HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE Alletra dHCI and NetApp HCI [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Hosni

Senior System Engineer at Giza Systems

Feb 24, 2024

Provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

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Yudish Jatoo

Business Development Manager at MC3

Oct 25, 2023

Independently scalable solution with the highest resiliency, low latency and intelligence

We use this solution to consolidate IT infrastructure in our data center and DR sites The most valuable features of HPE Nimble dHCI are that you can scale compute and storage independently, Triple+ Parity RAID can tolerate three simultaneous drive failures with any data loss, and HPE Infosight AI…

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EdwardHoppe

Senior SAN / Systems Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Nov 13, 2019

Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame

There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It is a bug fixed in 11.0 of the code for Element OS/Solidfire. The option to pull in a config/text file to be used as input to the NDE process; rather than going through a lot of screens. The manual effort there is error-prone. This something NetApp engineering has been made aware of as a request and they say they're looking at that as a future enhancement. As far as SolidFire, if you use the GUI, you can only create one line at a time or device at a time. That's ludicrous. I referenced earlier today to the NetApp feedback panel that this needs to be fixed. They said, "Yep. I understand that." In terms of bandwidth and IOPS along with availability - we have not managed this environment long enough to put TIER1 environments under this umbrella; yet don't see why it couldn't handle the aforementioned especially if you create dedicated pods for those 'heavy hitters' (I'll just call it that.) Thus, in time we'll look for more deployments upon the converged infrastructure of NetApp.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."

"It's quite easy to install."

"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."

"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."

"The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well."

"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."

"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."

"It enables us to provide more solution options for our clients, with the reassurance that, when implemented, they will be efficient and stable."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"We have the ability to increase the storage without any additional costs."

"Simply being able to move objects and the duplication feature have been quite effective."

"The nice thing about it is that it truly integrates with the cloud, so I can move my volumes bi-directionally in and out of the cloud."

"The product has cut down a lot of service tickets. Earlier, people complained about slowness."

"So far, the solution's performance is very good."

"It's helpful as you stand on high-end storage. Alletra offers up to 99% availability, providing excellent stability. You also get the benefits of an HCI solution with a template and upgradability at any time."

"I love InfoSite. That gets you a lot of good detailed information."

"Nimble DHCI is really user friendly and not complex"

More HPE Alletra dHCI pros

"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."

"The solution is very scalable."

"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."

"It has reduced our hypervisor footprint by around 20%."

"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"

"The most valuable feature is the convergence."

"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."

"The most valuable aspects are that it's an all-in-one solution and it's very self-contained."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

Cons

"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."

"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."

"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."

"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."

"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."

"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 runs until it does not - and disaster recovery documentation is sparse and mostly unclear."

"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"The only issue I'm really running into is we have a SQL server that we're having a lot of high IO latency on one of my drives and it's my data drive from my SQL server. It's not really giving me any good information as to where that latency is coming from, so that's what I'm trying to track down and troubleshoot."

"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI currently is promoting only VMware as a hypervisor, whereas if they can look into other OSs, such as KVM or Red Hat, it would be an improvement."

"Companies in small countries face problems with spare parts."

"The product’s performance needs improvement. It could also help with more environment monitoring and AI technologies to improve the performance and thresholds."

"Lacking integration to the cloud."

"The product does not support file services."

"Sometimes the technical support would get back to us in two hours, but other times it would take them two or even three days to respond."

"The solution must be hypervisor-agnostic."

More HPE Alletra dHCI cons

"It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."

"The fact that it doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like. I find that a lot of the performance analysis is done through support, where they have something that we don't have. It would be nice just to have all that on-prem."

"The price should be lowered. It's a little expensive."

"In the next version I would like to see bigger GPU types and insurance for including transparency."

"The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."

"There are some legacy applications which still cannot be migrated. That is why we have to keep two environments: legacy and the new one. We would like to see more compatibility to move stuff."

"HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources."

"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint."

"This solution has a great price for the functionality."

"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"We are happy with the price."

"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is much cheaper than the competition and has value proposition. Customers can see an ROI in three months. There are no additional costs, and VMware licenses can be reutilized."

"With the features that HPE Nimble Storage dHCI provides, I cannot say its pricing is more."

"The product is costly."

"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."

"I think it's priced right and it's extremely intelligent."

"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is cheap."

"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."

"The price of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is expensive."

More HPE Alletra dHCI pricing and cost advice

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."

"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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) combin...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

If you are comfortable with the solution and you feel that you don't need support, you can begin with the free licenc...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Areas for improvement in StarWind Virtual SAN include simplifying the setup process, especially for users with limite...

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What do you like most about HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?

The solution is easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?

It has competitive pricing.

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What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?

The roadmap could be improved.

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Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 28% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

VMware vSAN vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 19% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 19% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 17% of the time

VxRail vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Alletra dHCI Competitors

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Alletra dHCI

October 2024

Download HPE Alletra dHCI product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

October 2024

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI

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StarWind

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

NetApp

Overview

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

HPE Alletra dHCI, a data storage solution from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), offers Disaggregated Hyperconverged Infrastructure (dHCI), separating storage from compute resources for independent scaling and management. Utilizing HPE Nimble Storage technology, known for AI-driven optimization, it ensures high performance and management efficiency. With scalability and agility, users can effortlessly expand storage or processing power as data requirements evolve. Additionally, boasting rapid deployment in under 15 minutes and a claimed 99.9999% data availability, HPE Alletra dHCI promises robust and reliable storage solutions.

NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Information Not Available

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: November 2024.

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