HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while StarWind is ranked #26. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 5.6% mindshare in HCI, compared to StarWind’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

HPE SimpliVity

Read 155 HPE SimpliVity reviews

11,993 Views
11,513 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Read 6 StarWind Virtual Tape Library reviews

2,163 Views
1,384 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HPE SimpliVity

StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

HPE SimpliVity and StarWind Virtual Tape Library are competitors in hyper-converged infrastructure and data storage solutions. HPE SimpliVity leads with its comprehensive integration and competitive pricing, while StarWind stands out with specialized storage features.

Features: HPE SimpliVity integrates data protection, recovery, and deduplication, offering a robust solution in a single package. It simplifies management with inline deduplication and backup and recovery functionalities. StarWind Virtual Tape Library excels in storage efficiency and scalability, providing advanced data archiving and disaster recovery features. It allows virtual backup appliances with customizable LTO formats for flexible storage management.

Room for Improvement: HPE SimpliVity could enhance its customization capabilities and provide more detailed analytics tools. It can also benefit from expanding its application support beyond standard virtual environments. StarWind might improve its user interface for easier setup and management, reduce initial setup complexities, and broaden its integration with diverse cloud storage platforms for seamless hybrid solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE SimpliVity offers a straightforward deployment with comprehensive support, integrating well into existing IT infrastructures. StarWind provides flexible deployment options geared towards storage-specific needs, with dedicated support for detailed storage-related queries, appealing to specialized storage environments.

Pricing and ROI: HPE SimpliVity stands out for its cost-effectiveness by providing all features in a single integrated solution, yielding a positive return on investment through its extensive integration benefits. StarWind may have higher initial costs but is designed for significant long-term ROI, thanks to its customization capabilities and storage-specific optimizations, which offer enterprises greater flexibility and efficiency in storage handling.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library

September 2026

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Helped 913,683 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

HPE SimpliVity

Ranking in HCI

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

155

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Ranking in HCI

26th

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (22nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of HPE SimpliVity is 5.6%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 1.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HPE SimpliVity	5.6%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library	1.8%
Other	92.6%

HCI

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Lokman Hossen

Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Has integrated solutions and rapid recovery made management smoother and more reliable

There is the latest update from HPE regarding HPE SimpliVity. For virtualization, HPE has to depend on other manufacturers, OEMs such as VMware or Hyper-V. Recently, HPE declared the VM essential virtualization solution. In the future, if HPE integrates HPE SimpliVity with VM essential, that will be a great combination. Functionality-wise, I am totally satisfied with HPE SimpliVity, but for improvement, if HPE integrates its own virtualization solution, this combination and integration will be beneficial because this integration can be configured with the cloud-based system. A VM can be uploaded to the cloud from this, which will be advantageous for backup to other sites.

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reviewer1414572

DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics

Flexible and reliable with helpful support

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

Read full 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 features of this solution are the backup rate and the backup transfer."

"SimpliVity meets all of our requirements and also address other future requirements that were not in the scope of the primary storage project."

"SimpliVity is as scalable as all the other solutions."

"Now, the performance is much better, and we can take snapshots and backups of really big servers in just a matter of seconds."

"The performance is very good on any application you are trying to build on top of it, it performs according to that hardware layer."

"The most valuable feature is that the product has an inborn backup."

"The way it does backups is its most valuable feature. It replicates snapshots with very low bandwidth. We only have a 50 megabit link to that site, and it doesn't really use much of it at all. Therefore, it is a really good fit for getting our backups done."

"The access, high availability, and interface are the most valuable and important for us. There is one interface for the whole product, which is very important because you have a single pane to view all the infrastructure of a customer. You can improve your data recovery plan or DRP, or you can make a special emergency plan if a disk has any problem."

More HPE SimpliVity pros

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

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

"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."

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

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

"It is a stable solution."

"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."

Cons

"I would like some reporting about backup and replication."

"The stability and scalability of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required."

"Not having an all-flash option right now is probably a hindrance for us, because the customers just get turned off when they see that."

"We had failures out-of-the-box of our new technology along with a few bugs during the initial setup."

"The only problem I had was that when we initially purchased SimpliVity, I didn't know that the OmniCube took up 60 GB of RAM."

"Although HPE has made significant improvements, the upgrade procedure is still overly complex."

"Its price can be improved. Customers always look for better prices. It is more expensive as compared to other products available in the market."

"It crashes often. When one particular VM has random, large IOPS requests, it will bog down the node, and there isn't enough time for the replica to be brought up. So all the VMs on that one particular node will essentially become offline."

More HPE SimpliVity cons

"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."

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

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

"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 initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is not a license required for the solution."

