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Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Hitachi Unified Compute Pla...
Ranking in HCI
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.8%
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series1.2%
Other97.0%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

AA
Enterprise Information systems/Wintel Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Allows for centralized management with great interconnectivity
My main use is server management and virtualization This solution allowed us to move from using standalone systems to having all our data center management in one place. The most valuable feature is the interconnectivity, which allows me to use the system across my data centers and makes it easy…
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The replication technology can move data faster than EMC MirrorView and requires less bandwidth. The Storage Virtualization technology is the most mature in the market, outside of IBM’s Storwize (which has a lot of compatibility issues, and EMC’s very expensive VPLEX solution); and it works."
"The most valuable feature is the interconnectivity, which allows me to use the system across my data centers and makes it easy to connect to other storage platforms."
"This solution allowed us to move from using standalone systems to having all our data center management in one place."
"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."
"StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has made the servers redundant, reducing downtime from just having a single standalone server with a much lower hardware cost than having an extra storage device which then reduces the redundancy unless purchasing much more hardware that increases the cost significantly."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"I love StarWind HCA because of the cost and the redundancy."
"I cannot say enough about their support team; they are the greatest and extremely knowledgeable."
"The HCA appliance replaced aging hardware, formerly cluster-in-a-box solutions, at a savings of over $20,000.00 and provided increased performance and more redundancy."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement would be technical support."
"We prefer solutions other than HDS due to better post sales support, updates, ease of use, flexibility, etc."
"HDS reaches a ceiling depending on model. The G200 cannot transition to G400, the G400 can transition to G600 but cannot transition to G800, which is the top-end model."
"An update to its technology would be good. The G Series has been around for more than five years and HDS seriously needs to ramp up, since the competition has better performance at a lower cost with better features and functionalities. For example, it needs redirect on write Snapshot, preconfigured storage tiering with better IOPS, built-in deduplication technology on hybrid disk, etc."
"An area for improvement would be technical support. In the next release, I would like to see more features added to make this a more complete solution."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"The user interface needs an update for the Windows client."
"I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators to know, just in case you have to troubleshoot this by yourself, what you should look out for."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
"The control center looks really good and looks like it could be very valuable. However, at the moment, not having email notifications makes it less worth it."
"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."
"We would like more complete documentation to manage on your own without support - even though they are great to work with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Pharma/Biotech Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
19%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our inf...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
 

Also Known As

HDS Unified Compute Platform, Hitachi UCP, Hitachi UCP Select
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Asia Capital Reinsurance, RMZ, Cigniti Technologies, SPAR, Infosys
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,283 professionals have used our research since 2012.