StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's have been stellar for our nonprofit organization!
I am the sole sysadmin at a small nonprofit. We replaced our old VMware hosts/SAN storage with a pair of StarWind HyperConverged …
StarWind HCA
Top Rated
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Overview
What is StarWind HCA?
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
Read moreRecent Reviews
How StarWind HCA Differs From Its Competitors
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Best of
2023
Best of
2023
Best of
2023
Reviewer Pros & Cons
View all pros & consVideo Reviews
Leaving a video review helps other professionals like you evaluate products. Be the first one in your network to record a review of StarWind HCA, and make your voice heard!
Pricing
View all pricingN/A
Unavailable
What is StarWind HCA?
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
5 people want pricing too
Alternatives Pricing
What is Azure Stack HCI?
Microsoft offers hyperconverged infrastructure solutions via Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack HCI provides a variety of preferred hardware solutions for building a hybrid cloud infrastructure, allowing the user to run virtual machines on hyperconverged systems and use Windows Admin Center to connect to…
Product Demos
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
01:06
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is StarWind HCA?
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a turnkey hyper-converged platform that merges compute, storage, network, and software into a nuclear 2-node footprint. The solution is designed to simplify HCI management for Enterprise ROBO, SMB & Edge, while offering flexible scalability and powerful performance.
Users can start with two nodes, based on HeartBeat, that can be switchless and function without additional equipment. StarWind HCA is a software-centric architecture that removes the need for proprietary components. StarWind Engineers perform the configuration, testing, migration, and integration for users, free of charge.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance:
- allows using 100% of underlying storage performance
- has no hardware compatibility lists (HCLs)
- does 2- or 3-way replication + local RAID 5/6/10
- does VAAI and ODX data offloading
- includes load balancing and data locality
- does VM-centric hypervisor-level snapshots, and more.
To minimize CapEx and OpEx further, StarWind ProActive Premium Support (included in every license) substitutes an IT squad for the sake of cluster health assurance. ProActive Support monitors user environments 24/7/365, and uses machine learning to detect abnormal behavior so issues are prevented before they can become a problem.
The vendor presents StarWind HCA as a hyper-converged world enclosed in a tiny “building block” that comes at a reasonable price.
StarWind HCA Video
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
StarWind HCA Competitors
StarWind HCA Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | No |
StarWind HCA Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
Scale Computing Platform, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, and NetApp HCI are common alternatives for StarWind HCA.
Reviewers rate Availability and Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.7.
The most common users of StarWind HCA are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
View all alternativesCompare with
Reviews and Ratings
(61)
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 37)- Popular Filters
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 26, 2022
Efficiency, Performance And Piece Of Mind With Minimal Cost
Scale seemed like a good solution also. The problem from my side was how different the end result would be from our current environment. Scale uses it's own proprietary hypervisor, so no VMware. This would save on licenses but would require a new set of skills and possibly a harder migration. Scale didn't allow VM level backups, so an agent would be needed for each VM. That also means that they had a separate backup product that was part of the proposed setup. Again something new that we have never used before. Two switches were also part of the Scale setup. This was part of the old setup that I didn't like, having to run all the cables and data through the network. I get that his is standard but I've replaced a few bad cables before. I like the idea of having the servers directly attached. All this lead to the cost of Scale to being more than double StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA).
September 07, 2022
Solid Product and Great Service!
We looked at Scale Computing as another option that was more expensive. There may have been a couple more bells and whistles but for our organization and pricepoint, Starwind fit the bill. With Scale your needed three nodes and with StarWind only 2. Also, StarWind offered refurbished servers with a strong protection plan that brought costs to a more reasonable place for our organization.
August 31, 2022
Top product and good price policy
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Veeam Backup & Replication
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) offers a product that is comparable to other high-quality systems but at a much more attractive price. Other providers are not so transparent and want to sell hardware for an expensive service. You have to be active yourself and make comparisons because otherwise, you will be spending a lot of money.
