We performed a comparison between NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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."CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."
"It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We started with a small pilot and we then moved to production with no downtime at all."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it."
"If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily."
"The fast recovery time objective with the ability to bring the environment back to production in case something happens."
"With NetApp, you can integrate malware scanning or malware protection. This is something valuable that is not offered in SaaS solutions typically."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."
"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..."
"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong."
"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."
"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."
"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."
"I would like NetApp to come up with an easier setup for the solution."
"Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database."
"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP needs to have customizable pricing options such as 10 TB increments. They seem to have only two options: 10 TB or 250 TB."
"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."
"There is room for improvement in tier one support, especially with potential language barriers and communication challenges."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"Not much can be improved, to be honest."
"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work."
"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 60 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Its data tiering helps keep storage costs under control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Portworx Enterprise, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.
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