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NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

NetApp and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews
    88% willing to recommend
    StarWind HyperConverged App...
    Read 66 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reviews
    • 1,484 Views
    • 1,158 Comparison Views
    98% willing to recommend
     

    Comparison Buyer's Guide

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    Executive Summary
    We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI.

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    To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: July 2025).
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    July 2025
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    Helped 861,390 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

    NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Average Rating
    8.0
    Reviews Sentiment
    5.6
    Number of Reviews
    32
    Ranking in other categories
    No ranking in other categories
    StarWind HyperConverged App...
    Average Rating
    9.6
    Reviews Sentiment
    7.7
    Number of Reviews
    66
    Ranking in other categories
    Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th), HCI (14th)
     

    Featured Reviews

    MB
    Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
    Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.
    Read full review
    Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
    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

    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 feature is the convergence."
    "We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
    "The solution integrates well with all the other applications that we use on our environment."
    "The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."
    "It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."
    "It has automated a lot of workloads. It has automated us from ticketing a large number to a very small number."
    "It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."
    "It is highly scalable. Their support is also extremely good."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros
    "Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."
    "The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."
    "The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
    "The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
    "What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
    "Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."
    "The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
    "It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
    More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros
     

    Cons

    "The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."
    "The networking needs improvement."
    "The price should be lowered. It's a little expensive."
    "HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources."
    "The deployment process has room for improvement. I would like for it to be a cookie-cutter deployment."
    "I'd like to see some additional graphics capabilities because I'd like to look at some virtual desktop integration for CAD software."
    "I would like to see the implementation process improved."
    "I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons
    "The management console could use a facelift."
    "Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
    "We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."
    "We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
    "Updates need improvement."
    "CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."
    "I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
    "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."
    More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons
     

    Pricing and Cost Advice

    "This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
    "Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
    "Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
    "The licensing fees are renewed annually."
    "Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
    "This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
    "All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
    "The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice
    "Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
    "Its cost was reasonable."
    "We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
    "This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
    "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."
    "I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
    "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."
    More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice
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    Top Industries

    By visitors reading reviews
    Real Estate/Law Firm
    19%
    Financial Services Firm
    19%
    Computer Software Company
    12%
    Comms Service Provider
    8%
    Educational Organization
    14%
    Computer Software Company
    13%
    Manufacturing Company
    9%
    Financial Services Firm
    9%
     

    Company Size

    By reviewers
    Large Enterprise
    Midsize Enterprise
    Small Business
     

    Questions from the Community

    Ask a question
    Earn 20 points
    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?
    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 inf...
    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
     

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    Product Reports

    Buyer's Guide
    NetApp HCI [EOL]
    June 2025
    NetApp HCI [EOL] reportDownload NetApp HCI [EOL] product report
    Buyer's Guide
    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
    June 2025
    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reportDownload StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report
     

    Overview

    NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

    NetApp

    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
     

    Sample Customers

    American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
    Sears Home and Franchise Business
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    July 2025
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