NetApp HCI [EOL] vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

Why PeerSpot?

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 Tape Library

Read 6 StarWind Virtual Tape Library reviews

2,564 Views
1,641 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp HCI [EOL]

StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

October 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 920,769 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

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 Tape Library

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (20th), HCI (24th)

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.

Read full review

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

"HCI definitely improved how flexible we scale, and our entrance into the cloud. The features are very rich, in terms of both avenues. It's helped us flexibly move and shift our workloads around, back and forth."

"The benefits for our organization are the performance that we're able to get out of it, as well as the guaranteed minimum performance from a storage perspective."

"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."

"The solution integrates well with all the other applications that we use on our environment."

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

"The most valuables features of it are the deduplication and the compaction because the ratios are much better than what we normally get on our FAS storage."

"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."

"When it comes to DevOps, HCI has saved our organization time and money, especially with the number of resources that we have cut down."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pros

"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."

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

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

"It is a stable solution."

"The solution made our backups way more reliable."

"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."

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

Cons

"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."

"They could improve the packaging."

"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."

"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."

"It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."

"The initial setup is very painful. It's not straightforward, requires a lot of knowledge to get it going."

"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] cons

"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."

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

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

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."

"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."

More NetApp HCI [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The solution is cost-effective."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

19%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

Comparisons

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

Compared 21% of the time

VxRail vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra dHCI vs NetApp HCI [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp HCI [EOL] Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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 5% 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

NetApp HCI [EOL]

October 2026

Download NetApp HCI [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

October 2026

Download StarWind Virtual Tape Library product report

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 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

American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology

Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

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.