What users are saying about
33 Ratings
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Based on 33 reviews and ratings
StarWind HCA
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Top Rated
45 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.6 out of 100
Based on 45 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Cisco HyperFlex is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Renew, Implementation Rating
- StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Usability, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
Cisco HyperFlex
88%
17 Ratings
9.6
StarWind HCA
96%
43 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
Cisco HyperFlex
100%
1 Rating
9.1
StarWind HCA
91%
2 Ratings
Usability
9.0
Cisco HyperFlex
90%
1 Rating
9.1
StarWind HCA
91%
1 Rating
Availability
Cisco HyperFlex
N/A
0 Ratings
9.5
StarWind HCA
95%
38 Ratings
Support Rating
8.7
Cisco HyperFlex
87%
19 Ratings
9.6
StarWind HCA
96%
40 Ratings
Implementation Rating
10.0
Cisco HyperFlex
100%
1 Rating
9.1
StarWind HCA
91%
1 Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco HyperFlex
Hyperflex is best for customers who already have Cisco UCS because of its integration with UCS fabric interconnects. You can add UCS blades to your Hyperflex cluster to increase compute capacity without increasing storage--which is great depending on your needs--but it's still limited to UCS. Installations without fabric interconnects have been limited in scope and most importantly expandability. I like that it doesn't require data locality. While I've used Nutanix extensively and SimpliVity to a less extent, I'm not as sold on their use of it. On the one hand your reads are faster if they're all from the node currently running a VM, but it also means your data has to move around if you vmotion your VMs. I do feel that Cisco has been playing catchup for a few years now with Nutanix, but Hyperflex has become a decent product that I would recommend to my customers where it's a good fit. However, I recommend being careful to make sure that it has all the features you need.

Verified User
Professional in Professional Services
Computer Hardware Company, 201-500 employeesStarWind HCA
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is well suited for SMB companies that need a simple, reliable, and fully redundant solution. Small IT teams can't afford to spend a large portion of their day managing a complex system. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance helps with this problem with its vSAN system. Pricing for StarWind is very competitive as well. We got several other quotes and StarWind came in much lower. We've had zero issues with downtime in 5 years, all smooth.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Automotive Company, 51-200 employeesPros
Cisco HyperFlex
- UCS manager in HX is truly helping us in doing one touch firmware upgrades. Scaling of HX cluster (in few minutes) is too seamlessly due to service profiles.
- HX does not hold you back by creating a single data store unlike other HCI products. With HX, you can create multiple data stores and allocate those to desired services. This help logically separate the install base on HX and removes confusion for the admins too.
- We run high IOPs workload on HX, and we never felt latency issues due to the Cisco backbone (as you get FI as a TOR switch and options to choose 10G or 40G speeds).
- With HX you truly enjoy a single window support from Cisco including for the top of the rack switch (FI in HX case). In other HCI infra, you certainly have to bank on to network switch vendor for support and bring HCI and switch vendor at one pane for troubleshooting latency related issues.
- While we increased our footprint on HX, we didn't added additional administrators to support the landscape. This was possible because of the simplicity in managing HX clusters.
- With HX we had setup stretched cluster between two near site data centres. This is a unique proposition in HX (we have 2 nodes in each data centre) and data centre failover works absolutely seamless.
Sr. Practice Manager - Cloud & Platform
KPITInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees
StarWind HCA
- Onboarding is well supported and simple. We were able to migrate all our VMs within a week of receiving the appliances.
- StarWind's Virtual SAN software gives the reliability of a failover cluster with the performance of local storage.
- ProActive Support ensures errors are detected and contact initiated automatically.
- I no longer have to troubleshoot three disparate systems when something goes wrong.
Network Administrator
Winchester Utility SystemsUtilities, 51-200 employees
Cons
Cisco HyperFlex
- replication - as we need to use the same amount to storage to backup
- Cisco should come up with a strong hypervisor equal to vmware ESXi
- should come up with the repository of OS images and download automatically when a new OS version is released
- hybrid connectivity - missing

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 1001-5000 employeesStarWind HCA
- Could have been better communication during implementation
- Single pane of glass management console for cluster, VM, and backup operations has been slow to develop.
- If you want to set up Starwind vSAN in a lab to test, setup can be tedious. However, with the HCA itself StarWind HyperConverged Appliance handles all of that.

