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Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure 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:
 

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 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 Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is 1.3%, up from 0.6% 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%
Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure1.3%
Other96.6%
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that you can add other types of services."
"The size of the hardware is what we need because it is very good for small configurations."
"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."
"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 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."
"Both the scalability and stability of this solution are excellent."
"It is stable and scalable."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"Their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"One of the standout features of StarWind.com is its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with Dell systems. This integration provides users with an unmatched level of convenience and compatibility, allowing for streamlined operations within a Dell environment. This compatibility factor alone can save significant time and effort for IT professionals, ensuring a smooth integration process and optimized performance."
"Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
 

Cons

"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."
"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. 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."
"It should be more user-friendly, in my opinion."
"This product is not so stable. Maybe it is just not mature enough in its development."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure can be improved primarily because the biggest problem in Sri Lanka is its high price compared to other solutions."
"Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"If there was a way to automatically put disks in maintenance mode when shutting the host down and exit maintenance mode automatically, that would simplify things."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"While the tool works well in its current configuration, allowing for greater ease and flexibility in adding new nodes to the cluster without complications would be very beneficial, especially in growing environments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite pricey."
"Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-sourced, low-cost solution with full features."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
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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%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business165
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

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 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

Red Hat HCI, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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