organizations deploy HPE SimpliVity mainly for virtualized environments, focusing on disaster recovery, IT operations, and application hosting. Extensively used in sectors for VDI, backups, and data center tasks, it supports major workloads like Oracle and SAP, simplifying infrastructure management while ensuring high availability.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

StarWind Virtual SAN offers robust, scalable solutions for high availability in VMware and Hyper-V environments, providing real-time data replication and seamless infrastructure integration.

StarWind Virtual SAN stands out for high availability, impressive performance, and smooth integration with existing systems. Its real-time data replication capabilities minimize downtime and boost operational efficiency. Users appreciate the platform's cost-effectiveness and compatibility with diverse hardware, allowing for seamless deployment across hyper-converged infrastructures and data redundancy setups. Despite the strong feature set, calls for a more user-friendly setup and interface are common, alongside requests for clearer documentation and a web-based management interface.

What are the most notable features?

High Availability: Ensures continuous operation with real-time replication.
Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing IT infrastructure.
Scalability: Adapts to changing capacity needs easily.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces traditional SAN system expenses.
Energy Efficiency: Saves on power consumption with optimized functionality.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Reduced Maintenance: Minimizes IT staff involvement, lowering costs.
Enhanced Performance: Facilitates efficient data handling.
Operational Efficiency: Decreases downtime, increasing productivity.
Flexibility: Supports various IT configurations and strategies.

In industries like small businesses, StarWind Virtual SAN is implemented to replace costly SAN systems, ensuring uptime and strong performance. It's leveraged for hyper-converged infrastructure, failover clustering, and backup strategies, meeting diverse IT demands from hosting virtual machines to data migration.

StarWind

Sample Customers

Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

April 2026

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Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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