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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
26th
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
205
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.1%
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series1.0%
Other96.9%
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 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."
"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."
"In our implementations, HDS Storage Virtualization has helped in migrating data with the least amount of downtime, compared to other storage technologies."
"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."
"Now that I have implemented StarWind, everything is running perfectly."
"With StarWind Virtual SAN, I am able to deploy and test failover scenarios in just a few hours, significantly speeding up the validation cycle for planned changes."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"Compared to other products that we looked at, the cost-saving was so great that choosing StarWind was a no-brainer."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage, is pretty straightforward to install and set up, and so far has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"StarWind Virtual SAN has helped us save considerable costs as we do not need a very large storage device such as a SAN as we had to purchase before."
"This solution made it possible to deploy a new infrastructure in the shortest amount of time, at a low cost without purchasing expensive hardware storage, and use unused servers."
"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
 

Cons

"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. In the next release, I would like to see more features added to make this a more complete solution."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"In testing, we found some features in the Linux appliance were missing."
"I hope you can try to have a multiple deployment option like ceph which covers several nodes and replicas"
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."
"When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business165
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost. I did most of the setup, so there wasn't really any cost there. The professiona...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little bit unclear. However, when I worked through those issues with their professional...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
Our main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is hyper-convergence of a two-node cluster. We have multiple servers up and running at all times for our operations, and we were able to use StarWind Virt...
 

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: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.