Item: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Rating: 10
Author: Shawn Davie

Overall Satisfaction with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The StarWind HCA is used as a home for our VMs. It makes spinning up a new VM or migrating old VMs very easy and fast. It is being used across the whole organization from file servers to test servers. It makes managing VMs a much easier endeavor, a must-have.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Support.
Reliability.
Speed.

Return on Investment

Increased processor speed has made SQL queries speedy.
Moving VMs to the new environment has been very easy.
No need for a SAN.

Support Rating

StarWind support has been top-notch. They have detected bad RAM in one of our HCA devices. Turned out it was a BIOS issue, they were able to assist us in resolving the issue, and updating the BIOS before we even knew there was an issue, all with zero downtime.

Reliability and Availability

We have experienced zero downtime due to the StarWind devices. When an HCA goes offline I always get an email from StarWind making sure it was intentional. They have helped us recover from a downed cluster to the HCA, even though the downed cluster was not their problem! Great support.

Alternatives Considered

We evaluated the offerings from HPE and Lenovo, but they weren't as attractive as the StarWind offering, often requiring expensive prerequisites before even getting into the cost of their hardware/support. StarWind had them beat on every front!

Key Insights

Do you think StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)'s feature set?

Yes

Did StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

The HCA is suited for any business of any size, it scales up and down based on your needs. The Support team will be hands-on from start to finish and ensure everything works every step of the way. They have made the whole experience very easy, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Comments

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