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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    StarWind Virtual SAN

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AStarWind Virtual SAN is software-defined storage for efficient storage and backup.N/A

    Veeam Data Platform

    Score8.9 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Veeam’s® premier product, Veeam Backup & Replication™, delivers availability for all cloud, virtual, Kubernetes and physical workloads. Through a management console, the software provides backup, archival, recovery and replication capabilities.

    $428

    per year per 5 instances

    Pricing
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Veeam Data Platform Essentials
    $428
    per year per 5 instances
    Veeam Data Platform
    Contact sales team
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Veeam sells through channel partners. Contact a partner for detailed pricing and quotes. Resellers or sales personnel are available for assistance.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Considered Both Products
    StarWind
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    HPE and Dell solutions were just too expensive for our budget. HPE's solution lacked performance. Dell's solution is plagued by bad reviews which told stories of broken patching procedures and terrible support experiences. The only company who offered me a trial of their …
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    VMware vSAN requires 3 physical hosts or 2 and a witness, and this was not practical for our situation as we are SMB. StarWind allows us to continue our 2-host virtualization setup and keep all our redundancy and performance.
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    These products are awesome, but not cost-effective for me. VMware vSAN integrates like a glove if you are running fully VMware environment, not other hypervisors. ONTAP Select is awesome, like a real cabinet, but licensing is a bit complex, and expensive. in both cases in a …
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    I selected "Windows Server" since I couldn't find S2D in the list... S2D just sucks overall. Crap UI. Crap CLI. Megacrap documentation. VMware is very expensive...
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    the features that StarWind offer, especially in a ROBO scenario, are the same as all the other competitor but with a fraction of the cost
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    We used HPE lefthand and tried several enterprise grade NAS systems from Lenovo. We have also had a few Dells Poweredge systems. I like StarWind the most due to the agnostic approach with the hardware. Easy to change hardware and keep your license. Also easy to swing data and …
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    We evaluated and received pricing for the native vSAN solution from VMware. We also looked at the discontinued solution from HPE.
    StarWind easily provided the best ROI. It also provided a mature solution from a company that is focused on storage solutions. Technically, the …
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    I don't recall the other solutions by name. Lots of them were appliance based that were much more costly. StarWind was sort of a bring your own device solution but it worked out well for us. The appliances all had upfront costs and then additional costs for connecting to cloud …
    Incentivized
    Chose StarWind Virtual SAN
    Other SAN vendors offer specific features that StarWind doesn't, such as more 3rd party integration (like backup and snapshotting) and nicer management and alerting, but between the huge premium they charge for those features (their "special sauce"), as well as usually …
    Incentivized
    Veeam Software
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    664 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    123 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    631 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    123 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    674 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    116 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    548 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    117 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    596 Answers
    Features
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Data Center Backup
    Comparison of Data Center Backup features of StarWind Virtual SAN and Veeam Data Platform
    Feature
    StarWind Virtual SAN
    -
    Ratings
    Veeam Data Platform
    8.9
    515 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Universal recovery00 Ratings9.0443 Ratings
    Instant recovery00 Ratings8.8465 Ratings
    Recovery verification00 Ratings8.9445 Ratings
    Business application protection00 Ratings8.7390 Ratings
    Multiple backup destinations00 Ratings9.1470 Ratings
    Incremental backup identification00 Ratings9.1480 Ratings
    Backup to the cloud00 Ratings9.0342 Ratings
    Deduplication and file compression00 Ratings9.0444 Ratings
    Snapshots00 Ratings8.9399 Ratings
    Flexible deployment00 Ratings8.6394 Ratings
    Management dashboard00 Ratings8.3176 Ratings
    Platform support00 Ratings8.7435 Ratings
    Retention options00 Ratings9.0440 Ratings
    Encryption00 Ratings9.1407 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    BDRShield
    Score6.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Bacula Enterprise
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Storage Scale
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Bacula Enterprise
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (163 ratings)
    8.8
    (971 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.6
    (14 ratings)
    7.9
    (59 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (33 ratings)
    9.7
    (48 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    7.8
    (13 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.4
    (119 ratings)
    8.4
    (50 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    6.9
    (34 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    7.7
    (12 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (13 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (13 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (12 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (13 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    StarWind Virtual SANVeeam Data Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    StarWind
