HPE Alletra dHCI vs VMware vSAN comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware are both solutions in the HCI category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 3.8% mindshare in HCI, compared to VMware’s 16.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and HPE Alletra dHCI compete in the hyperconverged infrastructure category. Based on feature integration and intelligent management, VMware vSAN appears to have the edge with comprehensive integration capabilities within VMware environments.

Features: VMware vSAN is renowned for its scalability and seamless integration within the hypervisor core, which simplifies management and provides flexibility in hardware compatibility. Its noteworthy features include stretched cluster solutions, high availability, and integrated tools for efficient setup and management. Conversely, HPE Alletra dHCI stands out with its AI-driven Infosight, offering intelligent storage solutions, high availability, and adaptable integration with on-premises and cloud platforms.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN can enhance by improving integration, reducing licensing costs, and offering better scalability options. Users have noted slower regeneration post-failures and the need for more effective cloud integration. HPE Alletra dHCI could expand hypervisor support beyond VMware, enable improved file-level restoration, and provide more granular upgrade options. Both aim to improve cost efficiencies and broaden compatibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN is noted for its ease of deployment within VMware environments, leveraging existing infrastructure. Its customer support is usually dependable, though occasionally slow. On the other hand, HPE Alletra dHCI is praised for straightforward deployment with excellent initial configuration tools and notable customer support. Both solutions provide a responsive support framework, with opportunities to enhance speed and depth of technical assistance.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN commands a higher upfront cost, justified by its comprehensive capabilities and enterprise-grade features. Although expensive, users report satisfactory ROI through stability and scalability. HPE Alletra dHCI is regarded as competitively priced, delivering significant ROI through cost-effectiveness and quick recovery of investments. Both solutions align economically with their market expectations, yet potential customers should consider exploring customized pricing offers.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Alletra dHCI is 3.8%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 16.9%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

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.

Read full review

Ajit Pratap Kundan

PreSales Lead- Government & Defense at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd

Nov 15, 2023

A scalable product that provides zero downtime and enables organizations to manage their infrastructure from a single console

The product is easy to deploy. Everything is through GUI. We don't have to go on the command line prompt. Everything is automated. The HPE engineers take the remote console and do the basic installation. It takes 10 to 15 working days to configure the tool and hand it over to the project team. We need one architect to design the solution and check whether the API plug-ins are certified or integrated with the solution. The existing infrastructure should be compatible with DSCI. We need one project manager to define the timeline and manage the daily activities. We also need two project engineers.

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Lipaz Hessel

Integration Manager at Gilat Satellite Networks

Feb 16, 2022

Expensive solution that requires professional services for installation and implementation

I'm still using a different solution. I only took two servers with vSAN to support one application that needs one feature that only VMware has. If not for that feature, I wouldn't touch VMware. Now, I'm looking at products like Nutanix, Silver Peak, Flexione, and FortiGate. For products that I choose, I don't need a specialist of that vendor. In VMware, I need a specialist in VMware. That's the issue I have with VMware. It's not like I can take any IT person, and they will know what to do. I need to make sure he will do the call, get the certificate and time to practice.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."

"You can build cheap, reliable, replicated virtual machines clusters using simple servers with an all flash disk or SAS\SATA hybrid tiered by performance storage."

"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."

"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."

"We have been able to use more on-prem hardware to reduce cost and also use old disks that we do not trust enough for ordinary RAID or usage."

"StarWind support has been great in helping resolve other issues not caused by their software."

"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."

"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

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

"With regards to performance, configuration, and longevity it is upgradeable, which means it has a good TCO rate. These are valuable aspects to me."

"Very good in-line compression."

"The product provides zero downtime."

"It is easier to manage compared to the other vendors."

"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI has the most valuable features for performance, resilience, and scalability."

"The solution works well."

"The latency is very low."

More HPE Alletra dHCI pros

"vSAN is scalable for us. If any additional capacity needs to be included, we just add to the host and configure the vSAN cluster."

"It is scalable, overall. If you need to add storage, it makes it easy to scale by adding additional hard drives into the existing servers or you can add storage by just adding more servers."

"vSAN that has been most effective in streamlining storage operations. For data recovery alerts, it uses tools like snapshots and vMotion."

"Technical support has been very good. They respond pretty fast, especially if we have a critical issue. Their responses have been great."

"The performance has exceeded our expectations and exceeded our traditional converged infrastructure."

"It is easy to find information out there, not only from searching the web, but even the times I have engaged VMware support."

"Since the storage space is local to the hosts, it reduces the overall response time and improves the performance."

"The most valuable feature is the simplicity of its scalability: being able to grow it without having to make sure you get the right disks and the right nodes. The solution is also easy to manage. It's all right there in the vSphere Client. You're not going through multiple things. You don't have to know, once you've created the vSAN node. You add storage, it sees it, and you create your data storage from there. Everything is right there for you."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."

"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."

"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."

"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."

"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."

"The documentation can be better for the free tier."

"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"

"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"I can tier my data in different storage on the cloud, but I cannot tier the data with HPE Alletra dHCI."

"HPE Nimble Storage dHCI only works with a hypervisor like VMware. There are plenty of other hypervisors that HP doesn't support. This is an area for improvement."

"Their documentation needs to be simpler to read yet more detailed so it's easy to compare models and easier for clients to pick."

"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 initial setup is a little bit complicated."

"The performance of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI could improve. Other solutions, such as Cisco, are better."

"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's website does not open properly or work consistently."

More HPE Alletra dHCI cons

"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."

"The biggest room for improvement I see in vSAN is the lack of SAN connectivity. I've kind of joked around that there is no "SAN" in vSAN. And it's something that we've worked to try and introduce some options for, and we're going to continue to work towards that."

"I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it going forward."

"vSAN has a significantly higher license cost post-merger."

"I would like to see it be more hardware-agnostic. Other than that, the only other complication is - and it has gotten better with the newer versions - that lately, once you're running an all-flash, if you need to grow or scale down your infrastructure, it's a long process. You need to evacuate all data and make sure you have enough space on the host, then add more hosts or take out hosts. That process is a little bit complex. You cannot scale as needed or shrink as needed."

"This is quite an expensive solution."

"One thing in vSAN that I would like to improve is using vSAN as a repository for files or other things. For example, with Horizon, maybe we can save profiles with UEM on there. That would be a good feature that I would like."

"One area that could be improved is the management feature."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."

"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."

"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."

"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."

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

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution’s pricing was very good."

"The product is costly."

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

"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 product is very affordable."

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

More HPE Alletra dHCI pricing and cost advice

"The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."

"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."

"From a cost perspective, it is expensive. From a usability perspective, it reduces the overhead costs attached to its users' servers."

"We are using the VMware vSAN ROBO which allows us to have a maximum of 25 virtual machines. The approximate cost is €10,000 for a perpetual license."

"It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."

"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."

"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."

"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

51%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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

It has competitive pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI?

The roadmap could be improved.

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...

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How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...

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Comparisons

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

HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

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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

HPE Hyper Converged vs HPE Alletra dHCI

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Alletra dHCI Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 14% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs VMware vSAN

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Alletra dHCI

November 2024

Download HPE Alletra dHCI product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

October 2024

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI

vSAN

Learn More

StarWind

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

VMware

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.

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

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Buyer's Guide

HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN

October 2024

Free Report: HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra dHCI vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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