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StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs VxRail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in HCI
26th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (22nd)
VxRail
Ranking in HCI
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 9.9%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail9.9%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library1.7%
Other88.4%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
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. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data
John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automation has streamlined lifecycle management and improved ongoing operational efficiency
For the first three years, I have a combo pricing policy. For the fourth year and fifth year, I have to buy separately for the licensing from VMware and from VxRail, so I think the combo cost for the fourth and fifth year is huge and does not make sense. Due to the pricing policy, I would not like to see additional functionalities at this time as it is not in my strategy. I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten because of the pricing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
"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."
"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."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"The stability is very good. We haven't had any issues at all. There aren't bugs or glitches. There aren't system crashes or anything of that nature."
"Dell owns the EMC, EMC owns VMware, and there are many other interconnections throughout the industry which allows a fully integrated solution from a technical perspective."
"The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades."
"My customers use it for VDI. It has been very usable and very fast to use with VDI. On the VxRail side also, it has been very fast."
"We previously had a traditional infrastructure where we always had issues with the performance, the vendor then introduced us to VxRail and the performance improved drastically, and the time spent on reports and support went down a lot."
"VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
"The VxRail has allowed an environment to be created that is easy to manage and back up."
"The solution is very easy to manage, as it is software-defined storage where one person can manage the whole infrastructure instead of two to three people managing the servers and the storage, and the one-click update for everything significantly simplifies IT operations because we don't have to upgrade our VMware and other systems separately, since everything is managed from a single console."
 

Cons

"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
"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."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI."
"I would like it if there were tools that provided the billing costs; in short, I would prefer it if each cell had a tool geared toward billing clients."
"There is limited support for SAP HANA with this solution."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"One challenge customers face with VxRail is the high cost of scalability. The price is higher if they want to add memory or capacity after purchasing the tool for three or five years. Each drive and RAM module is licensed separately, making the architecture costly. It would benefit Dell to review this licensing model and make it more cost-effective and flexible for customers."
"As I said, one place for improvement would be the automated update for VMware Tools."
"If they can provide deduplication compression through the traditional hard drives, as Cisco does in the HyperFlex system, it will be very cost-effective, especially when it comes to archiving workload. VxRail doesn't allow the mixing of old flash clusters and hyper clusters. When I'm starting with an old flash cluster and it comes to archiving workload, I will also need to attend the new cluster. So, I either manage two different clusters, or I pay and upload my work with the archiving mobile hard drive, which is not cost-effective at all. The main key is to allow mixing between two types of clustering, like Nutanix, or allow deduplication of completion over the period of shared hard drive on SAV. It will be much better."
"The setup requires a significant amount of expertise, as end customers can’t do it themselves. It must be done by certified partners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"A typical node that I would sell to a customer has a list price be between $80,000 and $100,000 per node. Organizations typically start with four nodes. That's the hardware, software, VMware licensing, everything. Customers typically pay about half of that - approximately $45,000 to $50,000 a node. On average, it costs about $200,000 to get your foot in the door."
"The pricing for this solution is on the high end but we do get good value for money based on performance."
"It is reasonable. Compared to the legacy hardware that we had so far, we are not paying way more, but we have very good performance. Its price is good."
"This is an expensive product and that should be considered a point to be improved."
"There is an advantage for those who have a good deal with Dell. Its price is good. From a company's perspective, it is always too expensive, but it is about value for money."
"More cost-effective than Nutanix."
"The licensing of vSAN and VMware for different editions of VxRail is not easy."
"The price is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Legal Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
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Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.