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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
19th
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
15th
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 January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.3%
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure1.3%
Other97.4%
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

"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"It is stable and scalable."
"Utilizing Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure's software-defined storage helps increase data consistency for specific use cases, aligning with customer requirements, depending on which type of data we are storing."
"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 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."
"Utilizing Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure's software-defined storage helps increase data consistency for specific use cases, aligning with customer requirements, depending on which type of data we are storing."
"I like that you can add other types of services."
"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 solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers."
"The sales process is easy."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"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."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
 

Cons

"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"The cloud deployment could be improved."
"The licensing policy needs to be improved. They have a licensing policy based on the number of CPU sockets. Nowadays what has happened is that the license they are trying to move is based on the number of CPU cores. With the advancement in technology there are now more cores in a single CPU. It's been very challenging in terms of managing the license around everything. Today we have a processor with 24 and 32 cores on the same physical CPU."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"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."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is very difficult to operate. You have to have a deep understanding of the technical details of the infrastructure to implement it. When you compare it with VMware, it is totally different because the graphical user interface is not that easy to understand. It is not intuitive. To use it, you have to read a lot of documentation and even understand what is going on behind the solution. It is not for someone who has a little bit of knowledge. Currently, it is too complex. I need something that is easy to implement. It should have a basic configuration as well as a complex configuration."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"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..."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale."
"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
"It is quite pricey."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"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 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."
"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."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"Its cost was reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Educational Organization
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Hospitality Company
6%
 

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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