Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Tape Library
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th), HCI (17th)
 

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.
KellyVon Der Heyden - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable solution with a good technical support team
We use the solution for data backups and ransomware protection The solution is compatible with cloud storage platforms, such as Amazon S3. Also, it efficiently reduces the storage cost for archiving. The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough. We have been…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is very scalable."
"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."
"NetApp HCI is a stable solution."
"It's an all-flash solution. NetApp guarantees 3-to-1 or more than 3-to-1. It has guaranteed performance, like 15K IOPS per node."
"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."
"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
 

Cons

"The problem is that it needs to be much more stable, for example, when I want to do the upgrade to 1.7 that just released, I also need to issue a ticket to the support guy in India and he asked me to deploy another mlock. There are a lot of manual steps compared with other products."
"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
"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."
"If you want to have a really dense data center then it's hard to have a big chunk of cabling going through everything."
"To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."
"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."
"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
"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."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Real Estate/Law Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Legal Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: May 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.