Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs VMware vSAN comparison

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN

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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 Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is 1.1%, up from 1.1% 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.

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VISHWAJITSHAH

Sr. Cloud Architect at Intuitive Technology Partners

Feb 19, 2024

Combines network, storage, and compute functions in one place

The best thing about the solution is that it combines network, storage, and compute functions in one place. Unlike the traditional three-tier setup, you don't need to buy separate devices for each part. This makes it much easier to control and manage everything in one go without switching between…

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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.

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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

"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."

"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."

"This solution enables us to make better cost-effective use of our existing hardware and leverage the current infrastructure at a higher level than we could before."

"Implementing Starwind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging Starwind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage."

"When we need additional storage but want to keep the size of the SANs manageable, the StarWind Virtual SAN has allowed me to do everything needed."

"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."

"The solution is also quite flexible. As an example, other vSAN solutions that we looked at had more stringent requirements regarding mixed HDD/SSD storage which wouldn't have worked in our environment."

"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The best thing about the solution is that it combines network, storage, and compute functions in one place. Unlike the traditional three-tier setup, you don't need to buy separate devices for each part. This makes it much easier to control and manage everything in one go without switching between different places for different tasks."

"The solution is stable and everything is taken care of through the Huawei support center. They ensure everything is running smoothly. It's been very good."

"The most valuable feature of Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is the relocating of resources."

"The product is very reliable. We haven't had any major issues with the product since we bought it."

"The pricing of the solution is excellent. It's one of the main reasons a customer chooses Huawei. It's much, much better than VMware."

"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."

"The solution fits well with my requirements."

"The solution is simple to use compared to other solutions, such as Hyperflex, VxRail, and Nutanix"

"It helped us survive power outages in one of our data centers, then continued to function without a hitch."

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

"It is easy to use. It is easy to implement for us, and it is also easy to maintain for the customers. It is not necessary to buy some extra devices and talk with other vendors."

"The most important thing is the simplicity of the product. It is a well-established product with good stability."

"The most valuable features are ease of deployment, and ease of management. If you compare it to other software-defined storage products, it's much easier. It's a checkbox. It's lot easier to manage."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."

"Performance when in storage-separate configuration needs to be improved."

"StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured .maintain and update and with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings a 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, provide a cost effect way to run a HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V, simple, easy to use, -.software monitoring should be web based to be reachable from any workstation in VLAN."

"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."

"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."

"It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website."

"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."

"We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"The solution currently does not have cloud integration."

"I want the product to be used more efficiently and for our system to connect easily with cloud services like AWS, Oracle, and IBM. We can also improve by adding advanced features like snapshots, replication, and encryption, allowing for more growth. Introducing features such as data duplication, data analytics, and AI-driven insights will improve its deployments."

"Technical support needs improvement. There's a lot of language barriers."

"Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure could improve the security of the solution. However, we are comfortable using it. Additionally, there could be more information provided for the solution and the interface could be more user-friendly."

"t would be helpful if the solution was able to collaborate or integrate with other well-known monitoring tools. Right now, you have to work hard to get it configured. It would be a good selling point for them if they could open up their solution to more integrations."

"Better options would be clustered nodes, or even cloud configuration. There is room for improvement in cloud configuration, we typically do web browsing for management."

"We are facing some problems with updates with the VMware vSAN. When we upgraded from version 6.5 to 7, we have been faced with many problems. They have been deploying many hotfixes for this version, and they need to continue to improve this version."

"On the DevOps side, if there could be more automation it would be more helpful."

"The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI."

"The price can be reduced. Small businesses cannot afford this solution."

"The solution must provide better customization."

"Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement."

"It would be ideal if clients didn't need to monitor the solution on a daily basis."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."

"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."

"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."

"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."

"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"I rate Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure's pricing a six out of ten."

"The price of Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is very good. There is a perpetual license for the solution, there are not any additional costs for the hardware. We have a license in case there is any new functionality that is required."

"VMware is not a cost effective solution, especially if you have a Microsoft shop. In this case, you would have to purchase the VMware license when there are already Hyper-V solutions that could do it for much cheaper."

"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"

"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."

"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."

"If they could reduce the cost, it would be better. Licensing costs are something that they could take care of. If you are a smaller and strong IT team, then VMware vSAN is a very good product. If you want to expand in the service provider space, then you will have to go for an open-source solution like OpenStack. We are now looking at OpenStack because we sell licensing costs. We are a service provider, so the IT component data is a substantial component in our overall costing. We feel that OpenStack might help us to cut down the licensing cost. Therefore, we are looking at SAS storage instead of vSAN. SAS is open source, but it is not wise to have open source without having the backend support. We are using RedHat SAS, and it is an open-source solution. You can also have a free version, but we are using it with support from RedHat so that we have somebody to back us up in case we have a problem. If you do normal business, then IT expense is 1% or 2% of the total turnover. The higher licensing costs sometimes don't make difference to the big companies who are not service providers and are using it only for their internal use. For them, the IT cost is 1% or 2%, but for an IT service provider, the IT costs will go up to 15% to 16% of the total cost of the operations. This is where the licensing costs become irrelevant. For example, the licensing cost of using VMware, VC, and vSAN is 8% of my monthly revenue. Every month, I pay about $35,000, and, with the revised plan, it will be something like $50,000 or revenue of 600k per month, which means almost 8% of the revenue is going into VMware licensing. In a very competitive world, 8% as a cost element is huge. So, if I can bring it down to 2%, I save 6% in revenue expenditure. In terms of profit, 6% of 30% is something like another 25% increase in my profit. My profit can be almost 25%. It would be 20% to 25% in case I am able to handle the licensing costs and bring them to a very low level. Because these IT costs are substantial for us, that is why we are going with OpenStack. OpenStack has a limitation that it requires more hardware. There will be some increase in the hardware cost, but overall we will save 5% to 6% of our licensing cost by using OpenStack."

"It is not a subscription model. It is a purchase model, but it is very important that you also buy technical support from VMware. This is probably the only disadvantage of vSAN. It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive."

"The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable."

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

More VMware vSAN 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

23%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

51%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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...

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

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

What do you like most about Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?

The best thing about the solution is that it combines network, storage, and compute functions in one place. Unlike th...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?

I rate Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure's pricing a six out of ten.

What needs improvement with Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?

I want the product to be used more efficiently and for our system to connect easily with cloud services like AWS, Ora...

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...

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...

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...

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparisons

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

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Compared 30% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Compared 13% of the time

VxRail vs Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Compared 6% of the time

More Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 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

HPE Alletra dHCI vs VMware vSAN

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

StarWind Virtual SAN

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Download Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure product report

HCI

November 2024

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure report

VMware vSAN

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

FusionCube 6000, FusionCube 6000C, FusionCube 2000, FusionCube Virtual SAN-Ready Nodes

vSAN

Learn More

StarWind

Huawei

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.

Huawei FusionCube is a hyper-converged infrastructure, which consists of computing, storage, network, virtualization, and management systems.

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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Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs. VMware vSAN