HPE Primera vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and StarWind are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while StarWind is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 3.6% mindshare in AFS, compared to StarWind’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

StarWind Storage Appliance and HPE Primera are leading contenders in the storage appliance market. Users are happier with the pricing and support of StarWind Storage Appliance, but HPE Primera excels in features, making it a worthy investment.

Features: StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its ease of use, flexibility, and robust data protection. HPE Primera stands out with its advanced analytics, reliability, and scalability. While both products offer strong features, HPE Primera’s advanced capabilities give it an edge.

Room for Improvement: StarWind users seek better integration options and enhanced performance metrics. HPE Primera users desire simpler management tools and improved customer support. Both products have areas for growth, but the demands vary based on user priorities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Storage Appliance is often highlighted for its straightforward deployment and responsive support team. HPE Primera, while offering a stable deployment process, faces criticism regarding its complex setup and inconsistent customer service. StarWind’s easier deployment process and reliable support make it a preferable option for immediate usability.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind Storage Appliance is recognized for its cost-effectiveness and swift return on investment. HPE Primera, despite its higher setup costs, is considered worthwhile by users due to its advanced features and long-term benefits. The choice between cost and advanced capabilities depends on the buyer’s budget and long-term goals.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Primera vs. StarWind Storage Appliance Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

September 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Primera	3.6%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
StarWind Storage Appliance	0.2%
Other	95.2%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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Kishore CA

Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited

Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.

The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"HPE Primera is used for shared storage."

"HPE Primera is scalable."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."

"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."

"The most valuable feature of HP Primera is that you don't have to buy an additional product for application replication. It's a stable product. The tool is scalable. I recommend HPE Primera because it's one of HP's most stable product."

"The most important thing that we had found when we purchased this product around six months back was its 100% availability and uptime."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provide the IOPS ratio which is required by a lot of our customers."

More HPE Primera pros

"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."

"They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us."

"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."

"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."

"The integration is excellent."

"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."

"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."

"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."

More StarWind Storage Appliance pros

Cons

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The file server embedded in Pure, the GUI, and the tracking and reporting features are better with Pure Storage."

"HPE Primera's pricing model is an area of concern and can be considered for improvement."

"They could work to make scalability easier."

"We cannot use this storage for critical applications and data."

"Increasing the IOPS and throughput values would make the product even better. Improving the scalability of HPE Primera is also recommended."

"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."

"On the hardware side, you should have the ability to expand capacity to larger numbers."

"There really isn't any aspect of the solution that needs improvement for the customer other than its price."

More HPE Primera cons

"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."

"The dashboard features are not in the free version."

"It needs more integration with backup vendors so there is native integration with it that will allow storage level backup/snapshots. I would love to see integration with Veeam and Commvault so it can be recognized by them directly and added as network storage."

"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."

"StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes."

"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."

"They could improve by providing integration with HP."

"StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one."

More StarWind Storage Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The product is expensive."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."

"HPE Primera service is cost-effective."

"The price of this solution is good for medium-sized and large businesses."

"The solution is cost-effective. I rate it an eight out of ten, with ten being excellent."

"HPE Primera is less expensive than HPE Alletra."

"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

"With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."

"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."

"The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"

"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."

"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."

"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."

"It costs about 50,000 euros."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

See all answers

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

See all answers

What do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?

I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Storage Appliance?

I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?

StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 23% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 33% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 26% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp AFF vs HPE Primera

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 33% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 26% of the time

Scality RING vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 21% of the time

More StarWind Storage Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

StarWind Storage Appliance

September 2025

Download StarWind Storage Appliance product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Primera

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out.

StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup.

StarWind

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

September 2025

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