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Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infr...
Ranking in HCI
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 2.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.5%
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure2.1%
Other96.4%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Maheshc Chathuranga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise System Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Has provided mature containerization support and responsive assistance while meeting diverse customer needs
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions. Feature-wise, it's very mature for the containerization side, but the price point is an issue. I would like to see more features related to disaster recovery and continuity in Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, specifically disaster recovery, disaster recovery sites, and business continuity.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Their technical support is amazing in general."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
"The most useful feature is the solution's automation in terms of how we are able to spin up a certain workload in real-time when we are doing R&D."
"The consolidation of the management in one control point is the most valuable. The whole infrastructure management is consolidated in just one console point. The documentation is also pretty good."
"The stability of the solution is good; we haven't experienced any bugs or glitches and we've been satisfied so far."
"Depending on the requirements of the consumers, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be used for any application that can be deployed."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"At the moment I haven't any reason or cause for improvement because it does what it does as it says on the tin, and it just works."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"On the cost side, StarWind is a really cost-effective solution, costing a fraction of what the big name HCI solutions cost yet providing similar performance and capability."
"It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on."
"Downtime is almost non-existent now."
 

Cons

"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The main issue is the initial investment. It is an expensive product, and it should be cheaper. It should also be easier to use and manage. The professional service for this solution is quite complex and expensive."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate."
"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."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be..."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"A desired feature or service is the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with the hyper-converged software."
"The only issues are when Hyper V itself has limitations and I'd love to see support or enhancement in the area of direct-attached GPU cards."
"The user interface needs an update for the Windows client."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue."
"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
"It is quite pricey."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."
"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
15%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions. Feature-wise, it's very mature for the contai...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is mainly used for customers' companies.
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure?
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is not used for edge computing. Most people are referring to centralized data centers for requirements, and in Sri Lanka, there are not many edge computing sol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our inf...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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