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Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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 Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
189
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

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 Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 1.7% 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.
MIT - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up and maintain with good performance capabilities
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. ATM (20220609) is still necessary, since taking a node offline without properly activating the maintenance mode on the vSAN would trigger a full sync of the vSAN nodes. This is fine and a good thing since it ensures data integrity. However, there is something in the making that would ensure integrity without a full sync after a node goes down, which, as stated above, one could "abuse" to patch (and boot = take down) the hypervisors during business hours 😁 Other than that, the thing is rock stable and chugging along without issues. We are an SMB so we "only" have around 50 VMs on our FO cluster, which is a medium load for SSDs. If you plan to go more to the "max" side of performance use, do proper testing!

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is file sharing."
"The most beneficial feature is the consolidated storage which is the vSAN. It handles most of the heavy work."
"Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable"
"No concerns regarding the footprint in the data center."
"The tool's most valuable feature is high availability."
"The tool's most valuable features are compression and its usage in Kubernetes."
"We find the initial implementation process simple and straightforward."
"The product is useful for DR and other things."
"StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"When it comes to ease of installation, the whole process is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
 

Cons

"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."
"We have experienced some issues with performance."
"Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement."
"Currently, it's like a black box that only Dell technical support knows how to handle."
"The solution doesn't scale."
"This product is not sufficiently scalable."
"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."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation area."
"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."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"The interface of the management console of the StarWind Virtual SAN is complex, and it's difficult for the novice user to interact with the management having less knowledge or training in the product."
"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is more expensive than a traditional array. The prices are skyrocketing."
"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"Comparing the price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to other solutions it is not expensive."
"The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions."
"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."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."
"Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective."
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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
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
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 do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a str...
 

Also Known As

vSAN Ready Nodes
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,881 professionals have used our research since 2012.