NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Why PeerSpot?

NetApp and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 213 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

10,811 Views
6,595 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

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

Buyer's Guide

HCI

October 2026

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Helped 918,169 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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StarWind Virtual SAN

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

213

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)

Featured Reviews

Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

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

Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs

The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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 allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."

"The multi-vertical aspect is what is most valuable for us. The main reason we wanted a multi protocol was because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data as we could get from Linux and Windows lengths. That was our value proposition for this solution."

"NetApp HCI solves predictability challenges with industry-leading performance capabilities that allow the granular control of every application."

"We went with NetApp based on the cost-effective solutions, technologies, and protocols."

"I like how the solution gives you the ability to basically grow compute and storage separately, and there is no compute processing used for storage IO so that means that the compute is purely satisfying user workloads."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface."

"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud."

"It is highly scalable, and their support is also extremely good."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"The installation of StarWind Virtual SAN was pretty easy, and the configuration was done in no time."

"StarWind Virtual SAN improved my Hyper-V deployment by making it highly available, was easy to roll out and manage, and has greatly improved virtual machine reliability and accessibility while reducing the stress of hardware problems."

"The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."

"When it comes to ease of installation, the whole process is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward."

"It also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."

"StarWind vSAN for Hyper-V solves the problem without any kind of hardware lock-in and with its low impact, easy to configure vSAN solution."

"StarWind vSAN has a lot of great features and is a perfect solution for mirroring internal disks and flash between servers."

"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"Because of the repeated failure of the motherboard that we experienced, we have doubts about the stability of the solution, but I'm sure that in the near future it will be a great, reliable solution for us."

"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."

"The networking needs improvement."

"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."

"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."

"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."

"The setup was a bit challenging because it's a fairly new product and I think some of the stuff is not quite well baked yet."

"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"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."

"I wish they would improve the documentation for the beginner level as it's not very clear on the web page."

"Having large support for filesystems is important to our organization, as we sometimes use proprietary filesystems like WekaFS for some of the tasks, especially in the era of Exascale computing."

"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."

"They require more media visibility."

"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."

"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."

"The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."

"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."

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."

"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."

"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."

"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective."

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

20%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	170
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN is very simple; that is another good thing about it, as the pricing is really straightforward. I got a quote, and it w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

StarWind Virtual SAN has latency that is not as good versus VMware vSAN, but I believe it is more of a Hyper-V limitation than it is StarWind Virtual SAN; it is not bad enough to be an issue, but i...

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What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that it replaced our VMware vSAN. I transitioned from VMware vSAN to StarWind Virtual SAN due to the dramatic increase in VMware licensing costs followi...

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 24% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Huawei FusionCube Hyper-Converged Infrastructure vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

October 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

September 2026

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN offers robust, scalable solutions for high availability in VMware and Hyper-V environments, providing real-time data replication and seamless infrastructure integration.

StarWind Virtual SAN stands out for high availability, impressive performance, and smooth integration with existing systems. Its real-time data replication capabilities minimize downtime and boost operational efficiency. Users appreciate the platform's cost-effectiveness and compatibility with diverse hardware, allowing for seamless deployment across hyper-converged infrastructures and data redundancy setups. Despite the strong feature set, calls for a more user-friendly setup and interface are common, alongside requests for clearer documentation and a web-based management interface.

What are the most notable features?

High Availability: Ensures continuous operation with real-time replication.
Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing IT infrastructure.
Scalability: Adapts to changing capacity needs easily.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces traditional SAN system expenses.
Energy Efficiency: Saves on power consumption with optimized functionality.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Reduced Maintenance: Minimizes IT staff involvement, lowering costs.
Enhanced Performance: Facilitates efficient data handling.
Operational Efficiency: Decreases downtime, increasing productivity.
Flexibility: Supports various IT configurations and strategies.

In industries like small businesses, StarWind Virtual SAN is implemented to replace costly SAN systems, ensuring uptime and strong performance. It's leveraged for hyper-converged infrastructure, failover clustering, and backup strategies, meeting diverse IT demands from hosting virtual machines to data migration.

StarWind

Sample Customers

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

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

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