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StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs StorMagic SvSAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reduced costs, improved stability, and streamlined operations, quickly achieving substantial ROI and enhancing management efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.6
StorMagic SvSAN reduces costs by 60%, offering ROI of 40% over five years, saving $20-$30,000 annually.
StorMagic SvSAN helped us save around sixty percent on previous costs.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
With StorMagic, we calculate the return on investment to be about two years, compared to other solutions we could have adopted.
Information Technology Infrastructure Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
StorMagic SvSAN has delivered great benefits in overall cost-efficiency since it is an integral part of our complete solutions for clients.
Consultant at a transportation company with 1-10 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.5
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's 24/7 customer service is praised for quick responses, proactive monitoring, and expertise despite language barriers.
Sentiment score
8.6
StorMagic SvSAN provides excellent 24/7 customer support with swift, knowledgeable assistance, ensuring high user satisfaction and smooth resolutions.
I rate them at a nine out of ten due to their prompt responses and effective solutions to our issues.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
They respond rapidly to support requests and provide assistance beyond their scope.
Consultant at a transportation company with 1-10 employees
StorMagic offers exemplary customer and technical support, ensuring excellent service and timely assistance that enhances my clients' experience.
Senior Solution Consultant at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers scalable options for SMBs, supporting expansion through nodes, RAM, or storage to align with cloud strategies.
Sentiment score
7.5
StorMagic SvSAN provides moderate scalability for edge environments, suitable for SMBs, with limitations in complex or large enterprises.
We can simply add more ESX hosts to a cluster and deploy additional controllers without any issues.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
StorMagic SvSAN is easy to scale.
Consultant at a transportation company with 1-10 employees
Scaling CPU and servers can be costly due to increased licensing fees beyond two nodes.
Senior Solution Consultant at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers exceptional stability, zero downtime, excellent support, and ease of use, ensuring reliable performance.
Sentiment score
8.8
StorMagic SvSAN offers excellent stability and efficiency, ensuring seamless performance with minimal maintenance and no downtime or data loss.
StorMagic SvSAN has demonstrated flawless stability over the past six years, with no reported downtime, bugs, or glitches.
Senior Solution Consultant at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Its ability to seamlessly migrate running machines to another host during maintenance ensures uninterrupted operations and a transparent user experience.
Information Technology Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The stability of StorMagic SvSAN is excellent.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
 

