StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a 3 host Dell hardware/Starwind HCI Solution used to replace an ageing SMB HCI Solution. While we could have also migrated to a different Hypervisor, we still had a valid VMWare license so stuck with that.

Our old system was out of Compute and close to maxed on storage. It was slow and starting to cause issues from general managemenet to random shift downs of the Virtual Machines or those servers requiring regular restarts. Since migrating we have had neither and the system is a rocket ship speed wise.

Likelihood to Recommend

This is a perfect solution for in-house or private cloud scenarios for the Small>medium sized business were speed and agility is important. We can deploy VM's and resize storage on the fly with almost zero impact on the system. We have 10 Vm's including to very large and bust database servers (SQl and Oracle) and even at full load there is zero slow down. Even better is there are no additional networking requirements so its a great solution for when you are on a tight budget.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We migrated away from VMware after the Broadcom takeover made it especially difficult and expensive to renew support. We we're looking to move to another Hypervisor and since we're primarily a Microsoft shop we landed on Hyper-V. We previously ran 3 servers with a SAN which was adequate for the most part. On looking into other options we found StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) which fit the bill perfectly.

Likelihood to Recommend

Small to medium business without a dedicate storage team. Companies wanting to move away from VMware. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) have been great to work with so far and their proactive support is something we've not had access to with other providers. They're also responsive when there is an issue, no backwards and forwards emails that take forever to get anywhere.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) efficiently hosts our school district's production server environment, ensuring reliable performance and uptime for critical applications like student information systems, email, file sharing, and learning management systems, all within our limited budget and IT resources, making it an ideal solution for our needs. Basically, it covers our production environment.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're looking for something cost-effective with reliable performance, you can't go wrong. Having previously used a top vendor in this space, we were looking for a hyperconverged solution that could deliver similar performance and reliability at a fraction of the cost. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) has exceeded our expectations on all fronts.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is used as shared storage in a 4 host cluster. The connection is via LAN (10Gb) and runs with good performance. In this way we can virtualize an area of IT and thus relieve the hardware costs. In addition, data security is increased, although there is a stable backup and restore concept.

Likelihood to Recommend

In an environment where flexible storage usage is important, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is the optimal solution. With the right planning, the system can be expanded flexibly. Personally, I find the integration into VMware class successful. This makes it easy to scale shared storage, which is almost always scarce. Thanks to the node principle, the reliability is high and the hypervisor can be maintained or replaced during operation without restrictions.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am the sole sysadmin at a small nonprofit. We replaced our old VMware hosts/SAN storage with a pair of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's and have since converted numerous physical servers to VM's and have been smoothly running about 50 VM's on our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's ever since then. The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's have been instrumental in helping us to simplify our server and network environment and provide the capacity, performance, and stability we need to virtualize more of our infrastructure.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The StarWind HCA solution is used for our VMWare virtualization environment in a two host high-availability cluster to support critical business operations running over 20 virtual machines/servers. I needed to have a setup that provides the highest level of performance, due to a few critical virtualized servers, as well as the highest level of redundancy in the situation where we will need to recover from any given incident affecting business operations.

Likelihood to Recommend

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is well suited for environments needing redundancy and high performance. I feel comfortable running virtualized critical servers on the StarWind setup due to the benefits provided by the two-node system. Cost is more along the low-end of pricing compared to other brand-name hyperconverged solutions, so the return on investment is high.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We had a two physical host, two SAN VMware setup on aging hardware. The SAN's setup as a pool, therefore not redundant. We wanted to simplify this setup, improve performance, reduce the single point of failure, all while dealing with a SMB budget. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) allowed us to simply migrate our VM's over to a new set of HCA hardware. All setup and support is included and within an hour or two overall we were all setup.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for an SMB. SMB's don't always have a large budget. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) gives you high performance hardware setup with minimal cost. SMB's also don't always have an IT team so the fact that it's all supported hardware and services is great. The fact that you can migrate easily is a plus.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We've been using a StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pair as our Hyper-V solution for 5 years now. Their support remotely configured the initial environment and it just works. Very easy to maintain. Because of its simplicity, I'd definitely recommend for a small to medium business with limited IT resources. It is definitely an affordable and reliable solution without the need for an expensive enterprise level SAN.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is a perfect solution for a small business with limited IT resources and budget. It will be a reliable solution that is easy to maintain.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Being a facility that hosts horse shows and restaurants we need servers in a HA solution to ensure that shows are not delayed and we didn't have any major downtime. The StarWind HCA vSAN solution gave us the product we needed to ensure we stay online. Our horse show software is necessary to run each of these shows and very necessary element for our companies success.

Likelihood to Recommend

When upgrading servers and software it is so easy to to switch the active server over to another node. The cluster manager makes it easy to work on managing servers and upgrades. Our server is not overly complex so it meets our needs in every way. updates can be done during the day instead of waiting till the middle of the night to do upgrades.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is our primary server setup. The setup has allowed us to have a redundant server solution with lower hardware costs. The support the solution comes with means you always have an extra set of eyes watching your servers and will notify you when you have issues on the servers. The solution has allowed us to extend our server offerings due to an HDD\SSD hybrid configuration.

Likelihood to Recommend

The server went down at a weekend, support was on hand to quickly get the server back up and running before the next working day. Availability of hardware when we purchased was slim, and we wished we had waited for another vendor but the servers we were provided weren't bad just better vendors out there we would have waited for.