We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI."In terms of helping us with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds, we do store data internally and in Azure. It has allowed us to consolidate a number of workloads, across our old NetApp and a number of our older storage arrays, into a single unit and have that unit also working with Azure."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
"The solution integrates well with all the other applications that we use on our environment."
"This is a strong product and it works very well, and the processes around it continue to grow and mature."
"The solution is very scalable."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"Speed and high availability have been the most valuable for us."
"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"One of the standout features of StarWind.com is its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with Dell systems. This integration provides users with an unmatched level of convenience and compatibility, allowing for streamlined operations within a Dell environment. This compatibility factor alone can save significant time and effort for IT professionals, ensuring a smooth integration process and optimized performance."
"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."
"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 also provides a high degree of mobility, as the virtual SAN can be moved relatively painlessly between on-site devices and the cloud."
"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."
"The networking needs improvement."
"The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment."
"I would like to see the implementation process improved."
"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."
"Because I like block mode, I'd like to see SAN connectivity. I would like to be able to easily put it into my current environment."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."
"If there was one thing we could request, it would be the ability to shrink volumes. For example, we want to be able to decrease in the size of the volume."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
Earn 20 points
NetApp HCI [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in HCI with 32 reviews while StarWind Virtual SAN is ranked 4th in HCI with 182 reviews. NetApp HCI [EOL] is rated 8.0, while StarWind Virtual SAN is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of NetApp HCI [EOL] writes "Ease of provisioning has allowed us to implement large installations in a very short time frame". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Virtual SAN writes "Excellent support, great performance, and good redundancy". NetApp HCI [EOL] is most compared with , whereas StarWind Virtual SAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage and DataCore SANsymphony.
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