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Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 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

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes
Ranking in HCI
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Niraj  Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and is easy to use
The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered. Dell's competitors offer many products at very good prices. I face some issues with the stability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required. In the future, I want to receive technical support directly from the vendor.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
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 solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade."
"The tool's most valuable features are compression and its usage in Kubernetes."
"If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability."
"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is file sharing."
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"I have found the most important features of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes are the capacity to manage the storage because the storage is built in the servers. The type of profiles you can attribute to the storage is a benefit. You can manage the storage by profiles. Overall the solution is a good speed and performance."
"It is easy to install."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"The support is the most valuable feature. The support has been amazing. It's around the clock. One of our hard disks accidentally ejected without me knowing or being onsite. They called and told me about it before I had a chance to see it myself."
"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
 

Cons

"Currently, it's like a black box that only Dell technical support knows how to handle."
"The Dell VxRail solution is based on vSAN Ready Nodes, but the Dell VxRail is fully automated. It would be helpful if this automation feature could be added to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. For example, we need to install VMware ESXi, and manually expand the cluster."
"The solution should provide daily task alerts for data recovery maintenance, usage, and other instructions to ensure the systems are in a good status."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is a great hyper-converged system that is a perfect platform for supporting any kind of workload. The only workload that it's not designed to support is big data."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes doesn't perform as well as IBM. There are significant limitations, especially with scalability and flexibility over time. For example, adding drives can be problematic if the specific drives aren't available with older nodes that are four or five years old. Unlike IBM, Dell vSAN Ready Nodes isn't as flexible and doesn't scale easily. Additionally, while present, features like deduplication and compression don't perform as efficiently as they do on IBM. Our experience shows that the tool isn't as robust or flexible as advertised."
"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"There is room for improvement in the maintenance pricing. Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution rather than renew this one."
"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."
"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."
"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."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions."
"The solution is more expensive than a traditional array. The prices are skyrocketing."
"We have a four-year contract to use Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."
"There is a problem, which is the lack of an integrated price structure."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"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."
"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...
What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.
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

vSAN Ready Nodes
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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