StarWind HCA - HyperConverged Appliance.
StarWind HCA - software-defined hyperconverged infrastructure
StarWind HCA(HyperConverged Appliance) is a 100% software-defined hyperconverged infrastructure designed to minimize application downtime for companies with limited IT budgets.
StarWind HCA ensures business continuity by using Starwind VSAN software that allows a 2-node system to work, even with a failure of 1 node and 1 disk in a working node. There can be two nodes on the company's premises or just one, with the other node located in the cloud. All failures are resolved very quickly without the involvement of the customer's IT staff, thanks to the manufacturer's proactive support that every StarWind HCA device is covered by. StarWind provides device configuration, participates in data migration and integration of the solution into the customer's infrastructure. All this is included in the standard price of the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance. Thanks to Starwind's experienced support team, all customer problems, not only those related to the StarWind HCA appliance itself, are resolved very quickly. Even if it requires troubleshooting third-party applications.
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Starwind HyperConverged Appliance is a turnkey virtualization solution built with the best components. With a single support team and Starwind's continuous monitoring of the appliance's performance, the administration effort is very low. StarWind HCA combines the best hardware and software components to provide unparalleled performance, at a low cost, without increasing the risk of failure. Servers are provided by Dell, flash memory is provided by Intel, virtualization of storage resources is provided by Starwind, the hypervisor is provided by Microsoft or Vmware, and backup and recovery is implemented using Veeam software.
Virtualization is a way to improve the performance of an IT environment and reduce the costs associated with it. For many years, it was only available for enterprise environments. In recent years, the situation has changed in favor of SMB and remote branch office environments. Complexity, high implementation and maintenance costs have delayed the implementation of virtualization in small companies or small branches of corporations. The problem is primarily a lack of qualified IT personnel. This problem is attempted to be solved by purchasing services related to the virtualization project, either by purchasing a pre-configured virtualization solution, or by using virtual machines running outside the company's location. In most cases, however, this is not effective because:
- Services are not free or cheap, so IT spending is increasing instead of decreasing.
- Initially pre-configured solutions tend to be overbuilt and later cause scalability problems. Hypervisor vendor offerings are often expensive. Cheaper, budget-priced offerings tend to condemn users to a single vendor and, over time, cause major problems with support and maintenance of such solutions.
- Maintaining virtual machines outside the company often causes a lot of problems. Usually for small companies it is not technically possible and, above all, economically justified.
StarWind HCA - The best solution for small and medium-sized enterprises
For SMBs or large companies with many small branches that would like to quickly deploy and easily manage a virtualization environment, the best solution is to use StarWind HCA. This solution unifies standard storage server hardware, hypervisor (Hyper-V or VSphere) and application software, into a single, scalable platform. Starwind HyperConverged Appliance requires only 2 servers initially. Network switches are not required or are optional. StarWind HСA is already pre-configured, tested and customized for the specific application. Thanks to StarWind's cooperation with hardware manufacturers, the cost of the solution is a minimum of 40% lower than the cost of components purchased separately.
StarWind HCA - For those who are building infrastructure from scratch
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is designed for those who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In cases where several servers are already in use, the best solution is the "software-only" version of the solution, i.e. StarWind Virtual SAN, which has been available on the market for many years. This is what drives the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
StarWind HCA is an ideal virtualization solution designed for SME or multi-site companies; unadapted or customized, but built from the ground up to meet their unique requirements.