We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI."It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses."
"The most valuable feature is the managed service, which has been an important part of monitoring our critical infrastructure."
"The multi-vertical aspect is what is most valuable for us. The main reason we wanted a multi protocol was because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data as we could get from Linux and Windows lengths. That was our value proposition for this solution."
"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"In terms of helping us with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds, we do store data internally and in Azure. It has allowed us to consolidate a number of workloads, across our old NetApp and a number of our older storage arrays, into a single unit and have that unit also working with Azure."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."
"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."
"The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware. I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, obviously. There are cost savings, obviously."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."
"The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The sales process is easy."
"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"A central management console may be nice to see all nodes."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
"They could improve the packaging."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."
"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."
"Its stability is very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crash."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"Not much can be improved, to be honest."
"Most meetings are done via Zoom, and I'm sure you could switch to a text based conversation if needed as they seem like a very accommodating team. It's not something I would worry about if you are a potential client."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
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NetApp HCI [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 32 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. NetApp HCI [EOL] is rated 8.0, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of NetApp HCI [EOL] writes "Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". NetApp HCI [EOL] is most compared with , whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN.
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