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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
    • 10,057 Views
    • 6,235 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, Nutanix, Broadcom and others in HCI.

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    To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: August 2026).
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    August 2026
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    Helped 911,994 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
    213
    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

    "The NetApp Deployment Engine that comes with it makes the actual deployment and usage very easy. That's our primary focus and it's hyper-converged. That's something that we want to use as well."
    "When it comes to DevOps, HCI has saved our organization time and money, especially with the number of resources that we have cut down."
    "Now you don't have to be a storage administrator to provision or do anything, and any VMware system administrator, with the ease of a button, would get storage provision, which makes their lives easier."
    "In terms of helping us with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds, we do store data internally and in Azure. It has allowed us to consolidate a number of workloads, across our old NetApp and a number of our older storage arrays, into a single unit and have that unit also working with Azure."
    "The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware. I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, obviously. There are cost savings, obviously."
    "The ability to size the available space in a way that matches our company's needs is most valuable. For instance, you can decide if you want 80/20, 70/30, or 60/40 space. Redundancy depends on your needs without changing the appliance. You just add space and decide the percentage of space that you need free and the percentage of space that you need for backup. It is all automatic, and you don't have to do anything. You just add space, and the system automatically configures itself with the chosen option."
    "The most valuables features of it are the deduplication and the compaction because the ratios are much better than what we normally get on our FAS storage."
    "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."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros
    "High Availability is the best feature of product."
    "We were able to leverage our previous hardware capital investment and converted our infrastructure to use StarWind VSAN; the migration process was simple, and afterwards, we had a highly reliable SAN system."
    "The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
    "By having StarWind, we're able to minimize maintenance impact and coordinating different support to be available around those timeframes."
    "StarWind saved us about 80% of our storage costs over our old solution."
    "The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
    "StarWind Virtual SAN was a bulls-eye."
    "Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
    More StarWind Virtual SAN pros
     

    Cons

    "It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."
    "Its stability is 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 crash."
    "The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."
    "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."
    "My biggest pain point is the installation part. I would like to see the appliance itself remove the entire switch that goes behind it and figure out how to do all the cluster interconnects within the box itself."
    "There have been some drive type of issues where we have to apply a new code level. Storage nodes kick certain drives until they act as though they have failed when really they haven't. You just have to reinsert them, then they go on about their happy way. It's sort of a bug."
    "To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."
    "It doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons
    "In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."
    "The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent. However, when they do occur, it makes it very challenging to figure out what the cause is."
    "Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
    "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."
    "The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
    "I hope you can try to have a multiple deployment option like ceph which covers several nodes and replicas"
    "More comprehensive reporting and educational resources for error resolution would enhance the user experience."
    "Pricing is a bit high."
    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."
    "You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
    "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."
    "Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
    "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 licensing fees are renewed annually."
    "Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice
    "Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
    "Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
    "This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
    "The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
    "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
    "The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."
    "The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
    "The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
    More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice
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    Top Industries

    By visitors reading reviews
    Construction Company
    22%
    Financial Services Firm
    10%
    Outsourcing Company
    9%
    Marketing Services Firm
    8%
    Financial Services Firm
    12%
    Computer Software Company
    10%
    Comms Service Provider
    8%
    Manufacturing Company
    8%
     

    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 Business170
    Midsize Enterprise57
    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 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...
    See all answers
    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...
    See all answers
     

    Comparisons

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    VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 12% of the time
    VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 10% of the time
    HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 9% of the time
    DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp HCI [EOL] Logo
    DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp HCI [EOL]
    Compared 7% of the time
    More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors
    StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 12% of the time
    VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 7% of the time
    Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 6% of the time
    DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 6% of the time
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Virtual SAN Logo
    Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Virtual SAN
    Compared 5% of the time
    More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors
     

    Product Reports

    Buyer's Guide
    NetApp HCI [EOL]
    August 2026
    NetApp HCI [EOL] reportDownload NetApp HCI [EOL] product report
    Buyer's Guide
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    August 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 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
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    August 2026
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