    For remote locations, where communications are limited and cloud services are difficult to obtain, on-premises servers are the only solution. Hardware solutions require spares in storage for redundancy and are more expensive than software solutions. If communications and cloud computing are highly available, then solutions such as StarWnd Virtual SAN would not be needed.
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    It is well-suited for most environments, from Small and medium businesses to large enterprises. But its cost may be prohibitive for smaller businesses with a limited budget. While there are multiple licensing levels, there may be a use case for creating a level between the community edition and the Foundation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    StarWind
    • the StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to use Starwind Management Console to confirm health of the sync
    • The High Available nature of the deployment means we can fail over VMs without end users noticing any downtime
    • Their support is proactive alerting when firmware updates are needed (including iDRAC firmware) or when there are any warnings in the event logs, and schedule a time to remediate the issue with you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    • The ease of use in creating jobs and adding clients enables our new and less skilled administrators to work efficiently, quickly, and accurately.
    • The same ease of use is essential for junior admins as well. Backups are quickly and accurately restored, allowing our networking team to bring clients back to production within expected times.
    • The ability to create a restore for testing and to remove it quickly has proven to be an excellent asset for our production and DB teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    StarWind
    • Complexity: StarWind Virtual SAN can be complex to set up and manage, especially for organizations with limited IT resources
    • Limited protocol support: StarWind Virtual SAN supports a limited number of protocols, primarily iSCSI and SMB3
    • Limited scalability for storage-only deployments: In storage-only deployments, StarWind Virtual SAN has a limit of 32 nodes per cluster
    • Lack of reporting and analytics: StarWind Virtual SAN has limited reporting and analytics capabilities, which can make it difficult to monitor and troubleshoot performance issues
    • Limited backup and recovery options: While StarWind Virtual SAN provides some basic backup and recovery options, it lacks advanced features such as snapshot management, backup scheduling, and offsite replication
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    • On occasion, the 'reason' for a failed backup can be a little hard to understand. It would be nice if it were a bit more straightforward.
    • I would love to run the platform natively on Linux, but I don't think it's an option.
    • Sometimes, locating the correct update file for the platform software can be a bit confusing. If they had an option to download the correct update file from within the console, that would take some of the guesswork out of it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    StarWind
    StarWind Virtual SAN is a great solution and is now an integral part of our network of servers. The product is superb and the support has been amazing. It's perfect for our organisation and we won't be looking to come away from it any time soon!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    I really have no complaints about Veeam Backup & Replication. Their service has been excellent and the cost is minimal in comparison to other services I checked out. Implementation wasn't simple and the Veeam Support team was there to help each step of the way.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    StarWind
    Very easy to use and manage from an IT standpoint. The user interface is well laid out, provides access to the underlying hardware configurations, and allows customization of storage volumes from each cluster node in your environment. Can provide differing levels of access, so team member access can be set up based on roles.
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    It is a very robust solution that has never failed. It also has perfect integration with Windows server volume shadow copies. The processing load is moved from the backup server to the backup proxy. Increased fault tolerance: you can store data on a separate machine, the backup repository. Can perform a bare metal restore.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    StarWind
    The solution has been tested under constant usage for 5 years now and there (knock on wood) has yet be an outage. There were instances if human error during the operation and the StarWind reliably intervened, either through a synchronization or reporting of a degredation of interfaces, e.g. the heartbeat interface.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    I give Veeam Data Platform a rating of 9 for availability because it consistently performs reliably in critical data protection and recovery tasks. The platform is designed to minimize downtime, ensuring that backup and recovery processes are accessible when needed.While there may be rare instances of maintenance or minor application errors, these do not significantly affect the overall reliability of the system. Veeam’s strong architecture and features like high availability configurations further enhance its performance, allowing us to trust it in crucial situations. Overall, it has proven to be a dependable solution that meets our organization's needs effectively.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    StarWind
    The software delivered exceptional performance until now with very fast write and speed rates, around 900MB/s through a 10GBit connection on a virtualized fileserver. It meets our demands without any problems whatsoever and we are a very media heavy environment with TBs of raw data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    Veeam does a good job with backing up our servers in a timely manner. We are still at the beginning of our Veeam use and are pleased with the speed at which we can access the system as well as the backups and restore points. Veeam is definitely superior to our previous backup system in terms of speed and accessibility
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    StarWind
