High performance and redundancy, with 24/7 support, at a surprisingly reasonable cost.
December 01, 2022

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

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

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.

Pros

  • 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

Cons

  • 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.
  • We experienced a significant increase in IOPS with the all-flash storage and high-end components of the system.
  • The cost to replace an aging critical physical server was absorbed into the cost of the StarWind HCA two-node setup which ended up benefiting the entire enterprise instead of just improving a single physical server.
  • Users are happy with the improved performance of their applications which increases productivity and overall business operations.
I've been contacted a few times already when the proactive support team could not detect our servers. One time it was mainly due to a firewall issue which we quickly resolved. The other two times were due to the fact that we had to shutdown our systems due to two hurricanes within a month. StarWind was quick to notify my that they lost monitoring capability when we shutdown for the storms.
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.

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

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.

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