StarWind Virtual Tape Library Reviews

We have been using the product for backups and long-term storage. 

We had been using physical tape backups for many years. It became harder to get those tapes to successfully complete and also get access to the data center to swap out the tapes. 

With the VTL, we have seen our success rate increase to 100%. We are now also able to direct the virtual tapes onto cheap storage and send them to multiple different sites. 

Finally, we can even replicate the backup tapes without the need to run the job again by using the built-in functions of the SAN.

Firstly, the solution made our backups way more reliable. Typically, we would have failures with the physical tape, and we would need to rerun the job. Our backup window is now smaller, and thus, we can process the same amount of data even faster.  

We have flexibility in terms of where the backups are stored, and as hardware changes, we are able to take advantage of new storage or even use our older storage to store the virtual tape backups. This decreases our costs, and we don't have to keep investing in new LTO technology.

With this solution, you can choose the LTO format. That means you can pick from LTO1 through LTO9 currently. All that really does is set up how big a tape folder will be. 

Inside that folder, you can set how large you want the file chunks to be.  This allows you to take the capacity of an LTO9 tape and break it down into smaller increments. This does a better job of taking advantage of the underlying storage that you are using. You can also create more than one virtual backup appliance.  Each appliance can have up to four virtual drives assigned to it.

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

We have been using this product for about eight months now.

The solution is very stable, and now our backups are always successful.

It can scale easily into PB - it just depends on the hardware you are storing the virtual tapes on.

It was great working with technical support. They took the time to address everything I needed to know.

Positive

We were using physical tape previously. It was taking too long to back up, and backups were failing. It was also hard to keep getting the tapes swapped out. Our tape hardware was aging out, so it was time to either spend the money on new physical hardware or go this route.

The initial setup was a bit complex with regard to understanding the terminology. However, using their support, we were guided through the process via a remote session. From there, I was able to tweak it as I needed without a problem.

We implemented the solution with the help of the vendor. Their expertise on the product was excellent.

Considering the ROI is hard as we were going to update our physical tape hardware. This solution is cheaper, even if you are considering buying new storage to store the backups on.

The pricing is surprisingly reasonable, and that includes the help to get it set up and running. They really want you to use their support get to get everything up and running.

In the VTL field, this was the only solution that I evaluated.

We were looking for physical tape backups to protect against DR situations but were concerned about the fact that it would require manual intervention, with respect to the changing of tapes and sending them offsite. This is something that we could easily forget.

Luckily, I came across Starwind VTL. This product is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes. The whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc.

It's been six months and it has been working well without any issue. The jobs are completed within 24 hours, which meets our RTO.

In regards to the cost, we ended up saving a few thousand dollars as well, due to the high cost of the physical tape library.

We are using StarWind's VTL to upload virtual tapes to Amazon and Wasabi simultaneously, in addition to having local virtual tape backups via Veeam. We did not have to purchase a new backup solution, as Starwind integrates seamlessly with Veeam.

Also, by integrating with Veeam, we are able to leverage deduplication and compression features with the virtual tapes. This allows for the uploads to finish quicker, as well. Because of this, we are able to meet our disaster recovery objectives within a 24 hour period.

We also avoided the costs of a physical tape library, as well as having to need users to change tapes and schedule offsite pickups.  

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. This helps with our RPO objective, which is within 24 hours.

The cost is also much lower, as uploading to cloud storage providers such as Wasabi is very cheap. This is unlike physical tape libraries that can cost thousands of dollars in addition to tape costs.

The virtual tapes themselves are also in linear tape-open (LTO) format, which means they are air-gapped.

The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud.

There is no easy way to determine how long an upload took to complete without looking into the logs, which is very cumbersome.  I’m also unable to search by tape and have to manually scroll through the list when troubleshooting.  I spoke with their support and was able to add it as a feature request. Starwind VTL is in constant development and after my discussion with them, I found out that they are planning to include this feature in the next release.

I've been using this solution for almost six months.

Their customer support is pretty quick a they respond usually in 24 hours and they will jump on a remote session to resolve the issue.

Positive

We did not have any previous solution for offsite backup other than file-level cloud backup such as iDrive, which didn't meet our needs.

The initial purchase already includes one year of maintenance support. The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost.

We looked at physical tape libraries but we soon found out the cost was much higher, and moreover, users did not want to manually change tapes.

We use the solution for data backups and ransomware protection.

The solution is compatible with cloud storage platforms, such as Amazon S3. Also, it efficiently reduces the storage cost for archiving.

The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough.

We have been using the solution for four years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability a ten.

It is a very scalable solution. We can back up data from one terabyte to a hundred terabytes. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution's technical support is good.

Positive

The solution's initial setup process is easy if you have technical expertise. It takes a couple of hours to complete and requires one executive for deployment and maintenance. Also, the operational expenses to maintain the product are minimal.

The solution is cost-effective. I rate its pricing as a three. We purchase its yearly license.

It is a perfect product if you are looking for a low-cost solution to archive your company's data backups. I rate it a ten out of ten.

We use StarWind Virtual Tape Library as a high-capacity storage system.

The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud.

I have been using StarWind Virtual Tape Library for approximately four years.

StarWind Virtual Tape Library has been stable.

The support that they provide is excellent. They have 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well.

The initial setup is straightforward. Additionally, it is easy to configure in a lab and to run tests, which is very important.

The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies.

I rate StarWind Virtual Tape Library an eight out of ten.

We currently use Veeam as our backup solution and wanted to save some backups to Backblaze. StarWind VTL allowed us to keep using Veeam and Backblaze for an easy and affordable solution to our backups.

The software has excellent performance, and it is straightforward to set up given the extensive tutorials hosted on their website, online help, and remote assistance from the beginning, all for free with no initial costs involved. 

We are a very small company and cannot afford the pricey storage solutions for the amount of information we needed to backup from various sources. StarWind VTL allowed us to move backups to the cloud without having having to purchase additional hardware.

StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud.

This solution is easy to set up without having to have a lot of storage on-premises or change the backup solution that we already had in place, which saved us time and money.

The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified.

I have been using this for two years and have not had any issues. It is very stable and reliable.

I have had great experiences with customer service and technical support.

I have used different solutions in the past but when I researched StarWind, wanting to integrate with our current backup solution, it was an easy decision.

The initial setup was a little complex but the technical support walked me through every step until it was up and running.

If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind.

I did evaluate other cloud solutions and backup software, but to keep from having to change how we do the backup, StarWind was an easy and affordable solution for us.

The product works great, and I am not sure what features could be added or improved.

All the features I expected work great, and support is always available to answer any questions. It is a fix it and forget it solution, and you do not have to monitor the backups all the time to ensure they run.

Our objective for using StarWind's VTL to Backblaze B2 was to get away from sneakernet backups of Veeam data for offsite storage and archiving. We have approximately 20TB of data that needs to be backed up on a GFS schedule. We're able to do this with StarWind's VTL to Backblaze B2 app very easily. 

We were finally able to get rid of our Pelican cased sneakernet hard drive transport system for good. 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 ability to continue to use Veeam was of the highest importance — but we needed something to replicate data easily to a cloud storage provider like Backblaze. StarWind's VTL to B2 fit the bill nicely on paper. In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done.

It's a very technical product so some more user-friendliness and UX would go a long way. It sort of has to be very technical though because it is trying to marry old school tape library technology with new school cloud storage technology and act as a bridge between backup software that uses VTL for offloading. An easier way obviously would be to do away with the need for VTL and just go straight to B2 out of Veeam — like a plugin maybe. Not sure if that's possible with how Veeam works.