    Their support team is dedicated to providing top-notch customer service and is always available to help with any questions or issues that may arise. Their expertise and responsiveness have proven invaluable in ensuring the smooth operation of our virtualized environment. With such excellent support, we feel confident in our ability to utilize this product to its fullest potential, and we highly recommend it to others.
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    Veeam Software
    The support team has never asked me to jump through silly hoops or waste time on pointless exercises. They seem to truly have a handle on what may be wrong. In fact, when we were having trouble getting our license renewal setup (because of yet another license migration at Veeam) a support incident got us connected to the right people to get our renewal done in time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    StarWind
    No answers on this topic
    Veeam Software
    I rated the in-person training an 8 because it was generally effective and provided a solid foundation for understanding the Veeam Data Platform. The instructors were knowledgeable and engaged, making the sessions interactive. However, I felt that some topics could have been covered in more depth, and additional hands-on exercises would have further reinforced the learning experience. Overall, it was a positive training session that adequately prepared attendees for using the product, but there's room for improvement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    StarWind
    No answers on this topic
    Veeam Software
    I gave it a rating of 7 because, although the online training offered valuable content and covered the essential aspects of the Veeam Data Platform, it lacked interactivity and opportunities for direct engagement with instructors. This made it challenging to ask questions or delve deeper into specific topics. Additionally, some sections felt a bit rushed, which could hinder a comprehensive understanding of more complex features. Overall, while the training was useful, improvements in interactivity and pacing could elevate the experience significantly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    StarWind
    Overall the setup was easy, we did require some help from the technical support team but other than that, we followed all of StarWinds prerequisites and everything else just fell nicely into place with hardly any downtime. The downtime was only due to moving VMs from our previous cluster over to the new StarWind storage cluster.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    Plan the process and then work through your plan, i know this should go without saying but its easy to get sidetracked. You tend to want to just get up and running so you can have that sigh of relief, spend the time to talk to your business stakeholder to see what goals they are trying to accomplish and how that may impact your plans first.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    StarWind
    We have found the solution surprisingly simple to use. The management
    console allows us to monitor the solution and we have configured email
    alerts to alert us about critical issues. These alerts have been proven
    to work in an actual failure scenario, for example, when we had a memory
    issue with one of our servers that caused the entire server to crash.
    The management console also allows us to monitor the solution
    performance and provides us with access to system logs.
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    I believe it's not possible to compare these three products, as none of them are as feature-rich as Veeam Data Platform. The addition of Proxmox-VE in version 12 was certainly a game-changer, as we were previously dependent on the VMware environment to access all the features that Veeam Data Platform offers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    StarWind
    The software is very scalable storage wise. The storage is provisioned through config files, which are created either through PowerShell scripts or the Management Console on the paid version. After that the storage is provisioned through iSCSI. In our case, in case of expansion, we would have to run the PowerShell scripts and do another full synchronization to update any remaining backup nodes, but the procedure is clear and even easier via Management Console, just expand the RAID array, punch the new capacity into the console and start the synchronization!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    In terms of scalability for our company, Veeam was able to cover our backup needs with ease. They have options for even more individualized backup if we were to need them; i.e. if a specific workstation needs its own independent backup. We have not used these resources yet, but I am confident they will be beneficial to our company in the near future.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    StarWind
    • It eliminates the need for expensive storage hardware and provides an affordable software-defined storage solution.
    • It allows organizations to use commodity hardware, reducing the dependency on proprietary hardware.
    • It ensures that data and applications are always available, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Veeam Software
    • Positive impact: it "saved our ass" on one occasion. In that particular scenario, we were hit with ransomware.
    • On another occasion, it provided a means of building a staging environment from our production and saved us a significant amount of time from having to build from scratch.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    StarWind Virtual SAN Screenshots

    Screenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Management ConsoleScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SANScreenshot of StarWind Virtual SAN

    Veeam Data Platform Screenshots

    Screenshot of an example of the proactive threat assessment technology used to identify adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) before a cyber-attack.Screenshot of where Veeam Intelligence turns noisy alerts into clear insights with recommended next steps, explaining anomalies and pointing out the next best action.Screenshot of a preview of an AI generated snapshot of job health, exceptions, and priority actions.Screenshot of the chat flow to watch AI agents scan for anomalies, confirm a clean restore point, and surface integrity and performance insights.