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."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."
"The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."
"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."
"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure..."
"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."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"With StarWind's Proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"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."
"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."
"It gives zero downtime and it works with two nodes rather than three nodes, unlike other solutions."
"This synchronization is easy with StorMagic, and we can establish availability between servers."
"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."
"StorMagic SvSAN's best feature is that it is platform agnostic."
"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."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."
"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..."
"Updates need improvement."
"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."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
"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."
"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."
"They should enable data compression deduplication features for the platform."
"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."
"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 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"
"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."
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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 Red Hat Ceph Storage, whereas StorMagic SvSAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, DataCore SANsymphony, LINBIT SDS and StarWind Storage Appliance. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StorMagic SvSAN report.
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