Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.
$999
Per Year Per Hypervisor
StarWind HCA
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
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Pricing
Red Hat Virtualization
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Editions & Modules
Standard
$999.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Premium
$1,499.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)
StarWind HCA
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Red Hat Virtualization
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Features
Red Hat Virtualization
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.
As a nonprofit, we needed a virtualization platform that was reliable, cost effective, and simple to administer. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance checked all the boxes for us. We went with their refurbished models to lower the cost, and they've been rock solid. We were able to simplify our environment and the platform has been so reliable that I really don't have to think about it. This has been great for me as the sole sysadmin. There are a lot of pieces to manage, and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance have allowed me to focus less on the platform and more on the VM's themselves and the other pieces of our network environment. I think as long as you get the "right size" of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance that this platform could work well for many organizations.
It is extremely easy to set up, it comes with most options pre-configured for you. But the support group will walk through your entire setup and migration.
It is monitored by StarWind 24x7. Instead of issues being reactive with the monitoring I'm hoping things will be more proactive.
The performance has been outstanding. I think disk was our main limiting factor with our hold hardware.
1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.
Support team has slight accent but is not too difficult to understand.
Emphasis on security can be improved. Things like default passwords were not changed initially until requested.
Can't really think of much else...If I had to split hairs...on reboots sometimes it took a while to sync with the other node. Max was 30 minutes, but 99% of the time it's 3-4 minutes.
The hardware appliance convinced me. It is also good to use as a product in the box.Experience of the speed and security of the storage and the data on the storage is important.Installation is relatively easy and support is supportive. You are not left alone.Therefore a clear recommendation
Overall, the appliance is versatile. It covers the adaptation to all current hypervisors and can be addressed via different protocols. This prepares you for a wide range of uses.Rack mounting is also well thought out. And last but not least, apart from the technical performance, it is also an eye-catcher.
Working with the support team has been great. Connecting with somebody during and after business hours has been smooth, and they have always been responsive and professional. I don't have to wait very long to hear back from them when either sending out an email with a question or inquiry or when calling after business hours when we had to shutdown and bring back up the servers due to hurricanes here in Florida.
Literally, while writing this review, I just received an email from starwind saying my VSAN version was out of date due to a recent update coming out and they offered to help me install it. Its just amazing how "on top of it" support is. They'll monitor downtime, reboots, version issues, even the bios firmware on the Dell servers... I can't imagine using any other vendor, they just do it all, and they do it well.
The old saying: Preparation is everything.It should be ensured in advance that the operating system is up-to-date and therefore suitable for the appliance.The recommended network adapters should also be used in the network and the firewall rules adjusted.If this is planned in advance and everything is prepared, then the installation can be carried out relatively quickly.The manuals and the StarWind website are also a very good help.
RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!
Scale was a proprietary SAN software/hardware and outrageously high priced. The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance was just Dell servers with VMWare ESXi Hypervisor installed running two Windows Servers virtual machines where the StarWind SAN software is installed on. The only thing that was proprietary for StarWind was the StarWind SAN software
Our CIS software has some poorly optimized SQL logic. Our old Failover Cluster w/ a VNXe3200 SAN would take up to 7 seconds to pull a customer's records up. It now takes only 1-2 seconds. Our front office has been much more pleasant since their install.
I would only rarely have to interact with our blade switches and VNXe SAN, so I wouldn't necessarily retain the knowledge of how to configure them. Each time I'd need to make a change, I'd have to refer back to my documentation. That's no longer an issue I have to deal with.
The rack footprint for our cluster went from 14U to 4U, and we were able to achieve it with much less network cabling and with lowered power requirements.
