We performed a comparison between HPE SimpliVity and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"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."
"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."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases."
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"We like the backup feature, which is inbuilt."
"A very small package but with lots of memory and CPU."
"Looking at the way that our infrastructure team works now, we don't think about infrastructure, storage, or compute anymore. The solution just works. It is same with the backup and replication side of things, as it just works on schedule. We don't have to manage it tightly, like we used to."
"The whole backup capability, where we are able to create backups and restore backups in typically 40 to 50 seconds, has been great."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"What I appreciate most about HPE SimpliVity is its seamless integration of hardware."
"Backups happen very quickly."
"No SAN switches and having a native backup is pretty cool."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
"It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me."
"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"I would like to see improvements in the documentation area."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."
"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."
"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."
"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."
"In terms of what I would define as a perfect solution, I am looking for one that is easy to manage, has a real user-friendly interface, and something that is not too complex."
"Needs to improve the cloud integration, such as Azure and AWS."
"If there was anything I would like to see, it would be indexed backups."
"We had some hardware compatibility issues with the earlier versions of HPE SimpliVity. We upgraded to the latest version a few months ago, and since then, there is no hardware failure, and it is better. They don't provide a portal to create a ticket directly for the HPE SimpliVity. We have a web portal to create a ticket when we have an issue, but for HPE SimpliVity, we need to call the local vendor for support. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they contact the global support, which takes more time. Technology is moving very fast, and everybody nowadays is focusing on the cloud base. In the future, they should integrate it with the cloud base for the backup."
"A lot of our customers are using VMware and also are using Hyper-V. Hyper-V is not very stable on the HP SimpliVity."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"I would love to see a more proactive approach to implementing patches and reaching out to customers with new initiatives."
"The solution could improve by adding better support of the VMware add-ons and a more intuitive user interface for administrators."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be..."
"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 151 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th in HCI with 65 reviews. HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex and VxRail. See our HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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