We performed a comparison between NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and StarWind Storage Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."
"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."
"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."
"It gives a solution for storage one place to go across everything. So, the customer is very familiar with NetApp on-prem. It allows them to gain access to the file piece. It helps them with the training aspect of it, so they don't have to relearn something new. They already know this product. They just have to learn some widgets or what it's like in the cloud to operate and deploy it in different ways."
"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."
"The stability has been really good."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are the best thing since sliced bread. Rollback is super easy. It's just simple, and it works. It's very efficient."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us."
"The integration is excellent."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."
"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."
"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."
"There is room for improvement with the capacity. There's a very hard limit to how many disks you can have and how much space you can have. That is something they should work to fix, because it's limiting. Right now, the limit is about 360 terabytes or 36 disks."
"I would like to have more management tools. They are difficult to work with, so I would like them to be a bit more user-friendly."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see the Azure NetApp Files have the capability of doing SnapMirrors. Azure NetApp Files is, as we know, is an AFF system and it's not used in any of the Microsoft resources. It's basically NetApp hardware, so the best performance you can achieve, but the only reason we can't use that right now is because of the region that it's available in. The second was the SnapMirror capability that we didn't have that we heavily rely on right now."
"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."
"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."
"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."
"The DR has room for improvement. For example, we now have NetApp in Western Europe and we would like to back up the information to another region. It's impossible. We need to bring up an additional NetApp in that other region and create a Cloud Manager automation to copy the data... I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution like it was in the NetApp solution about a year ago. I would like to see something like AltaVault but in the cloud."
"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."
"The dashboard features are not in the free version."
"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 60 reviews while StarWind Storage Appliance is ranked 10th in NAS with 9 reviews. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8, while StarWind Storage Appliance is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Its data tiering helps keep storage costs under control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Storage Appliance writes "Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes". NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Portworx Enterprise, whereas StarWind Storage Appliance is most compared with FreeNAS, StoneFly VSO NAS, StorMagic SvSAN and VMware vSAN. See our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. StarWind Storage Appliance report.
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