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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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Pricing

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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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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 Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationNo

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 59)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • turnkey hyperconverged appliance
  • uninterrupted application delivery and data security
  • improving the graphical interface with pnp functions
  • Extension of the display to performance parameters via latency, access, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Proactive monitoring of our StarWind HyperConverged Appliances - We've only had a couple minor issues, and all have been identified early.
  • Fantastic support - Support is knowledgeable and can fix things in a remote session or provide guidance.
  • Very reliable - We've never had VM downtime on our cluster in our almost 3 years.
  • Super easy onboarding process - Sales was knowledgeable and very helpful in helping us to pick the "right size" StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's.
  • I honestly don't have anything to complain about. Nothing is perfect, but the only issues we had were promptly identified and resolved with minimal effort on my part, and were caught early and did not cause downtime. We've basically had almost 3 years of smooth sailing and 100% uptime.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Redundancy provided by the clustered hardware and synchronized storage vSAN
  • High level of performance due to the quality hardware components that comprise the system
  • 24/7 support team that is always available, professional, and very responsive
  • Some aspects of their online documentation could be a little more detailed. Although, their support team is very helpful with any questions.
  • The StarWind vSAN system is complex and proprietary. Without their strong support team, I couldn't troubleshoot or manage it myself.
  • The StarWind vSAN virtual machines run on each host and use 24GB of memory on each host. That was not known when I built out my system.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Coping date every second in real time
  • instant failover
  • the ability to upgrade software in background without affecting users during business hours
  • I can't say I know of specific areas of improvement. I like the way the systems work. Sometimes I have hard time understanding the support team on the phone but it's not bad.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Redundancy
  • Load balancing
  • Technical Support
  • Firmware updates - Though this is more of a server Manufacturer issue. Support does help when there are any questions.
  • I would like to see easier to access dashboards and notification areas (This may exist currently, I just don't know about it)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • A single off-the-shelf solution for a high-availability system (usually entails a mix of solutions)
  • Support is excellent. Responses are prompt and reps are knowledgeable.
  • Relatively low cost
  • Command Center (web portal) management is slow and clunky. I find it easier to manage directly from the node OS.
  • Scalability could be problematic for larger/faster-growing companies
Dan Reynolds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • I prefer HP hardware to Dell hardware but that's just me.
  • The documentation is a bit sparse.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Virtualization
  • Hardware redundancy
  • The central management
  • in the past due to time zone differences to get to phone support later in the afternoon sometimes we could not get a hold of second level technical support on the same day. however we feel that this has been improved in the past year. Normally we can get to first level support immediately and then if an escalation needed, we schedule a time with second level support later
  • Customer portal to schedule a time
  • Discounts on Upgrades
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Simplicity and ease of management were great. Much easier to maintain than other complex redundant solutions.
  • Proactive support is great and available 24/7.
  • Reliability have been solid (no downtime at all) for 5 years.
  • 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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Reliability.
  • Redundancy.
  • Ease of use.
  • Ease of installation/setup.
  • Our use case is very simple and I can't think of anything that needs room for improvement.
  • For our use, it's mainly set it and forget it and it does everything we need it to do out of the box.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The appliance scale very well. If need be, we can add new appliances to the pool with ease.
  • The appliance runs maintenance-free. We rarely have to touch the StarWind software or the appliances beyond routine VM maintenance
  • It load balances extremely well.
  • Price. It is a little expensive for small businesses to buy into - however it is on point with other solutions in this market space.
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