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Pivot3 vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN
Sponsored
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
189
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
Pivot3
Ranking in HCI
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Pivot3 is 0.2%, down from 0.2% 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 - 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.
JW
Jul 25, 2018
One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter
The primary use case was for a persistent VDI solution using vSphere as the hypervisor software and using Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop as the provisioning software in an enterprise Windows server domain infrastructure It greatly streamlined the time it took to scale out the enterprise and it…
Lipaz Hessel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"As the client had acquired another company some distance away, they were concerned about having a single SAN in one location or the other. StarWind vSAN allowed us to keep a copy of the data local to each site without asking the client to pay for two SANs in addition to the two new servers they needed."
"Their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"The solutions best feature is that it is easy to use."
"We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."
"It completely removes the need for a storage network and for a storage administrator and all of that infrastructure and the costs that are involved with them."
"The most valuable features are secure IOPs and LAN security."
"While we haven't made major changes to our disaster recovery and business continuity processes yet, moving towards stretch vSAN across sites will simplify and expedite our DR processes in the future."
"vSAN has just one datastore. so customers do not need to think where to put their VMs, how to design the physical disk RAID, the LUN size, the LUN mapping, etc. when they use NetApp/EMC/HDS or other storage systems."
"It uncoupled the idea of proprietary technology and component capabilities. It is basically a proprietary technology for a cost-effective infrastructure."
"The most valuable features are its price point and that you can use existing storage; no specific storage requirements are needed."
 

Cons

"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources"
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"This solution is not great for large file shares/object/rich media repository."
"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."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
"In a future release, they can bring in the object storage capabilities to this solution. Currently, there is not any compatibility."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"If one node out of your ten nodes fails, it takes a lot of time to replicate and rebalance VMware vSAN. This time can be reduced. When a node fails and the data is not accessible, vSAN has to be rebalanced to make the redundancy level of two again. However, if it is taking a lot of time and any other hardware fails during that time, then we have a problem. Two disk failures mean that all data will be lost, and we may have to recover it from the backup. So, the number of threads that run to do the rebalancing could be more so that the time taken to make it fully redundant again is not so much."
"VMware vSAN could improve by having faster reload time and a single point of failure. Resynchronization of many hardware could be better. If you have an outage of a disc or a full system, the replication time is too slow. This has room for improvement."
"Hackers are able to manage to leak information or data from the product using some corrupt files, making it an area of major concern where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is more than reasonable."
"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
"Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective."
"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"The vSAN licensing is not an inexpensive product. It does cost more than hypervisor."
"We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing."
"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."
"It is too expensive."
"With the new pricing model, it's expensive for the customer."
"Basically, vSAN is a license in addition to that of the classic VMware Vsphere, which is also mandatory."
"We have increased our user productivity."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
No data available
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
 

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.