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NetApp HCI [EOL] vs VxRail comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
189
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Hosni - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
EH
Nov 13, 2019
Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame
There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It is a bug fixed in 11.0 of the code for Element OS/Solidfire. The option to pull in a config/text file to be used as input to the NDE process; rather than going through a lot of screens. The manual effort there is error-prone. This something NetApp engineering has been made aware of as a request and they say they're looking at that as a future enhancement. As far as SolidFire, if you use the GUI, you can only create one line at a time or device at a time. That's ludicrous. I referenced earlier today to the NetApp feedback panel that this needs to be fixed. They said, "Yep. I understand that." In terms of bandwidth and IOPS along with availability - we have not managed this environment long enough to put TIER1 environments under this umbrella; yet don't see why it couldn't handle the aforementioned especially if you create dedicated pods for those 'heavy hitters' (I'll just call it that.) Thus, in time we'll look for more deployments upon the converged infrastructure of NetApp.
Sushil MIshra - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 17, 2024
Trouble-free architecture, we don't have to juggle multiple components like in a traditional three-tier architecture
We mainly use it for virtualization across all our applications. We also have a DC/DR setup based on the VxRail infrastructure It's a trouble-free architecture. We don't have to juggle multiple components like in a traditional three-tier architecture. With VxRail, it's a pre-built solution…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's quite easy to install."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."
"The product's core feature of virtualizing our storage is by far the most valuable."
"One of the most valuable features is the way it sets up the virtual SAN, because we don't have to buy a separate appliance for storage. It uses the existing storage on the servers, which is definitely a cost savings for us."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."
"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
"It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number."
"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"When you are doing lifecycles for your equipment, you can just swap out pieces of equipment. We used to do one big iron to another big iron, and that's a major migration hassle. Whereas, with this environment, you can go with small nodes, one at a time, and do a refresh."
"It is easy to set up, and you don't have to do much work to get it to do what it needs to do."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."
"There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance. Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature. Its performance is also valuable. It delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated."
"The support has been excellent, especially if you compare it to IBM."
"There is no in-depth config involved nor third-party needed, saving us time and money."
"VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"VxRail has given us a lot of tools in a one-stop-shop environment."
"I have found the vSAN is highly flexible. The documentation is good and the interface of the solution is responsive and fast. The interface has everything you need to manage the solution, such as the VxRail and VMware integration. You can manage the hardware from within the VMware plasma pan."
"It helps our servers and it is very efficient."
 

Cons

"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."
"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."
"One main thing this product needs to work on is reporting."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
"I'd like to see some additional graphics capabilities because I'd like to look at some virtual desktop integration for CAD software."
"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."
"To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."
"The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."
"The problem is that it needs to be much more stable, for example, when I want to do the upgrade to 1.7 that just released, I also need to issue a ticket to the support guy in India and he asked me to deploy another mlock. There are a lot of manual steps compared with other products."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"The initial setup is very complex."
"I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI."
"If VxRail could also offer file services in addition to virtualization, that would be nice because sometimes people want to complement their environment with file services, and you don't have that in VxRail."
"Dell wants to implement the disaster site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet. I hope we will have the opportunity to sell VxRail with this disaster site. It is not really clear at the moment, but hopefully, we will get some good news from the customers in the new year."
"The version upgrade process should be simplified."
"If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature."
"The present SaaS model license structure can be improved."
"When we have a vulnerability or we need to upgrade VxRail, it takes a long time. It takes eight hours each time we upgrade."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."
"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."
"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"We were expecting Dell EMC to bring us something that would work very quickly and easily, but also be at a reasonable price point, and they did."
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
"The price is rather on the high side."
"The licensing costs can vary depending on the number of processors and specific requirements, which may result in considerable expenses."
"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."
"It's a mandatory cost with everything included"
"It is reasonable. Compared to the legacy hardware that we had so far, we are not paying way more, but we have very good performance. Its price is good."
"The current VxRail pricing structure is quite opaque for me, especially considering the recent changes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
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) 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...
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Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: November 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.