Room For Improvement

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance needs hardware, software, and management improvements, with focus on Linux support and streamlined scalability.
StorMagic SvSAN's base version is limited in features, scalability, and usability, needing enhancements in security, management, and training.
It would be beneficial to have a central place for configurations, similar to VMware vCenter.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
Ideally, the console should provide plugins or similar configuration options for seamless integration with these tools.
Consultant at a transportation company with 1-10 employees
Unauthorized access to the SvSAN server could cause significant damage.
Network Engineer at a legal firm with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers competitive, cost-effective pricing, significantly cheaper than competitors like Nutanix, with transparent, all-inclusive fees.
StorMagic SvSAN offers cost-efficient, flexible pricing, 20-30% lower than competitors, simplifying licensing by usable storage capacity, without SAN hardware costs.
The pricing model, based on the usable storage capacity, is simple and predictable.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
I would rate the cost a one out of ten with ten being the most costly.
Consultant at a transportation company with 1-10 employees
Choosing the maximum capacity proved cost-effective, especially compared to alternatives like VMware vSAN, which would have been significantly more expensive based on VCP cores.
Network Engineer at a legal firm with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance provides ease of use, high availability, flexible deployment, and cost-effective, reliable performance with excellent support.
StorMagic SvSAN offers high availability, easy integration, quick setup, and cost-effectiveness with only two servers required.
I am able to bring fully functional virtual infrastructure in a matter of two hours with StorMagic SvSAN, compared to other technologies that are very complex.
Global Data Center & Disaster Recovery Manager at Curium Pharma
For our solution in production plants, stability is crucial.
Information Technology Infrastructure Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
StorMagic engineers were very helpful in setting up the system, remoting into our system to assist, which was very beneficial.
IT Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
12th
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StorMagic SvSAN
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
4th
Ranking in HCI
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.5%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StorMagic SvSAN is 4.3%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StorMagic SvSAN4.3%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance2.5%
Other93.2%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.
reviewer2619357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Provides immediate benefits after deployment
StorMagic SvSAN is flexible and easy to use. It is compatible with various hardware, including Cisco, HP, Lenovo, and Supermicro. The company is also flexible with its recommended specifications, allowing users to exceed them without issue. I have not encountered any problems with StorMagic SvSAN on any hardware vendor I have tried. The cost of hardware required for StorMagic SvSAN is significantly lower than that of competitive solutions. Their licensing model, based on storage usage, offers flexibility and affordability. For instance, we utilize a two-terabyte license. Overall, StorMagic SvSAN's pricing is comparable to, if not more affordable than other options. StorMagic SvSAN supports various storage types and brands within a cluster, accommodating past and current technologies. Over the years, we've transitioned from traditional spinning disks to SSDs and now utilize NVMe SSDs, with StorMagic seamlessly supporting each upgrade. While faster drives inherently deliver better performance, StorMagic has consistently functioned without issue across a range of drive types and brands. Hardware flexibility is as crucial as cost, especially for a smaller company like ours that needs to adapt quickly. With hardware frequently changing, upgrading, and involving different vendors, maintaining flexibility and consistency is essential. Having a solution that works the same way across all vendors, whether it's Cisco or HP, significantly benefits our small support team. Witness effortlessly manages up to 1,000 SvSAN clusters. While we haven't personally utilized that many, it has effectively handled our multiple clusters without issue. The software's hardware requirements are very flexible. It reportedly runs on platforms as small as a Raspberry Pi. We currently operate it on a small HP desktop computer with excellent results, and it scales seamlessly with the rest of our system. The primary advantage is its two-host architecture, requiring only two hosts plus a Witness for full functionality. This contrasts with competitors who necessitate three hosts, significantly increasing costs. Avoiding the need for a third host translates to substantial savings, estimated at $20,000. Although StoreMagic's costs remain high, the ability to eliminate a host and its associated expenses results in considerable cost savings. This Edge Control provides a simple, visually appealing dashboard for easy administration of all clusters. The well-designed interface ensures clear and understandable cluster management. It provides immediate benefits after deployment. StorMagic SvSAN significantly reduces downtime in our environment by allowing us to perform maintenance or system updates without disrupting user access. With SvSAN, we can seamlessly switch all running machines to a secondary machine, ensuring continuous operation and eliminating noticeable downtime for end-users. This has resulted in substantial savings on maintenance costs and provided peace of mind regarding system reliability. StorMagic SvSAN helped us save costs by eliminating needing a third witness host. Their pricing has remained relatively consistent over the past ten years, with only a modest increase of about 10 to 15 percent. Despite this, their pricing is still very competitive, and they have been proactive in helping us find ways to save money. While I would always like to see even more cost savings, I understand that they need to make a profit as well. We've likely saved 30 to 40 percent annually by using StoreMagic, simply due to the cost reductions in hosting and maintenance time across multiple sites. StorMagic SvSAN provides a hyperconverged high-availability solution with enterprise functionality, and that is all we use it for.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our inf...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StorMagic SvSAN?
I find the pricing moderate. However, since some features should be given in the default price, I find it a little bit on the higher side with missing a few features.
What needs improvement with StorMagic SvSAN?
Some advanced features feel like they should be included by default, which are paid. The scalability is a bit limited for me. The advanced features that could be included in the base version are th...
What is your primary use case for StorMagic SvSAN?
I use StorMagic SvSAN for the virtualization of my storage. I mainly use it for the high availability at the small and remote sites that are not accessible to me.
 

Also Known As

No data available
StorMagic
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sears Home and Franchise Business
Sheetz Inc., Giant Eagle, RWE Renewables, Keiser Corp., TDK, Oxford University, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rommelsbacher, Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort, Eugen Forschner GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StorMagic SvSAN and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.