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HPE Alletra dHCI vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE Alletra dHCI
Ranking in HCI
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
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 December 2024, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 4.0%, up from 3.3% 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

Yudish Jatoo - PeerSpot reviewer
Independently scalable solution with the highest resiliency, low latency and intelligence
It's a very innovative solution for companies. Nowadays, businesses are very dynamic. They are very demanding due to data growth. The product enables users to scale compute and storage independently. Companies can have a dynamic HCI to scale their resources independently. It gives them the flexibility to grow, expand, and scale up however they want. It’s very good for companies. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Ahmed Hosni - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The latency is very low."
"It is easier to manage compared to the other vendors."
"The solution works well."
"The solution is useful for taking storage snapshots, has high performance, and the CASL architecture is good for optimizing workloads."
"So far, the solution's performance is very good."
"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI's user interface is very easy to work with."
"The product has cut down a lot of service tickets. Earlier, people complained about slowness."
"The product provides zero downtime."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."
 

Cons

"Cost-wise, this solution is slightly more expensive than other hyperconverged solutions."
"Lacking integration to the cloud."
"I rate Nimble one out of 10 for ease of setup. Setting up Nimble Storage was a nightmare. It took us three months to deal with all the kinks and bugs. We had two people from HPE assisting us and two from our team."
"Software upgrade is still more complicated than the competitors, so that's an area of improvement."
"I'm not sure if there are features lacking."
"They should improve just the support."
"The product does not support file services."
"Their documentation needs to be simpler to read yet more detailed so it's easy to compare models and easier for clients to pick."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"The Command Center, a free guest VM for management and monitoring, leaves something to be desired. It could have more accurate real-time information and better reporting visuals, which seem to be an afterthought."
"It would be great to have more automated tooling around managing the iSCSI connections in Windows"
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is expensive."
"With the features that HPE Nimble Storage dHCI provides, I cannot say its pricing is more."
"The prices are very high."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is cheap."
"The cost of the licensing is reasonable."
"The product licensing costs vary depending on whether VMware or other solutions are used."
"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."
"The customers have found the solution to be expensive. However, when compared to the competition the price is reasonable."
"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."
"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"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 support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"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."
"The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

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) 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

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra dHCI vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.