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Hitachi Universal Replicator vs NetApp SnapMirror comparison

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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

Hitachi Universal Replicator
Ranking in Data Replication
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (26th)
NetApp SnapMirror
Ranking in Data Replication
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Data Replication category, the mindshare of Hitachi Universal Replicator is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapMirror is 7.7%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Replication Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp SnapMirror7.7%
Hitachi Universal Replicator3.8%
Other88.5%
Data Replication
 

Featured Reviews

Bratislav Petkovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead for Core Infrastructure at Raiffeisen bank Serbia
Optimizing data replication and management with unique resource handling features
The features of Hitachi Universal Replicator that I use include data flow, monitor, and Data Mobility Services. We have Data Mobility Services resource pool and resource group mirror unique allocated. Features like source journal, destination image, remote path, volume name, and capacity saving mode are valuable. De-duplication, compression, and capacity saving processing mode are essential. Other useful aspects are storage target, default data reduction, shared volume, and automatic journal creation. These features work synchronously for tasks like remote cloning or universal replication.
LeeLee2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Infrastructure Engineer at Gigabit Technologies Pvt Ltd
Reliable replication has transformed disaster recovery and supports realistic dev-test environments
The best feature NetApp SnapMirror offers is block-level incremental replication, which is the foundation of everything. After the initial baseline transfer, only the changed blocks move across the wire, not entire files or volumes. In a busy storage environment, that is the difference between replication that fits in your backup window and replication that hammers your network all day. NetApp SnapMirror has positively impacted our organization by taking us from a theoretical DR capability, meaning we had a secondary site but had never fully tested a failover, to a validated, tested, documented DR process that we run quarterly, which is a fundamental change in our risk posture. Management can now say with confidence that if the primary site goes down, we recover within two hours with zero data loss on critical systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate Hitachi Universal Replicator eight out of ten."
"The user interface is very easy to manage. The replication is also very easy to set up."
"This solution provides safety and data protection for my customers."
"Management can now say with confidence that if the primary site goes down, we recover within two hours with zero data loss on critical systems."
"It's a stable solution; it just works."
"The solution is so reliable that managers of a company don't even need to bother about knowing how NetApp SnapMirror functions in their organization."
"NetApp SnapMirror's ease of use and reliability are valuable features."
"NetApp SnapMirror's compatibility with NetApp products has helped my storage management efforts immensely, as it is part of ONTAP and all architectures based on ONTAP, including ONTAP 8 and 9."
"A NetApp storage solution allows a company to architect a disaster recovery plan that protects all company data."
 

Cons

"I have used Hitachi Universal Replicator for about two years, but it does not work fast and needs time to copy data."
"In the next release, I would like to get an active IP number solution."
"NetApp SnapMirror can be improved as the initial configuration is not simple; if you are new to NetApp and ONTAP, NetApp SnapMirror concepts take time to get right."
"At the moment, we are not using the synchronous mirror, but we can implement the synchronous mirror. The only thing is that it needs another license. This is the same issue we have with business continuity. It needs another license to be implemented. You need too many separate licenses for the features. They should add some of the aspects of the premium bundle into the basic bundle. Sometimes our customers choose other replication services because of the initial cost of the licenses."
"The price needs to be improved."
"About a year now we have faced random issues related to power supply or auto failover failback issues which were related to bugs in the firmware."
"There are some limitations when it comes to the scalability of the solution, but I don't know where the limitation is."
"We must be able to integrate Flash Pool with SnapMirror."
"The user interface could be simplified. They might want to have fewer options on it, to make it less complicated. There are a lot of options we never use ourselves. They're often very specialized and don't apply to us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost is low compared to different vendors."
"It's a highly cost-effective solution"
"It's part of the NetApp Firewall, so it's free."
"The pricing can be improved."
"The product price is reasonable."
"The pricing could be improved."
"SnapMirror is extremely expensive. We had a hard time adjusting to our budget. If rated on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most expensive, I would definitely rate it ten out of ten."
"The solution has monthly and yearly licensing options."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Universal Replicator?
I am not familiar with the pricing of Hitachi Universal Replicator. The storage purchase includes this feature, but a license is needed for replication, shadow image, and thin image.
What needs improvement with Hitachi Universal Replicator?
I think the graphical user interface can be more user-friendly. Although it is easy and intuitive now, there is always room for improvement regarding user interaction.
What is your primary use case for Hitachi Universal Replicator?
I use Hitachi Ops Center and Protector to create Thin Image, Shadow Image, and for remote replication. We also connect to Site Recovery Manager to replicate virtual machines to another site. We hav...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapMirror?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that NetApp SnapMirror is licensed as part of the ONTAP Data Protection bundle, which covers both NetApp SnapMirror and SnapVault. For or...
What needs improvement with NetApp SnapMirror?
NetApp SnapMirror can be improved as the initial configuration is not simple; if you are new to NetApp and ONTAP, NetApp SnapMirror concepts take time to get right. Peering clusters, peering SVMs, ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp SnapMirror?
My main use case for NetApp SnapMirror is disaster recovery replication, primarily, as we have two data centers and NetApp SnapMirror keeps our critical data synchronized between them continuously....
 

Also Known As

No data available
SnapMirror
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shandong Telecom
University at Albany, City of Houston, Yahoo Japan, Washington Employment Security Department, DG Khan Cement Co. Ltd., AmTrust Financial Services, Sheridan College
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Fivetran, Dell Technologies and others in Data Replication. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.