Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE SimpliVity 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:
 

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
6.9
StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, flexible storage solutions reducing operational costs, downtime, and hardware needs, with rapid ROI.
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.
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.
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.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
 

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
7.8
StarWind Virtual SAN offers exceptional support with timely responses, expert staff, and 24/7 proactive monitoring for optimal performance.
The technical support from the HPE side is excellent, and I give them 10 out of 10.
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.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
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.
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.
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.
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

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 impresses users with seamless scalability, allowing effortless upgrades and configurations without downtime, supporting various setups.
With HPE, customers can scale up the HPE SimpliVity solution anytime.
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.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
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.
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.
Manager of Systems Administration at Monster Digital
 

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 offers stable, reliable performance with minimal issues, seamless updates, and efficient VM migrations, even during failures.
From HPE's side, it is stable, and customers find it easy to manage and easy to grow.
Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
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.
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.
Hosting Operations Senior Analyst at Equinix Brasil
 

Room For Improvement

HPE SimpliVity requires improved integration, faster updates, enhanced features, simplified interface, better support, and expanded cloud compatibility.
StarWind Virtual SAN needs better documentation, automation, integration, setup simplification, monitoring, and feature enhancements like deduplication and encryption.
In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination.
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.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
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.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
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.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

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 competitively priced, simple to license, easy to implement, and offers excellent value with flexible options.
Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
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.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!
Infrastructure Manager at Beacon Fronline Solutions Inc
 

Valuable Features

HPE SimpliVity provides efficient data management with deduplication, backup, and recovery, enhancing performance and reducing complexity and costs.
StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, high performance solutions with easy management, excellent support, and seamless integration for various platforms.
The greatest benefit is that customers don't need multiple hardware solutions from other vendors. Virtualization comes in a single box.
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.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
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.
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.
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.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

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
204
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 7.7%, down from 9.2% 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 SimpliVity7.7%
Other90.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business67
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise80
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business165
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

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 ...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
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 ...
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

SimpliVity, HPE HCI
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.