We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"It is extremely stable."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"vSAN we found was simple to set up, easy to configure and manage and allows us to achieve storage redundancy."
"PowerShell library is pretty good feature as I created with APC PowerChute a script to put volumes on maintenance mode then turning off the StarWind nodes together with the VM and Hosts when UPS reaches 15 percent, this way after a blackout or electrical problems when turning servers on again, there is no issues for syncing or data loss due to energy interrupts."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."
"The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"Everyone uses virtualization to more efficiently utilize hardware resources. That's the main point of vSAN and VMware."
"The most valuable features are Erasure Coding, Deduplication and Compression, and the advancement in stretching regarding replication."
"We had very good access to technical support."
"Very easy to implement in any existing environment."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"We can also create test cases. We can even throttle down performance or release more performance. So, we can run more precise test scenarios."
"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"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."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"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."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance."
"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 only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"We'd like an easier setup for Windows updates on the Hyper-V servers so you don't have to use a script to ensure auto-updating is done."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."
"The ability to access SAN environments with fiber channels (or even NVMe) would be a good addition."
"VMware vSAN could improve by having better integration with other vendors and the storage is limited, I prefer it to the traditional storage."
"Improvements can be made with respect to scalability."
"The updating process could be easier."
"It can be very expensive."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"Reporting currently depends on third party applications and that could be improved."
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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 43 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 80 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Flexible and easy to set up with excellent support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), StorMagic SvSAN, Dell PowerFlex and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. VMware vSAN report.
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