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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
11th
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
13th
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 January 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

"vSAN ReadyNodes offer easy scalability, which has proven beneficial for storage needs."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"They are heading in the right direction and moving to integrate everything with a hybrid cloud, and moving workloads back and forth."
"The tool's most valuable features are compression and its usage in Kubernetes."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"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 the flexibility of the nodes. Additionally, if there are any critical issues they update us through emails. The issues are taken care of remotely on the system."
"The solution immediately expands storage area when you add nodes."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network."
"The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me."
"The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment."
"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 initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."
 

Cons

"The deployment is done by doing it one by one and could be simplified."
"Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement."
"The power switch on the hardware is located in a poor location where it can accidentally be pushed. In an update, they should solve this issue so people do not push it accidentally to have their service go down. A possible solution is the switch should be inside."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"Compatibility with other hardware nodes needs to be improved."
"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."
"Dell vSAN Ready Nodes must be flexible since it is complex in designing concepts. It needs to improve stability. The product should integrate with the public cloud."
"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."
"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."
"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 only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
"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."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a problem, which is the lack of an integrated price structure."
"We have a four-year contract to use Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes."
"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"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."
"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."
"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."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"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."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"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."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
7%
 

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 do you like most about StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature.
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...
 

Also Known As

vSAN Ready Nodes
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Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace
Sears Home and Franchise Business
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