StarWind Virtual SAN and HPE Alletra dHCI are two products competing in the virtual storage and hyper-converged infrastructure sphere. StarWind offers reliability and cost-effectiveness, whereas HPE Alletra dHCI provides a comprehensive feature set and predictive analytics. StarWind has the upper hand in cost-effectiveness and simplicity, while HPE excels in advanced integration capabilities but at a higher cost.
Features: StarWind Virtual SAN offers advanced features such as active-active HA, seamless Microsoft clustering integration, and excellent performance with fault tolerance. HPE Alletra dHCI is known for its ease of management, comprehensive features, and AI-driven InfoSight for predictive analytics, which continually monitors and manages the system performance.
Room for Improvement: StarWind Virtual SAN needs enhanced user documentation, better Linux integration, and more intuitive monitoring tools. HPE Alletra dHCI could improve by reducing higher costs and addressing limitations in integration with non-VMware environments, as some users seek more granular controls and fiber channel support.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Virtual SAN is straightforward to deploy, integrating easily with Windows environments with knowledgeable support. HPE Alletra dHCI offers solid support but users face a steeper learning curve during initial deployments compared to StarWind's simplicity.
Pricing and ROI: StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for cost-effectiveness, with a straightforward pricing model and solid ROI. It leverages existing hardware without upfront costs, making it attractive for budget-constrained organizations. HPE Alletra dHCI demands a higher upfront investment, offset by its ability to deliver substantial ROI in large, integrated environments.
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.
Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.
A response typically comes within half an hour to one hour.
They were always helpful and professional during the resolution of implementing and installation issues.
Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.
They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.
Scalability is limited, particularly when adding new servers as the one-click installation procedure is not available for this.
It's important because it keeps the costs low for the customer and allows for quick implementations and easy extensions.
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.
We might have encountered only two minor errors, such as a corrupt disk, but the system always runs and we have never had any downtime.
For stability, I would rate HPE Alletra dHCI a nine.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.
I would like to add servers to the existing stack more easily, and there should be a function to reinstall servers with a one-click installation process.
dHCI projects often require new servers, but flexibility in deployment options would be beneficial.
A potential area of improvement for HPE Alletra dHCI could be including integration with applications because it is currently just for virtualization.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
The price of HPE Alletra dHCI is considered expensive for small businesses.
The price is appropriate for the capabilities and features that the customers receive.
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!
The most valuable feature of HPE Alletra dHCI is the one-click upgrade function, which allows all drivers and services to be downloaded to all servers easily.
Data protection is very good, offering features such as virtual lock for snapshots, multi-factor authentication, and encryption for volumes.
It is easy to work with a management environment thanks to the machine learning-driven management features in HPE Alletra dHCI.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| StarWind Virtual SAN | 2.1% |
| HPE Alletra dHCI | 4.0% |
| Other | 93.9% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 25 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 3 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 165 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 54 |
| Large Enterprise | 34 |
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.
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.
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