We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and StorMagic SvSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most important feature is the ability to experience the loss of one node or one storage device, and not lose the entire cluster."
"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."
"It has great free trials that allow end users to test a large variety of their products before deciding to buy the full product."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
"The most valuable feature is the fact that the nodes are Active/Active, and allow us to do upgrades on any node without any downtime."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."
"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great."
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"It helps us prevent any data loss while working with the failover clusters."
"StorMagic SvSAN is a very effective solution and the interface is good."
"What I found most valuable in StorMagic SvSAN is integration. As a software-defined storage solution, it's also very easy to use and it's the trend in the market today. StorMagic SvSAN also made the customer happy because the customer could use his existing hardware with it. The customer had rack-mounted storage, so he didn't want to purchase a dedicated hardware for storage purposes. He just upgraded his hard disk drives."
"The most valuable feature of StorMagic SvSAN is its high availability. We have not had any downtime or data loss. Business continuity is highly important."
"It gives zero downtime and it works with two nodes rather than three nodes, unlike other solutions."
"We compared two solutions for this use case, but we went with StorMagic because it had more capabilities than the others. It's also more reliable, especially in production environments that require availability and sustainability."
"This synchronization is easy with StorMagic, and we can establish availability between servers."
"StorMagic SvSAN's best feature is that it is platform agnostic."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"There should be some kind of active monitoring connected to StarWind vSAN, so you will be able to act when needed."
"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
"Updates seem to be non-existent."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"I want to suggest that the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure needs to be reduced."
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"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."
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."
"Not much can be improved, to be honest."
"Updates need improvement."
"If we want to want to replicate the VM to the cloud, or off-site, it does not allow it because of asynchronous. There is no option available."
"There are two features missing: there's no REST API functionality, and there is no date duplication in it."
"In the next release, StorMagic SvSAN should include multi-node clusters, which would allow storage spaces to be used more efficiently."
"The only improvement area I can see is their licensing. For example, the memory caching feature is only available in an advanced license. Normally, it's in a standard license. It would be better if they had memory caching features in the product. Some backup features should also be in the product"
"In terms of what could be improved in StorMagic SvSAN, I don't have a major issue with it, but its user interface should be more customer-oriented."
"The deployment of StorMagic SvSAN is very small. However, you need some time to do it. It's important to make a test deployment before the real deployment."
"They should enable data compression deduplication features for the platform."
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews while StorMagic SvSAN is ranked 8th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 9 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while StorMagic SvSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StorMagic SvSAN writes "The best choice for performance and price". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and HPE SimpliVity, whereas StorMagic SvSAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, DataCore SANsymphony, Veeam Backup & Replication and HPE StoreVirtual. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StorMagic SvSAN report.
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