NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

NetApp and StarWind are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. NetApp is ranked #24 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.0. NetApp holds a 0.9% mindshare in AFS, compared to StarWind’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and StarWind Storage Appliance are both high-performance storage solutions. StarWind Storage Appliance seems to have the upper hand due to its superior features and favorable pricing.

Features: NetApp EF-Series offers impressive speed, reliability, and strong performance stability. StarWind provides flexibility, scalability, and a comprehensive feature set, giving it an edge in functionality.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series users suggest enhancements in the management console, ease of use, and more robust support options. StarWind users point out the need for better documentation, a more intuitive interface, and advanced training resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series has a straightforward deployment process but receives mixed reviews on customer service. StarWind's deployment is more complex but is counterbalanced by responsive and helpful customer service.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series has higher initial setup costs but provides good ROI. StarWind offers competitive pricing and rapid ROI, making it an attractive choice for cost-sensitive buyers.

To learn more, read our detailed NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

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 January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.9%, up from 0.6% 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
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.4%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	0.9%
StarWind Storage Appliance	0.3%
Other	97.4%

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.

Read full review

Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"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 most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The solution is scalable."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."

"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."

"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."

"The management software is very good."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."

"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

"The integration is excellent."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"StarWind Storage Appliance is simpler and more effective than using Microsoft products. We chose it because it can be easily integrated with Microsoft."

More StarWind Storage Appliance pros

Cons

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"We need better data deduplication."

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

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."

"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."

"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."

"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."

"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."

"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."

"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."

"They could improve by providing integration with HP."

"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."

"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."

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

"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."

"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."

More StarWind Storage Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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

"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."

"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."

"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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

"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"

"It costs about 50,000 euros."

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

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

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

"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."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,114 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

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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	12
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	18

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.

See all answers

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...

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

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 13% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 27% of the time

StoneFly VSO NAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 15% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

More StarWind Storage Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2026

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

January 2026

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Storage Appliance

January 2026

Download StarWind Storage Appliance product report

Also Known As

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

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

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

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

December 2025

Free Report: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. StarWind Storage Appliance report.

See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.