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StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs StorMagic SvSAN comparison

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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
215
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
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)
StorMagic SvSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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
reviewer2619357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Provides immediate benefits after deployment
StorMagic SvSAN is flexible and easy to use. It is compatible with various hardware, including Cisco, HP, Lenovo, and Supermicro. The company is also flexible with its recommended specifications, allowing users to exceed them without issue. I have not encountered any problems with StorMagic SvSAN on any hardware vendor I have tried. The cost of hardware required for StorMagic SvSAN is significantly lower than that of competitive solutions. Their licensing model, based on storage usage, offers flexibility and affordability. For instance, we utilize a two-terabyte license. Overall, StorMagic SvSAN's pricing is comparable to, if not more affordable than other options. StorMagic SvSAN supports various storage types and brands within a cluster, accommodating past and current technologies. Over the years, we've transitioned from traditional spinning disks to SSDs and now utilize NVMe SSDs, with StorMagic seamlessly supporting each upgrade. While faster drives inherently deliver better performance, StorMagic has consistently functioned without issue across a range of drive types and brands. Hardware flexibility is as crucial as cost, especially for a smaller company like ours that needs to adapt quickly. With hardware frequently changing, upgrading, and involving different vendors, maintaining flexibility and consistency is essential. Having a solution that works the same way across all vendors, whether it's Cisco or HP, significantly benefits our small support team. Witness effortlessly manages up to 1,000 SvSAN clusters. While we haven't personally utilized that many, it has effectively handled our multiple clusters without issue. The software's hardware requirements are very flexible. It reportedly runs on platforms as small as a Raspberry Pi. We currently operate it on a small HP desktop computer with excellent results, and it scales seamlessly with the rest of our system. The primary advantage is its two-host architecture, requiring only two hosts plus a Witness for full functionality. This contrasts with competitors who necessitate three hosts, significantly increasing costs. Avoiding the need for a third host translates to substantial savings, estimated at $20,000. Although StoreMagic's costs remain high, the ability to eliminate a host and its associated expenses results in considerable cost savings. This Edge Control provides a simple, visually appealing dashboard for easy administration of all clusters. The well-designed interface ensures clear and understandable cluster management. It provides immediate benefits after deployment. StorMagic SvSAN significantly reduces downtime in our environment by allowing us to perform maintenance or system updates without disrupting user access. With SvSAN, we can seamlessly switch all running machines to a secondary machine, ensuring continuous operation and eliminating noticeable downtime for end-users. This has resulted in substantial savings on maintenance costs and provided peace of mind regarding system reliability. StorMagic SvSAN helped us save costs by eliminating needing a third witness host. Their pricing has remained relatively consistent over the past ten years, with only a modest increase of about 10 to 15 percent. Despite this, their pricing is still very competitive, and they have been proactive in helping us find ways to save money. While I would always like to see even more cost savings, I understand that they need to make a profit as well. We've likely saved 30 to 40 percent annually by using StoreMagic, simply due to the cost reductions in hosting and maintenance time across multiple sites. StorMagic SvSAN provides a hyperconverged high-availability solution with enterprise functionality, and that is all we use it for.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure Storage FlashArray is simple and easy to use. It offers protection when removing devices. It has the ability to undo deletes."
"I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be much better than traditional storage because it has a GUI interface. It makes the process of allocating the storage much easier, and most activities are automated. It is like clicking a button for every task."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"It overperforms both in terms of storage capacity and throughput, and bandwidth capability."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"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."
"It is a stable solution."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"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 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."
"StorMagic SvSAN significantly reduces downtime in our environment by allowing us to perform maintenance or system updates without disrupting user access."
"What I found most valuable in StorMagic SvSAN is integration, as a software-defined storage solution it's also very easy to use and it's the trend in the market today."
"The part I like most about it is just that it does not require a lot of touch. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and it is straightforward."
"We compared two solutions for this use case, but we went with StorMagic because it had more capabilities than the others. It's also more reliable, especially in production environments that require availability and sustainability."
"Overall, I rate it ten out of ten."
"StorMagic SvSAN allows customers to eliminate the cost of SAN hardware; it's also 70% cheaper than competitors and provides all the enterprise feature requirements at low cost."
"StorMagic SvSAN reduced downtime in our environment by 50 percent."
"The solution is cost-effective and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet."
"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."
"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."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
"StorMagic SvSAN's management or witness server, a standard Linux box, lacks security hardening."
"The StorMagic console needs embedded monitoring capabilities to improve interoperability with other platforms."
"The only improvement area I can see is their licensing. For example, the memory caching feature is only available in an advanced license. Normally, it's in a standard license. It would be better if they had memory caching features in the product. Some backup features should also be in the product"
"They should enable data compression deduplication features for the platform."
"The deployment of StorMagic SvSAN is very small. However, you need some time to do it."
"In terms of what could be improved in StorMagic SvSAN, I don't have a major issue with it, but its user interface should be more customer-oriented."
"It would be beneficial if they adopted the recommended configuration for other vendors and offered pre-built, pre-configured scenarios with best practices readily available on their websites."
"The only improvement area I can see is their licensing. For example, the memory caching feature is only available in an advanced license."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"The pricing is very attractive and it delivers performance for the money."
"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"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."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"While not the cheapest option, it offers comparable functionality for 20 to 30 percent lower than its competitors."
"While I lack specific cost details, StorMagic's segmented pricing options offer valuable flexibility, allowing companies to choose solutions based on their needs and capacity."
"While it is less than other solutions, such as vSAN, for instance, it is still significant. However, it is well worth it in terms of the quality of the product and the support that it allows me to have. We are buying the flagship product from them. We are always buying premium support and all the features that we need, so it is a little bit steep upfront, but it is less than other solutions and comes with excellent support."
"The pricing of StorMagic SvSAN is fairly good because if you compare it with VMware, it's at a better price. This is an important thing to remember."
"70% cheaper than competitors and provides all the enterprise feature requirements at low cost."
"StorMagic SvSAN provided substantial savings."
"The product has good pricing."
"StorMagic SvSAN offers competitive pricing within the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Legal Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise150
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StorMagic SvSAN?
I find the pricing moderate. However, since some features should be given in the default price, I find it a little bi...
What needs improvement with StorMagic SvSAN?
Some advanced features feel like they should be included by default, which are paid. The scalability is a bit limited...
What is your primary use case for StorMagic SvSAN?
I use StorMagic SvSAN for the virtualization of my storage. I mainly use it for the high availability at the small an...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
StorMagic
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Sheetz Inc., Giant Eagle, RWE Renewables, Keiser Corp., TDK, Oxford University, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rommelsbacher, Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort, Eugen Forschner GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Virtual Tape Library vs. StorMagic SvSAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.