August 29, 2022
Great Product, Amazing Service, Perfect Performance
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Honestly using Starwind was our first jump into Clusterd services. We utilized standalone business grade hardware/software prior to moving to them. It was a great migration. Everything wen't smooth, support was great, the hardware is great, and performance is perfect. If you're hesitant, don't be. If you have worries, drop them. It'll be fine :)
VMware vSAN, nutanix
Because I was using StarWind VSAN previously I had no intention at looking at other products.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a complete different beast to storage solution such as Dell EqualLogic PS Series equipment as it allows for all storage to be housed locally to the processing server, having less kit to have to maintain in turn using less power and less cooling, whilst keeping costs lower
May 05, 2022
Excellent product, even better support
- HPE Nimble Storage, Nutanix AOS and HPE StoreVirtual VSA (Discontinued)
StarWind provided the best value for money against the other solutions we looked at, while providing all the functionality we needed.
May 05, 2022
Great Product and Support!
Unfortunately, I haven't used any others but I am pretty happy with StarWind.
April 25, 2022
StarWind HCAs Help Me Sleep at Night
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.
April 25, 2022
Amazing product, Amazing support
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
StarWind is a major player in this space and competes at every level. The one place that shoots them to the top of my list is their AMAZING technical support.
April 21, 2022
Excellent service and reliable hardware
Main reason for swapping away from VMware was cost. Our servers at the point of swapping away from VMware were already old so performance wasn't a consideration. We wanted to have something that Microsoft already provided so being able to leverage HyperV was a solid sell for us.
April 20, 2022
Fantastic product for a SMB
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We looked at some tradtional solutions from HP and Dell along with Nutanix. StarWind had the best solution and price overall.
April 19, 2022
Great SMB Hyper-Convergence Solution
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I didn't spend a lot of time looking at other solutions. I did check out Dell's VxRail offerings, but didn't want to switch from Hyper-V to VMWare.
April 19, 2022
Amazing product, better support
- Dell EMC PowerScale (emc isilon)
Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, as one is used as a general NAS type array, but we have had multiple drives out in our EMC product over the same course of life as the StawWind HCAs, which have had zero failures.
April 04, 2022
4 Years Running Strong with 2 Node HCA Appliance
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.
March 31, 2022
Simple To Set Up And Manage, A Dream To Work With
- Nutanix AOS and HPE SimpliVity (formerly OmniCube)
We evaluated both of these systems and obtained quotes for comparison. Unfortunately both were way out of budget. StarWind however was well within budget! I have also used Nutanix, and the complexity of the management and the setup of the nodes is way more difficult to set up and manage than StarWind.
March 29, 2022
Affordable and easy
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The price, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) had a much more attractive price.
January 28, 2022
Starwind HyperConverged Appliance Is One Of The Best Solution
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
They offer the same core functions as them but with a much better price and with the ability to supply hardware, "software" and support.
December 27, 2021
A rock-solid and affordable alternative to VMWare native vSAN
In our simple two-host environment, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) won out hands down in cost, and while I had no prior experience with the technology, I have been extremely pleased with the result. I wouldn't hesitate to go with them again in the future, although our current hosts will likely still be going strong for at least another 5-7 years.
December 10, 2021
Affordable and Rock Solid
I've never used a Scale appliance, but I've researched them and talked to their sales team and engineers. I decided to go with StarWind vs Scale largely because of price, but I also wanted to use Hyper-V and didn't really want to go with a proprietary hypervisor, which is what Scale has.
December 01, 2021
Great Solution, easy transition
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Price was much better with StarWind's, and it was much more suited for our size environment
October 30, 2021
Great HCA product at a great price with outstanding support
Extremely similar features at a way less cost point which allows us to spend in areas that is required.
October 19, 2021
Cost-effective and stable for small environments
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Starwind is much easier to use and manage than traditional SANs while maintaining our known Hyper V Hypervisor. Starwind is a much simpler product which is perfect for what we need. Traditional SANs may be able to do more than Starwind, but we haven't found any examples yet that we miss and we love the stability and ease of use of Starwind
October 07, 2021
StarWind HCA vSAN Post-Purchase Review
We compared against just general servers + SAN solution from Dell. StarWind had fewer single points of failure, reduced hardware, and better performance.