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Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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 Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
206
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.2%
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series1.1%
Other96.7%
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…
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs
The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."
"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."
"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."
"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 Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs."
"Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."
"Overall, the solution proved to be much more cost-effective than the competition."
"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."
"StarWind has provided an active-active HA storage system that keeps our systems running 24/7."
 

Cons

"We prefer solutions other than HDS due to better post sales support, updates, ease of use, flexibility, etc."
"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."
"We prefer solutions other than HDS due to better post sales support, updates, ease of use, flexibility, 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."
"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 area for improvement would be technical support."
"Management tools could be improved, sometimes the usage seems to be slowed down and confusing. A native web interface could also be an option. I love to see in the future port of the software on a general Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu in order to avoid windows license costs. I would also like to see features like erasure coding implemented. On the VSAN software, I would like to see some improvements in the storage pools (eliminate the usage of the file as a data container and use the raw partition)."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could be improved, and I wish the management GUI worked better."
"It would be nice if we could designate pools, or tiers, for storage of different speeds, and then assign rules to new VMs that would automatically place them into the proper pool."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"I hope you can try to have a multiple deployment option like ceph which covers several nodes and replicas"
"I'd like for it to be more user-friendly in the future."
"The dashboard is functional, but it could benefit from a more modern and visually appealing design."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."
"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
"Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Pharma/Biotech Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business166
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any cost.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available. I wanted to see better understanding of...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specif...
 

Also Known As

HDS Unified Compute Platform, Hitachi UCP, Hitachi UCP Select
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Asia Capital Reinsurance, RMZ, Cigniti Technologies, SPAR, Infosys
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.