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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure users achieve ROI within 2-3 years, citing cost, energy savings, and operational efficiencies with stable infrastructures.
Sentiment score
6.0
StarWind Storage Appliance users saw reduced costs, improved performance, and increased efficiency, with easy scalability and high reliability.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure support is praised for quick, knowledgeable service, resolving issues swiftly with multilingual capabilities and proactive monitoring.
Sentiment score
9.0
StarWind Storage Appliance customer service is praised for 24x7 troubleshooting, professionalism, high technical support ratings, and helpful videos.
When we send an email, an engineer is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes, and we get on a call to resolve the issue.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
The second one was a licensing issue because when I switched from the SMB package to another package, I had to change the way of licensing, and that was horrendous.
Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers exceptional scalability, allowing seamless expansion, dynamic growth, and effortless workload management for enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.5
StarWind Storage Appliance is scalable, adaptable, hardware-independent, supports unlimited storage, and is effective in standalone and hyperconverged environments.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers stable, reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficient workload handling, and high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.9
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for stability, robust performance, and high user ratings, especially on well-maintained Windows OS.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Assistant Manager at Isuzu Hicom Malaysia Sdn Bhd
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in setup cost, storage, integration, compatibility, networking, oversight, and pricing transparency for competitiveness.
StarWind Storage Appliance requires improved integration, easier setup, better insights, and feature parity between demo and paid versions.
It could be interesting to offer back another small business pricing that would be more suitable for small companies.
Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN
They should add AI features in the future.
Manager at Seoul Institute of the Arts
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers cost-effectiveness with comprehensive solutions, despite initial costs, appealing to enterprises for long-term ROI.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its affordability, straightforward licensing, and excellent value compared to competitors for SMEs.
At first, it is cheaper than cloud services, so the cost is a major benefit.
Manager at Seoul Institute of the Arts
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
Assistant Manager at Isuzu Hicom Malaysia Sdn Bhd
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure excels in ease of use, scalability, data protection, and seamless management, enhancing performance and reducing costs.
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its user-friendly interface, high performance, reliability, excellent support, affordability, and robust data protection.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
The performance was really better for applications and access times to the data.
Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN
It is easy to use, and it's easy to maintain.
Manager at Seoul Institute of the Arts
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
200
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (6th), HCI (5th), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
StarWind Storage Appliance
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (16th), All-Flash Storage (31st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 8.8%, up 8.2% compared to last year.
StarWind Storage Appliance, on the other hand, focuses on NAS, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)8.8%
VxRail13.8%
VMware vSAN11.4%
Other66.0%
HCI
NAS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Storage Appliance1.2%
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)15.1%
Dell PowerStore10.4%
Other73.3%
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

OB
Head Systems Administration/Security at Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System PLC
Infrastructure efficiency has improved significantly with quick server provisioning, though physical to virtual migrations need a streamlined in-house tool
From my experience with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), there is one area that needs improvement. When moving a critical infrastructure from a physical machine to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), we currently have to use a third-party tool to convert the physical machine to a VM. We have to use VMware converter to perform this conversion before moving it to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise77
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...
What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?
NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products and worth using, is the full-stack lifecycle management. This capacity allows u...
Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it for me. You may have an amazing product but if there is not anyone to help you ...
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
What advice do you have for others considering StarWind Storage Appliance?
The tool is mostly for medium companies and requires no maintenance. It has a good price and performance. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.