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StarWind Storage Appliance vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

StarWind Storage Appliance
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (15th), All-Flash Storage (31st)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (23rd), HCI (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. StarWind Storage Appliance is designed for NAS and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
StarWind Virtual Tape Library, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 2.3% mindshare, up 1.3% since last year.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Storage Appliance1.4%
Dell PowerScale (Isilon)14.8%
NetApp FAS Series10.7%
Other73.1%
NAS
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library2.3%
Red Hat Ceph Storage11.5%
DataCore SANsymphony6.0%
Other80.2%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."
"The integration is excellent."
"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."
"We love it and rely on it."
"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS 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."
"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."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"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

"The dashboard features are not in the free version."
"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"The dashboard features are not in the free version. Today it is normal to have the full features in both versions and only pay for support."
"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 initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."
"The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"
"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."
"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."
"It costs about 50,000 euros."
"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Legal Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
What advice do you have for others considering StarWind Storage Appliance?
The tool is mostly for medium companies and requires no maintenance. It has a good price and performance. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Storage Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.