NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

NetApp and StarWind are both solutions in the HCI category. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Read 32 NetApp HCI [EOL] reviews

88% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 206 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

7,795 Views
4,833 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI.

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Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

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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

NetApp HCI [EOL]

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StarWind Virtual SAN

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

206

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)

Featured Reviews

Massimiliano Bartolozzi

Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.

Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022

Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

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Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs

The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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

"HCI has provided us with efficiencies and mobilities similar to that of the public cloud."

"Simple setup and having the storage and compute right on one deployment is the most valuable aspect of this solution."

"It's simple, flexible, powerful; we've been able to move most of our workload to it and we've seen increased performance across the board."

"The ease of deployment is a positive feature that allows us to scale easily."

"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."

"Since implementing this solution, we have to do less work."

"It is scalable, and NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) makes its deployment easier."

"Simple setup and having the storage and compute right on one deployment is the most valuable aspect of this solution. They're able to get set up and ready to go and start having their DevOp team deploy to that environment."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"The user interface for this application is amazing."

"It has given the company an almost zero possibility of downtime."

"Implementing Starwind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging Starwind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage."

"This has helped us gain a resilient and robust SAN for much less than anything else we could find."

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs."

"The ability to host high availability storage between existing servers without additional hardware is a great benefit. This not only saves money but also reduces the complexity of the hardware configuration creating fewer points of failure."

"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."

"StarWind VSAN allowed our small business to build a fault-tolerant storage architecture using SSDs and off-the-shelf chassis that is high-performing, high-functional, fault-tolerant, highly available, reliable, and easy to use, and best of all, we achieved all of this for a fraction of the cost of other solutions."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."

"To improve the product, they should make it more flexible."

"I'm not a fan of how they don't log you out properly from some of their web tools for management."

"I would like to have more variety, like GPU cards."

"There are some legacy applications which still cannot be migrated. That is why we have to keep two environments: legacy and the new one. We would like to see more compatibility to move stuff."

"We went with a different solution and having run that for a while, I would say that there is a lot more than they could do to make it more streamlined."

"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."

"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."

"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."

"We have, in rare cases, received conflicting guidance between different support folks within StarWind."

"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."

"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."

"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."

"Including their own hyper-visor would be a valuable improvement over simply integrating with Hyper-V."

"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."

"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."

"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."

"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."

"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."

"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."

"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."

"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."

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

14%

Marketing Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Wholesaler/Distributor

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	166
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available. I wanted to see better understanding of...

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What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?

In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specif...

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 30% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetApp HCI [EOL]

April 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

April 2026

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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.

NetApp

StarWind Virtual SAN offers robust, scalable solutions for high availability in VMware and Hyper-V environments, providing real-time data replication and seamless infrastructure integration.

StarWind Virtual SAN stands out for high availability, impressive performance, and smooth integration with existing systems. Its real-time data replication capabilities minimize downtime and boost operational efficiency. Users appreciate the platform's cost-effectiveness and compatibility with diverse hardware, allowing for seamless deployment across hyper-converged infrastructures and data redundancy setups. Despite the strong feature set, calls for a more user-friendly setup and interface are common, alongside requests for clearer documentation and a web-based management interface.

What are the most notable features?

High Availability: Ensures continuous operation with real-time replication.
Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing IT infrastructure.
Scalability: Adapts to changing capacity needs easily.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces traditional SAN system expenses.
Energy Efficiency: Saves on power consumption with optimized functionality.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Reduced Maintenance: Minimizes IT staff involvement, lowering costs.
Enhanced Performance: Facilitates efficient data handling.
Operational Efficiency: Decreases downtime, increasing productivity.
Flexibility: Supports various IT configurations and strategies.

In industries like small businesses, StarWind Virtual SAN is implemented to replace costly SAN systems, ensuring uptime and strong performance. It's leveraged for hyper-converged infrastructure, failover clustering, and backup strategies, meeting diverse IT demands from hosting virtual machines to data migration.

StarWind

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.

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