HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN
Sponsored
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Number of Reviews
183
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
HPE SimpliVity
Ranking in HCI
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
151
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

RI
May 17, 2019
Simple to manage and has minimized our operational risk in case of disaster
Our primary use case is for a distributed virtual SAN over two data centers. Virtual SAN uses three servers in two data centers Technically the change is enormous and the operational risk in case of disaster has been minimized. The monitoring is simple and the user interface is intuitive. The…
ET
Jul 4, 2022
Setup easy, stable, and very fast at setup and operating.
I use the solution for virtualised infraestructure of servers HPE Simplivity improved the space of disk with deduplication, reduced the time of backups and recovers. One of the key features is the solution is really fast for backups and deduplication is amazing. It would be good to have more…
KF
May 16, 2023
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

"The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."
"When using new (warranty) servers, you can forget about the storage service for several years. The users will not even notice the failure of two servers out of three."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"The customer support provided by StarWind is excellent."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"The compression and deduplication features are most valuable because they allow us to have a small footprint for storage. It is a very stable product, and we are also able to get all that we need in terms of reporting."
"Backups happen very quickly."
"The scalability is its most valuable feature. It's also able to do stretch clustering."
"​My impression is that it is a very nice solution. Very simple to use."
"The solution is scalable."
"The replication from the different centers (the main to the secondary) has been very great. It is good value for us."
"The features I have found most valuable are the convergence of the infrastructure and multi-platform support, for example, VMware and Hyper-V"
"HPE SimpliVity is a very valuable and effective solution. It's also a scalable solution. As the customer requirements and application requirements increase, it can scale to accommodate them."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"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."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
 

Cons

"They recommend RAID10 for HDD, which reduces the usable storage capacity."
"This is a great product."
"I'd love to see native export of metrics (via Prometheus or something of that nature) to allow us to get more metrics available on our existing dashboard software."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"Updates seem to be non-existent."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"The upgrades need improvement."
"It is not so cheap, and this is the most common complaint that my customers have. It is a very good product, but the price is an issue in Latin America. VMware is a de facto tool. It would be useful for customers if HP can also use Red Hat or any other open-source virtualization product. Currently, you can only use VMware to manage the machines inside SimpliVity."
"Scalability is something that needs to be improved because if you need more storage then you have to add more nodes."
"There is room for improvement in the operations area because the support for that server space is minimal."
"They should optimize the administration stack because it is consuming too much memory. It ends up consuming 20% of memory. They have another product for this feature, but I would like to have this feature within HPE SimpliVity."
"The solution must provide other hypervisors."
"Once you select the size of SimpliVity, it could be risky for you to downsize it because you may need maybe to reimplement some things."
"The solution could have an optimization site."
"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 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

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"
"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"It seemed like it was expensive at first. Now that I have had it installed for a period of time, I think I got a great deal."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. The licensing cost also includes vCenter at a cost in the cloud solution."
"We spent $250,000 back in the day, and that was for two servers in my data center for that cluster. We then ran what they call an arbiter, and that took the place of a third server or the third node in the cluster. My DR site was one standalone server, and its horsepower was more than the two at my main site. It included my Cisco Switches that I needed to re-upgrade. It was comparable to what we were paying a year in VM."
"Its price is pretty good as compared to the other solutions, but it is quite expensive if we compare it with non-HCI solutions."
"One big advantage with SimpliVity is that you don't need the higher license cost or VMware to put together a simple SimpliVity solution."
"Cost of this product is high."
"It is not too expensive, but it is quite expensive for me."
"The solution can be expensive if you are using a lot of nodes."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I would highly advise new users to consult the StarWind technical team beforehand. Also, consider the paid version if...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings t...
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 resea...
What do you like most about HPE SimpliVity?
The solution's technical support is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE SimpliVity?
HPE said that my company could use SimpliVity with VMware licenses, but HPE recommends that we separate it from the v...
What do you like most about StarWind Virtual Tape Library?
The solution made our backups way more reliable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual Tape Library?
The pricing is surprisingly reasonable, and that includes the help to get it set up and running. They really want you...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual Tape Library?
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like ...
 

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
SimpliVity, HPE HCI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
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
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE SimpliVity vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.