Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

NetApp AFF C-Series vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

Sponsored
 

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
NetApp AFF C-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
3.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Storage Appliance
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
31st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF C-Series is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Storage Appliance is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.5%
NetApp AFF C-Series0.5%
StarWind Storage Appliance0.3%
Other97.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MB
Senior Storage Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Transition from costly infrastructure lowers expenses and improves hardware performance
NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware. Frequent improvements are shared through bulletins so we can enhance hardware performance by upgrading the ONTAP version. Firmware upgrades are also widely distributed. Weekly calls with NetApp ensure we're staying on top of any potential issues. The transition from SAN-based to NetApp storage eliminated SAN switch costs and reduced CommVault dependency, lowering license costs significantly.
Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"NetApp AFF C-Series is a good product for entry-level flash storage, the system is competitive in terms of pricing, and the value proposition is strong."
"NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."
"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."
"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."
"I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"The integration is excellent."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"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."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"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."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
Information not available
"On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."
"It costs about 50,000 euros."
"I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."
"We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."
"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"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
881,821 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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.
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...
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 ...
What needs improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series?
We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue. Better ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp AFF C-Series?
We are using NetApp C series for our VMware environments mainly.
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF C-Series?
Overall, from one to ten, I would rate NetApp as an eight. As for additional advice, I suggest that NetApp provide mo...
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
What advice do you have for others considering StarWind Storage Appliance?
The tool is mostly for medium companies and requires no maintenance. It has a good price and performance. I rate the ...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF C-Series vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,821 professionals have used our research since 2012.