StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs SteelFusion comparison

StarWind and Riverbed are both solutions in the HCI category. StarWind is ranked #15 with an average rating of 10.0, while Riverbed is ranked #31. StarWind holds a 1.4% mindshare in HCI, compared to Riverbed’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of StarWind users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

StarWind HyperConverged App...

Read 66 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reviews

2,052 Views
1,518 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

SteelFusion

Read 2 SteelFusion reviews

390 Views
374 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

StarWind HyperConverged App...

SteelFusion

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

SteelFusion and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance are competing solutions in the infrastructure space, each offering unique strengths. SteelFusion excels in features, making it an appealing option for those prioritizing advanced capabilities. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance stands out for its cost-effectiveness and robust deployment model, providing high value for investment.

Features: SteelFusion's most valuable features include seamless data mobility, impressive integration capabilities, and strong data security measures. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers high-performance storage, simplified virtual environments, and efficient resource utilization. SteelFusion's strength lies in its expansive feature set, while StarWind is noted for streamlined operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance provides a straightforward deployment model with excellent customer service, emphasizing clear guidance and support throughout the process. SteelFusion, while offering comprehensive support, presents a more complex deployment path that may require additional technical expertise. StarWind's deployment ease and supportive customer service make it a preferred choice for efficient implementation.

Pricing and ROI: SteelFusion involves higher initial setup costs yet promises significant long-term ROI due to its advanced features and functionality. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers more accessible pricing, leading to a quicker ROI through its efficient resource management and reduced operational costs. SteelFusion's potential ROI is driven by its robust features, while StarWind provides a faster return with its lower cost structure.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

January 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,665 peers since 2012

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

StarWind HyperConverged App...

Ranking in HCI

15th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)

SteelFusion

Ranking in HCI

31st

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance	1.4%
SteelFusion	0.8%
Other	97.8%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Russ Le Puill

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.

Read full review

it_user866178

Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA

Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices

The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."

"We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."

"The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently."

"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."

"It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime."

"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."

"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."

"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."

Cons

"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."

"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."

"The management console could use a facelift."

"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."

"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."

"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."

"Updates need improvement."

"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."

"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."

"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."

"Its cost was reasonable."

"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."

"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."

"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."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Marketing Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	8

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 9% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Local vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 8% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 7% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs SteelFusion

Compared 34% of the time

Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure vs SteelFusion

Compared 25% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs SteelFusion

Compared 19% of the time

More SteelFusion Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

January 2026

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

January 2026

Download SteelFusion product report

Overview

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

Riverbed SteelFusion is the first and only hyper-converged infrastructure for branch IT, enables 100% consolidation of branch data and servers from remote sites into data centers, delivering complete data security and centralized data protection, without compromising on any of the benefits of running branch services locally for your users. SteelFusion eliminates the need for physical servers, storage and backup infrastructure at branch locations, creates the ability to instantly provision and recover branch services, and provides full visibility and superior performance of on-premises and cloud-based applications, leading to dramatic increases in data security, business continuity, agility and operational efficiency.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: January 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.