"I think it's a complete package. We buy the license with support for five years. It's a subscription, I will say, but it's included when you buy the SimpliVity solution from HPE. You have a contract with the software warranty and upgrades."

"It's about $10,000 monthly."

"Its licensing is yearly."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. We have purchased a five-year license with all the support and upgrades."

"The time savings on the administration side of things is huge. We had somebody who was dedicated pretty much full-time to hardware, and now, they spend about a quarter of their time a year on hardware-related issues."

"HPE has decided to sell the solution in all-flash configurations, which may not be as cost effective for smaller mid-market enterprises."

"Other vendors fall short on price compared to HPE on this product."

More HPE SimpliVity pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."

"The solution is cost-effective."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	67
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	80

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?

Standalone HPE SimpliVity is more expensive than other OEMs and solutions. Regarding the software side, VMware is costing significantly more nowadays compared to other solutions in the market. The ...

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What needs improvement with HPE SimpliVity?

I haven't noticed anything that should be better in HPE SimpliVity, as I haven't done extensive work on this platform; I have only completed a couple of projects recently. Pricing could be an area ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs HPE SimpliVity

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Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs HPE SimpliVity

Compared 4% of the time

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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 6% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 6% of the time

FalconStor FreeStor vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual Tape Library Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity

September 2026

Download HPE SimpliVity product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2026

Download StarWind Virtual Tape Library product report

Also Known As

SimpliVity, HPE HCI

No data available

Overview

HPE SimpliVity provides businesses with advanced features such as inline deduplication, compression, and instant recovery, enabling efficient backup and scalability. Its integration with VMware and centralized management fosters ease of use, establishing a streamlined IT infrastructure.

HPE SimpliVity stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a robust infrastructure capable of handling diverse workloads. Its features like integrated backup and disaster recovery ensure quick restores and high availability. Known for its efficient use of storage and data processing capabilities, it helps reduce operational costs. This system offers a reliable framework for virtualized environments, enhancing disaster recovery processes, IT operations, and application hosting while supporting workloads such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL.

What are HPE SimpliVity's key features?

Inline Deduplication: Minimizes data redundancy, enhancing storage efficiency.
Compression: Optimizes storage, reducing space requirements.
Instant Recovery: Facilitates rapid restoration of data and applications.
Centralized Management: Simplifies IT operations with unified management.
Scalable Architecture: Adapts to business growth seamlessly.

What benefits should users seek in HPE SimpliVity reviews?

Cost Reduction: Achieves savings through efficient data processing and storage utilization.
High Availability: Ensures consistent service and data accessibility.
VMware Integration: Provides compatibility and smooth operations in VMware environments.
Quick Disaster Recovery: Enables swift restoration processes for continued business operations.

Organizations deploy HPE SimpliVity mainly for virtualized environments, focusing on disaster recovery, IT operations, and application hosting. Extensively used in sectors for VDI, backups, and data center tasks, it supports major workloads like Oracle and SAP, simplifying infrastructure management while ensuring high availability.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

StarWind Virtual Tape Library enables seamless integration with existing backup systems, allowing for efficient data archiving to AWS, Amazon S3, and Wasabi. Supporting Veeam and LTO formats, it reduces storage costs with multiple cloud uploads and offers control over file chunk sizes.

StarWind Virtual Tape Library is a technical platform that provides valuable features for cost-effective data management and quick recovery. Although it can be complex to deploy, it supports cloud storage providers like Amazon and Wasabi, replacing manual tape management with automated processes. Businesses manage approximately 20TB for offsite storage, achieving a high success rate in tape replication. Clear documentation and enhanced user-friendliness could improve the user experience, along with faster throughput and better configuration guides.

What are the most important features of StarWind Virtual Tape Library?

Seamless Integration: Works effectively with Veeam and other backup systems.
Cloud Archiving: Supports AWS, Amazon S3, and Wasabi for data archiving.
LTO Format: Offers air-gapped security and control over file chunk sizes.
Cost Reduction: Reduces storage expenses with simultaneous cloud uploads.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in StarWind Virtual Tape Library?

Enhanced Data Protection: Ransomware protection through automated processes.
Cost Efficiency: Decreased costs with efficient cloud data management.
High Success Rate: Reliable offsite storage with proven tape replication success.
Performance: Strong performance and support resources facilitate ease of setup.

StarWind Virtual Tape Library is used by organizations for seamless data integration with Veeam and Backblaze, facilitating data backups and ransomware protection. By automating physical tape management, it supports cloud storage providers effectively, making it suitable for industries handling significant data volumes.

StarWind

Sample Customers

Red Bull Racing, Mandarin Oriental, Brigham Young University, UCLA, Merlin Entertainments, Sasa Cosmetics, Travelport, St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Princess House

Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi

Buyer's Guide

HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library

September 2026

Free Report: HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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