Verified User
Director in Information Technology
Logistics & Supply Chain Company, 51-200 employeesPricing Details
Cisco HyperFlex
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—StarWind HCA
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Likelihood to Renew
Cisco HyperFlex
Cisco HyperFlex 10.0
Based on 1 answer
We are doing it in the current moment. The platform expansion will be twofold.
IT Infastructure Team Lead
ArcelorMittal TemirtauMining & Metals, 10,001+ employees
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA 9.1
Based on 2 answers
Because we are extremely satisfied with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) in all aspects of our experience
I.T. Director
MBIMedia Production, 11-50 employees
Usability
Cisco HyperFlex
Cisco HyperFlex 9.0
Based on 1 answer
Everything is fine if you work as a user of the system. Difficulties in fine tuning the system.
IT Infastructure Team Lead
ArcelorMittal TemirtauMining & Metals, 10,001+ employees
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA 9.1
Based on 1 answer
Easy to set up initially and use.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Chemicals Company, 11-50 employeesReliability and Availability
Cisco HyperFlex
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA 9.5
Based on 38 answers
In the 3 years that we have been using the StarWind HCA's, we have not experienced any downtime or unplanned outages. It has been the opposite that I was able to keep all systems/VMs up and running when I needed to upgrade the StarWind SAN software and firmware of the Dell hardware that are the virtual hosts/hyperconverged appliances.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Aviation & Aerospace Company, 51-200 employeesSupport Rating
Cisco HyperFlex
Cisco HyperFlex 8.7
Based on 19 answers
Nowadays being agile and efficient is most really important. Hyperflex has the ability to be agile and efficient. Cisco HyperFlex functions based on UCS technology, it includes built-in networking and integrated management with pre-configured software. Cisco HyperFlex has everything in one place as a data center, so there is no need to focus on extra things.
Application Development Associate
AccentureInformation Technology & Services, 5001-10,000 employees
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA 9.6
Based on 40 answers
Anytime we've been notified about a node going down is usually on us rebooting or incorrectly shutting down the machine. Each time that this has happened support has emailed us almost instantly to check on things and provide support if required.

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 1001-5000 employeesImplementation Rating
Cisco HyperFlex
Cisco HyperFlex 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Fast, powerful, flexible.
IT Infastructure Team Lead
ArcelorMittal TemirtauMining & Metals, 10,001+ employees
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA 9.1
Based on 1 answer
Very simple, all you need is a day's worth of time to install the hardware, get the vSAN up and running, and start moving over workloads.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Chemicals Company, 11-50 employeesAlternatives Considered
Cisco HyperFlex
HyperFlex is built on top of Cisco UCS infrastructure, which allows us to manage other non-HX servers attached to the same UCS environment. This allows us to tie everything together via Intersight and see all of the servers in our data centers. Other platforms don't really have a comparable offering.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 1001-5000 employeesStarWind HCA
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance was the only option that offered the performance, reliability, and high availability that we were looking for. It's also the solution that is tailored for small organizations and removes a lot of the complexities and extra components needed to make HCI work. The competitors each offer a solution that probably would have worked but none offered a solution that was within our budget.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 51-200 employeesReturn on Investment
Cisco HyperFlex
- The simplified management makes it easier to operate and prevents mistakes.
- Guided installation using the installer VM means you don't have to configure every component by hand. Improves deployment speed and lowers the risk of configuration issues.
- Performance increase of 40-90% compared to our previous compute/storage cluster.
Technical Team Lead Network & Security
Missing Piece BVInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees
StarWind HCA
- The initial cost of the setup was about $20,000 cheaper than the other solutions that I researched.
- It has made server maintenance much easier, because of high availability, which has made a big difference in the quality of life.
- It has made downtime for our end users almost never happen, which is a huge benefit.
Information Technology Manager
Tryon International Equestrian CenterEntertainment, 51-200 employees