StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and StarWind Virtual Tape Library based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere.""The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN.""This solution made it possible to deploy a new infrastructure in the shortest amount of time, at a low cost without purchasing expensive hardware storage, and use unused servers.""The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget.""The failover protection and the ability to expand storage and nodes with no downtime are by far the best physical features we have benefited from.""The ability to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity.""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 eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."

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"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly.""The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure...""The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy.""The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play.""The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers.""Live migration between nodes was quick and simple.""We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network.""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."

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"The solution made our backups way more reliable.""It is a stable solution.""The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud.""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.""StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."

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Cons
"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues.""There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA.""There is no Italian-language version of the software available.""I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation.""vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface.""Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell.""A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node.""I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."

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"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous.""A desired feature or service is the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with the hyper-converged software.""We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us.""I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers.""I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement.""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 were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers.""The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."

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"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.""The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "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 pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "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 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 licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "Its cost was reasonable."
  • "This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
  • "When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
  • "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."
  • "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 Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
  • "We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
  • More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • More StarWind Virtual Tape Library Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines… more »
    Top Answer:The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own… more »
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the… more »
    Top Answer:StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature.
    Top Answer:Keep in mind that StarWind VMs for the vSAN will take up 24GB of memory per host. If you do decide to go with StarWind… more »
    Top Answer:I honestly don't have anything to complain about. Nothing is perfect, though, over the past three years, there were two… more »
    Top Answer:The solution made our backups way more reliable.
    Top Answer:The pricing is surprisingly reasonable, and that includes the help to get it set up and running. They really want you to… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    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. 

    For SMB and Enterprises, who either look to get rid of backup tapes completely, or are willing to accelerate backup process and add an extra level of protection, our solution is StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL). It is an appliance that eliminates the need in physical tape and “pretends” to be a supported tape drive or autoloader, keeping all data on inexpensive, fast and high-capacity spinning disks.

    Even with explosive data growth, StarWind VTL fits the backup into backup window by accelerating it, so the process does not overlap with production time. Optionally, it creates additional copy of backup data for better safety. It is also available in a software-only form, as part of StarWind VSAN functionality. 

    StarWind VTL targets those, who need to replace existing tape backup infrastructure or accelerate it if regulatory requirements prohibit replacement. In case the goal is just virtualizing tape backup or creating a stretched backup infrastructure, StarWind Tape Redirector will come in handy. 

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    Learn more about StarWind Virtual Tape Library
    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    Sears Home and Franchise Business
    Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Construction Company12%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Transportation Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Retailer9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews while StarWind Virtual Tape Library is ranked 11th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 6 reviews. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6, while StarWind Virtual Tape Library is rated 10.0. The top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Virtual Tape Library writes "Flexible and reliable with helpful support". StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN, whereas StarWind Virtual Tape Library is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, HPE StoreVirtual, VMware vSAN and IBM Cloud Object Storage. See our StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library report.

    See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.

    We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.