We performed a comparison between StarWind Virtual Tape Library and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"The ability to choose our own hardware and our own vendors for this was hugely beneficial, as we had pre-existing relationships with vendors we wanted to maintain."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"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 is extremely stable."
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"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 solution made our backups way more reliable."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"I like vSAN because they release features incrementally, every year, and you don't have to upgrade your hardware to get those features. If you bought a traditional SAN, you would have to upgrade your hardware constantly, every three years: You would get it, and it is how it is for three years. But on vSAN, you upgrade when you have to, when your hardware gets old or when you need more capacity. It's great, you get new features constantly."
"vSAN can help customers save on storage system costs, and also save on the human cost."
"Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures."
"Adding new nodes and expanding vSAN forward is simple and non-disruptive for a lot of our customers."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"They recommend RAID10 for HDD, which reduces the usable storage capacity."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"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 solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The platform’s pricing needs improvement. Additionally, there should be an appliance module included in it."
"We plan to switch products since the hardware nowadays is a little bit outdated and we need to scale up a bit."
"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."
"The UI falls short compared to other solutions. It needs some development to make it more user-friendly."
"The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
More StarWind Virtual Tape Library Pricing and Cost Advice →
StarWind Virtual Tape Library is ranked 14th in HCI with 6 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. StarWind Virtual Tape Library is rated 10.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of StarWind Virtual Tape Library writes "Flexible and reliable with helpful support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". StarWind Virtual Tape Library is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage and HPE StoreVirtual, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs. VMware vSAN report.
See our list of best HCI vendors.
We monitor all HCI 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.
