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NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

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 205 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews
    • 5,744 Views
    • 3,561 Comparison Views
    100% willing to recommend
     

    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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

    DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
    To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: March 2026).
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    March 2026
    Download the complete report
    Helped 885,728 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 Virtual SAN
    Average Rating
    9.6
    Reviews Sentiment
    7.5
    Number of Reviews
    205
    Ranking in other categories
    Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
     

    Featured Reviews

    MB
    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 - PeerSpot reviewer
    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

    "HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
    "HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud."
    "The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."
    "NetApp HCI's ability to scale on demand is a differentiator in the marketplace."
    "The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
    "Scalability was another thing I was looking at. The solution, by its very nature, is designed to be expandable and flexible, so you don't have to buy performance you don't need today, but you're also not stuck with something you can't expand."
    "It's simple, flexible, powerful; we've been able to move most of our workload to it and we've seen increased performance across the board."
    "The best thing about the product is this is the only appliance in the market that separates control of storage from compute."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros
    "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” accessible by all hosts. StarWind cuts down virtualization cost and complexity by eliminating the need for a physical shared storage (SAN). -StarWind offers the Enterprise-level high availability (HA), deployed and easily configured . we get technical support from star wind team when implementation software and after setup if we face any issue."
    "The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."
    "StarWind Virtual SAN has made it easy to work with backups and save server data by mirroring two servers."
    "This is a cost effective solution that allows us to have an HA clustered environment with redundancy and scalability."
    "It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."
    "It allows me to configure High Availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget."
    "It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
    "In our case, the cost and high availability are the two most important factors which we were looking for in a solution."
    More StarWind Virtual SAN pros
     

    Cons

    "To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."
    "I would like to have more variety, like GPU cards."
    "Unfortunately, the solution has not reduced our hypervisor footprint."
    "I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
    "The initial setup is very painful. It's not straightforward, requires a lot of knowledge to get it going."
    "It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."
    "The fact that it doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like. I find that a lot of the performance analysis is done through support, where they have something that we don't have. It would be nice just to have all that on-prem."
    "It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons
    "High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."
    "The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."
    "While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."
    "I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."
    "There is a limit on HA storage for standard and professional versions which is too low to be very useful for any but the smallest of SMBs or startups."
    "Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
    "Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
    "I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
    More StarWind Virtual SAN cons
     

    Pricing and Cost Advice

    "Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
    "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."
    "Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
    "Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
    "The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
    "Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
    "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."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice
    "The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."
    "The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
    "Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
    "StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
    "We are happy with the price."
    "We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
    "This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
    "The pricing is more than reasonable."
    More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice
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    Top Industries

    By visitors reading reviews
    Construction Company
    14%
    Marketing Services Firm
    12%
    Comms Service Provider
    10%
    Computer Software Company
    6%
    Computer Software Company
    14%
    Manufacturing Company
    10%
    Financial Services Firm
    8%
    Government
    7%
     

    Company Size

    By reviewers
    Large Enterprise
    Midsize Enterprise
    Small Business
    By reviewers
    Company SizeCount
    Small Business8
    Midsize Enterprise9
    Large Enterprise19
    By reviewers
    Company SizeCount
    Small Business165
    Midsize Enterprise54
    Large Enterprise34
     

    Questions from the Community

    Ask a question
    Earn 20 points
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
    My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost. I did most of the setup, so there wasn't really any cost there. The professiona...
    See all answers
    What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
    The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little bit unclear. However, when I worked through those issues with their professional...
    See all answers
    What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
    Our main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is hyper-convergence of a two-node cluster. We have multiple servers up and running at all times for our operations, and we were able to use StarWind Virt...
    See all answers
     

    Comparisons

    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
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    Compared 44% of the time
    VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 19% of the time
    HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 19% of the time
    Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 18% of the time
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors
    StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 18% of the time
    DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 8% of the time
    Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 7% of the time
    VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 7% of the time
    Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    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]
    March 2026
    NetApp HCI [EOL] reportDownload NetApp HCI [EOL] product report
    Buyer's Guide
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    March 2026
    StarWind Virtual SAN reportDownload 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 provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    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
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    March 2026
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