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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/ARed Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.N/A

    StarWind Virtual SAN

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AStarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.N/A
    Pricing
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Considered Both Products
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    StarWind
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    VMware vSAN did not support 2-node clusters and was more expensive.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    295 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    253 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    123 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    289 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    123 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    188 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    116 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    253 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    117 Answers
    Features
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Operating System
    Comparison of Operating System features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and StarWind Virtual SAN
    Feature
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
    8.4
    78 Ratings
    4% below category average
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    -
    Ratings
    File Management8.073 Ratings00 Ratings
    Software Application Management8.075 Ratings00 Ratings
    System Update Frequency8.276 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating System Security9.378 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Small Businesses
    CentOS Linux
    Score8.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM AIX
    Score9.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Ubuntu
    Score8.2 out of 10
    IBM Storage Scale
    Score9.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.8
    (302 ratings)
    9.5
    (163 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    8.6
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    8.5
    (194 ratings)
    8.8
    (33 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.2
    (9 ratings)
    9.4
    (119 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)StarWind Virtual SAN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Red Hat
    There's a lot of things that can and can't be discussed. But as I mentioned earlier, cloud computing and on-prem, and very much like in the cloud, having a standard image ISO, deploying that, the configurations with Ansible or packages installed via Ansible, instead of just a Kickstart script, you have a set of scripts that run in a pipeline that deploy Red Hat. So I'd say the environments, every time I've used Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a computing solution has been, like I mentioned, reusable, scalable, positive. And I don't think I've ever found any situations where I wish I were using something other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, because the support is not there for anything else as much as it is for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    For remote locations, where communications are limited and cloud services are difficult to obtain, on-premises servers are the only solution. Hardware solutions require spares in storage for redundancy and are more expensive than software solutions. If communications and cloud computing are highly available, then solutions such as StarWnd Virtual SAN would not be needed.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Red Hat
    • Virtualization, like the operating system level task. I see this product is very good and it blends very well with the middleware components like all the JBoss and other things. And other than that, either you install it or a virtual machine or physical servers, it works seamlessly anywhere. And if you want to go further, like Red Hat OpenShift or those things also work very nice with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    • the StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm health of the sync
    • The High Available nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end users noticing any downtime
    • Their support is proactive alerting when firmware updates are needed (including iDRAC firmware) or when there are any warnings in the event logs, and schedule a time to remediate the issue with you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Red Hat
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) needs better built-in developer-centric tooling.
    • The desktop experience is too barebones, which makes it less attractive for developer workstations.
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) needs to be integrated and available in GItHub Actions as a supported platform so code developed on GitHub can be tested and qualified there.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    • Complexity: StarWind Virtual SAN can be complex to set up and manage, especially for organizations with limited IT resources
    • Limited protocol support: StarWind Virtual SAN supports a limited number of protocols, primarily iSCSI and SMB3
    • Limited scalability for storage-only deployments: In storage-only deployments, StarWind Virtual SAN has a limit of 32 nodes per cluster
    • Lack of reporting and analytics: StarWind Virtual SAN has limited reporting and analytics capabilities, which can make it difficult to monitor and troubleshoot performance issues
    • Limited backup and recovery options: While StarWind Virtual SAN provides some basic backup and recovery options, it lacks advanced features such as snapshot management, backup scheduling, and offsite replication
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Red Hat
    We find RHEL to be a superior OS with stable operations and long life. It is also easier to use and fix then most other OS's.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    StarWind Virtual SAN is a great solution and is now an integral part of our network of servers. The product is superb and the support has been amazing. It's perfect for our organisation and we won't be looking to come away from it any time soon!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Red Hat
    It's pretty intuitive and easy to use. Everything is adjustable; everything is customizable through a set of yaml's and everything can be undone and re-done. Doing items such a modification and restarting the single app doesnt take down the whole operating system like one of the more popular GUI based operating systems. We can work on live production systems without breaking into a sweat.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    Very easy to use and manage from an IT standpoint. The user interface is well laid out, provides access to the underlying hardware configurations, and allows customization of storage volumes from each cluster node in your environment. Can provide differing levels of access, so team member access can be set up based on roles.
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    Reliability and Availability
    Red Hat
    Product support and regular patches.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    The solution has been tested under constant usage for 5 years now and there (knock on wood) has yet be an outage. There were instances if human error during the operation and the StarWind reliably intervened, either through a synchronization or reporting of a degredation of interfaces, e.g. the heartbeat interface.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Red Hat
    As with any OS enhanced testing will need to be done prior to application integration.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    The software delivered exceptional performance until now with very fast write and speed rates, around 900MB/s through a 10GBit connection on a virtualized fileserver. It meets our demands without any problems whatsoever and we are a very media heavy environment with TBs of raw data.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Red Hat
    Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    Their support team is dedicated to providing top-notch customer service and is always available to help with any questions or issues that may arise. Their expertise and responsiveness have proven invaluable in ensuring the smooth operation of our virtualized environment. With such excellent support, we feel confident in our ability to utilize this product to its fullest potential, and we highly recommend it to others.
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    Implementation Rating
    Red Hat
    Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    Overall the setup was easy, we did require some help from the technical support team but other than that, we followed all of StarWinds prerequisites and everything else just fell nicely into place with hardly any downtime. The downtime was only due to moving VMs from our previous cluster over to the new StarWind storage cluster.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Red Hat
    Windows Server can take a long time to patch, waiting for the patch to install, then waiting to apply, after the OS is rebooted it can also take additional time to apply the update. Often times Windows Server patches can fail, leading to long troubleshooting times and application outages. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Patching is extremely quick, I've honestly not seen a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) update fail to install in many years of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) patching.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    StarWind
    We have found the solution surprisingly simple to use. The management
    console allows us to monitor the solution and we have configured email
    alerts to alert us about critical issues. These alerts have been proven
    to work in an actual failure scenario, for example, when we had a memory
    issue with one of our servers that caused the entire server to crash.
    The management console also allows us to monitor the solution
    performance and provides us with access to system logs.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Red Hat
    Operational ease of use backed by support
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    The software is very scalable storage wise. The storage is provisioned through config files, which are created either through PowerShell scripts or the Management Console on the paid version. After that the storage is provisioned through iSCSI. In our case, in case of expansion, we would have to run the PowerShell scripts and do another full synchronization to update any remaining backup nodes, but the procedure is clear and even easier via Management Console, just expand the RAID array, punch the new capacity into the console and start the synchronization!
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Red Hat
    • It has done wonders for my career because I come from a Linux background, HPUX, Solaris and AIX. So made this transition to Linux 20 years ago. So it has really put my career at the forefront of what we do in the company. We're still primarily a window shop, but with Red Hat and what they're doing with the Kubernetes integration with OpenShift, with the East Satellite Management, the Ansible stuff, all based on Red Hat. It's taken off at my company and we're very happy about it.
    Incentivized
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    StarWind
    • It eliminates the need for expensive storage hardware and provides an affordable software-defined storage solution.
    • It allows organizations to use commodity hardware, reducing the dependency on proprietary hardware.
    • It ensures that data and applications are always available, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    StarWind Virtual SAN Screenshots

    Screenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SANScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SAN