NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp HCI [EOL] and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the SolidFire interface.""The most valuable aspects are that it's an all-in-one solution and it's very self-contained.""The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path.""It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well.""The multi-vertical aspect is what is most valuable for us. The main reason we wanted a multi protocol was because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data as we could get from Linux and Windows lengths. That was our value proposition for this solution.""The most valuable feature is the convergence.""Scalability was another thing I was looking at. The solution, by its very nature, is designed to be expandable and flexible, so you don't have to buy performance you don't need today, but you're also not stuck with something you can't expand.""The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware. I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, obviously. There are cost savings, obviously."

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"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one.""The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing.""High Availability is the best feature of product.""A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic.""This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime.""Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier.""Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair.""It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

Cons
"They could improve the packaging.""It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well.""The vCenter keeps crashing, meaning that there is no stability in our environment.""HCI has not enabled us to consolidate workloads or break down silos and has not increased application performance. It has also not resulted in more efficient use of compute resources.""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.""The networking needs improvement.""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.""I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."

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"A better overall view of the different deployments could be beneficial, although this is difficult due to how flexible the solution is.""Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment.""Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell.""It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks.""I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided.""The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own.""I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found.""Pricing is a bit high."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
  • "Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
  • "There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
  • "All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
  • "You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
  • "This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
  • "Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
  • "The licensing fees are renewed annually."
  • More NetApp HCI [EOL] 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 →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier.
    Top Answer:Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market.
    Top Answer:At the moment, I am not looking for new features. Quality of Service (QoS) and capacity efficiency are the two things that I want to resolve in my customer's environment. QoS improves the performance… more »
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool”… 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 hardware costs.
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point… more »
    Ranking
    Unranked
    In HCI
    4th
    out of 39 in HCI
    Views
    5,812
    Comparisons
    1,819
    Reviews
    103
    Average Words per Review
    596
    Rating
    9.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    Learn More
    Overview

    NetApp HCI is the only true enterprise-scale hyper converged cloud infrastructure. NetApp HCI comes in a 2 RU chassis with 4 node expansion slots.

    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.

    Offer
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    Sample Customers
    American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Transportation Company15%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Insurance Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Government12%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCI
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Nutanix, VMware and others in HCI. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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 Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), 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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    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.