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StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs VxRail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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 Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in HCI
29th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (24th)
VxRail
Ranking in HCI
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VxRail is 13.2%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VxRail13.2%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library1.0%
Other85.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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
Saleh Khalid - PeerSpot reviewer
computer scientist at Imam University
Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges
The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"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 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."
"The low latency and response times and having a virtualized environment within a single computer are valuable. I have no physical elements, and I can optimize or balance my data depending on the sales volume that I have in a specific store."
"The solution is really stable."
"It helps simplify the management of VMware."
"It's a good product based on the features. You can upgrade the solution with only one click."
"We are very happy with the purchase, and it works well. It is fast. We went with the full-flash version, meaning that we have SSDs. So, we can build a Windows virtual machine in two minutes. We were surprised when we first tried to do that."
"I have found that the admin deployment, monitoring off-premises, and the many services important features. Additionally, the solution has good integration."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"The solution is vendor-locked and Dell is the only supplier of VxRail."
"During upgrades, some aspects get broken, requiring us to follow up with the VMware team to fix them."
"I would prefer it if each cell had a tool geared toward billing clients."
"They should have better compatibility with other processors, such as AMD processors."
"VxRail could improve by having domain protection."
"We have issues at times with the one-click upgrade, which is bugging us. At times, the one-click upgrade does not work or does not work well."
"If VxRail could also offer file services in addition to virtualization, that would be nice because sometimes people want to complement their environment with file services, and you don't have that in VxRail."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"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 licensing of vSAN and VMware for different editions of VxRail is not easy."
"Since VMware is detached from Dell, the solution's pricing is a bit higher than before."
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"The cost was cheaper compared to other virtualization solutions."
"VxRail has a subscription model usually tagged with the appliance box only."
"The price is good."
"Fees vary by license type."
"The price is rather on the high side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise56
 

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Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs. VxRail and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.