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Acronis Cyber Infrastructure 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

Acronis Cyber Infrastructure
Ranking in HCI
21st
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
5th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Acronis Cyber Infrastructure is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 1.9%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN1.9%
Acronis Cyber Infrastructure0.5%
Other97.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Rishan Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful multi-tenancy model, reliable, and simple setup
Acronis Cyber Infrastructure is too populated. They have many features, but some features are still missing, it is not complete. They need to improve many features, such as email security and disaster recovery. In a future release, there needs to be analytics when there is an existing dashboard, this should be a requirement.
Vladimir Simion - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support
The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the full image backup, and the file or document sharing, allowing documents to be easily accessed from anywhere."
"The technical support provided by Acronis is great."
"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."
"The best feature of Acronis Cyber Infrastructure is how it backs up files in a user-friendly manner."
"The most valuable feature of Acronis Cyber Infrastructure is the multi-tenancy model, we can create customers and services for them."
"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by giving us the flexibility and freedom to have more time for other projects."
"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"It's quite easy to install."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
 

Cons

"Backing up Azure resources is an area where there's room for improvement, as they are not fully covered yet."
"Backing up Azure resources is an area where there's room for improvement, as they are not fully covered yet."
"I would like to see real-time backup supported in the next release of this solution."
"If they could make improvements with the virtual environment then it would be better."
"Acronis Cyber Infrastructure is too populated. They have many features, but some features are still missing, it is not complete. They need to improve many features, such as email security and disaster recovery."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"The documentation can be better for the free tier."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."
"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."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"The only thing that I have any difficulty with is that in order to perform upgrades, it is required that the SANs be detached from the Hosts before that can happen."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is on the high side and the subscription is renewed every year."
"We pay monthly for the use of Acronis Cyber Infrastructure. There are additional features that we use that have an extra fee."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."
"The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business159
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Acronis Cyber Infrastructure?
Pricing is quite affordable. I would rate it a three on a scale from one to ten.
What needs improvement with Acronis Cyber Infrastructure?
Backing up Azure resources is an area where there's room for improvement, as they are not fully covered yet. This includes storage accounts, blob storage, and container VMs in Azure.
What is your primary use case for Acronis Cyber Infrastructure?
I use Acronis Cyber Infrastructure primarily to save our M365 resources. The implementation was simple, and the licensing fees were not too high. This allowed us to sell it to our customers with a ...
What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I had experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing through using the free version of StarWind Virtual SAN for testing purposes, so there was no cost involved during my evaluation. That made i...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
One area for improvement regarding StarWind Virtual SAN is the lack of a full-feature trial. At the time I tested it, I had access only to the free version, which required using PowerShell scripts ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computol, dmi Networking
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Acronis Cyber Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.