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StarWind HCA

StarWind 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.

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Recent Reviews

Top product and good price policy

8 out of 10
August 31, 2022
We would like to have a cheaper solution compared to a storage system but with all the advantages and not the disadvantages. Here only …
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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

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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TW
Thomas Weil
Network System Administrator
weiconet GmbH (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
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Pricing

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StarWind HCA

StarWind HCA

N/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

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Alternatives Pricing

Scale Computing Platform

Scale Computing Platform

$3,300
per node
What is Scale Computing Platform?

Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully…

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Product Details

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 TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationNo

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 and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure 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).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(63)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 53)
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May 04, 2023

My impressions with the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

TW
Thomas Weil
Network System Administrator
weiconet GmbH (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
9
We installed according to the manual and created a parallel environment. The performance and service were very good. The installation caused some problems. During the process of migrating to the new system, there were minor disruptions that made themselves felt in the form of VM failures, but were quickly resolved by support.
January 26, 2023

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's have been stellar for our nonprofit organization!

RB
Ryan Butler
Senior System Administrator
Inflexion (Education Management, 11-50 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
In our almost three years of running StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's, we have experienced zero downtime for our 50 VM's due to StarWind HyperConverged Appliance issues. Everything has been rock solid and I hardly think about our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's.
December 01, 2022

High performance and redundancy, with 24/7 support, at a surprisingly reasonable cost.

Verified User
Director in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
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.
September 07, 2022

Solid Product and Great Service!

DC
Daniel Chapman
Information Technology Director
Tryon International Equestrian Center (Hospitality, 201-500 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
We have not experienced any downtime during the two years that we have had the servers. They have been rock solid and without issues. So I can't really speak to real-time failover other than migrating active VM from one host to another and that is extremely smooth with no noticeable effects on performance or user connection.
September 05, 2022

Affordability and Redundancy made easy

CF
Christopher Forster
IT Engineer
H W Martin Group Of Companies (Construction, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
9
We have had a few incidents but most have actually been due to hardware vendor issues that have required updates rather than the Starwind software, the few issues we have had generally get fixed quickly, although take a while to sort themselves i.e if a full sync is required it's a quick fix but a long time for sync to occur.
August 31, 2022

Top product and good price policy

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Reliability and Availability
10
The system has only been in use since May 2022 and to date we have had no failures. This was also the idea behind purchasing such a product so that a redundant system is available in case of failure. The VM's can be moved at any time in real time should a host cause problems.
August 30, 2022

StarWind Goes above and beyond.

Justin Graves | TrustRadius Reviewer
Justin Graves
HIPAA Security Officer
Area Agency on Aging Region 9, Inc (Non-profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
Nearly zero downtime since I started using Starwind. My hosts are up and resilient. Any problems have mostly been attributed to the Hypervisor or server OS. The vSan piece just works. It runs smoothly, upgrades smoothly, and does its job without much problem. The management UI is a little rough but otherwise works great.
August 29, 2022

Great Product, Amazing Service, Perfect Performance

Mikel Reber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mikel Reber
IT Manager
WESTERN IDAHO CABINETS INC (Construction, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Reliability and Availability
10
We moved to starwind after our old Hyper-V server had some hardware issues. We experienced about a day of downtime on the old system. Since moving to our HCA in 2019, I can honestly say we haven't had ANY downtime... The system is solid, the support is great. I can't mention that enough. Maintenance is a breeze, since you can update the Hyper-V servers one at a time and stay up. Its just an entire mindset change. Its amazing.
August 12, 2022

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) - It just works

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Business Supplies & Equipment Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
Over the past four years, we have experienced zero downtime related to StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) solution. We can easily migrate virtual machines to perform maintenance on the hosts. It has worked flawlessly. We have brought down a host multiple times to add RAM and SSD drives and have experienced zero downtime while doing so.
August 12, 2022

Set It And Forget It - A Great Experience

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Accounting Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
9
Unplanned outages are few and far between with Starwind HCA and the culprit is more often Windows itself than Starwind's software the handful of times it does happen. Long term outages have not happened with our HCA deployment
May 25, 2022

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA): What's in the BOX?

Dan Reynolds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Dan Reynolds
Senior System Administrator
BLDD Architects (Architecture & Planning, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
From past experience with StarWind VSAN software, I have seen little to no downtime. At times of disk rebuilding, there were some performance issues but again that was with spinning disks. This is all SSD. With Since this was during a hardware refresh it was obviously to replace old hardware. I chose StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) we have not had any issues or problems whatsoever. I will say that StarWind's support is excellent and very responsive.
May 13, 2022

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) one of the best solutions

Verified User
Program Manager in Information Technology
Retail Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
I have experienced no downtime whilst we have used StarWind HCA's I hope this continues and if there were to be downtime I am sure StarWind support will be the first to notice and raise it directly with our internal team with support on how to resolve the issues faced.
May 05, 2022

Excellent product, even better support

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Retail Company, 201-500 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
In 4 years I have never had any down time or unplanned outages. The only time it has ever been down is when we added additional SSD's to expand the capacity, and even then no one noticed as we took 1 node down at a time and the end users never saw any down time.
April 25, 2022

StarWind HCAs Help Me Sleep at Night

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Aviation & Aerospace Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Reliability and Availability
10
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.
April 25, 2022

Amazing product, Amazing support

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Retail Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Reliability and Availability
10
Any of the downtimes we have had was caused by our own need to expand our environment with memory or storage - and it wasn't really downtime. The high availability of this product allows us to run our environment on a single host when needed. StarWind support is there to work with us through the whole process.
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