Nexenta vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Nexenta by DDN and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Nexenta by DDN is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #11 with an average rating of 10.0. Nexenta by DDN holds a 1.3% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Nexenta by DDN users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Nexenta and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance seems to have the upper hand, as many find its features and performance superior, making it worth the investment despite Nexenta being favored for pricing and support.

Features: Nexenta offers robust open-source storage solutions, flexibility, and cost-effective options focusing on software-defined storage. It is known for its versatile software tools. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance features an all-in-one architecture, high availability, and an emphasis on simplicity and efficiency. It stands out for its comprehensive integrated hardware-software synergy, offering streamlined operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Nexenta's deployment is flexible but requires more technical know-how. It provides customer service focused on software support. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers streamlined deployment with its integrated systems, providing proactive customer service that supports both hardware and software, leading to smoother implementations and superior all-around support.

Pricing and ROI:Nexenta is known for competitive pricing with lower initial setup costs, offering significant return on investment through its software-focused model. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance may involve higher initial costs due to its hardware and software bundle but provides a strong ROI by reducing the need for additional components and enhancing operational efficiency. Nexenta delivers cost-effective solutions highlighting flexibility, while StarWind provides greater long-term efficiency with a higher upfront cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

July 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 Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service

Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.

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Russ Le Puill

IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School

Proactive support with improved speed and resilience

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

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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

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."

"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong."

"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."

"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."

"The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers."

"The StarWind command centre is a very handy tool to have. It allows less skilled staff to have a view and manage our virtual machines."

"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."

"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."

"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."

"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."

"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."

"An emphasis on security can be improved."

"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."

"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."

"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."

"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."

"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price could be cheaper."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."

"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."

"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."

"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."

"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."

"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."

"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."

"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Non Profit

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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What needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent i...

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What is your primary use case for Nexenta?

It's for file systems. It's a NAS solution, and it has flexibility. There shouldn't be any outages because if one nod...

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What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.

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

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 66% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nexenta

Compared 34% of the time

More Nexenta Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 27% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 20% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 18% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

July 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage - what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS).We uniquely integrate software-only "Open Source" collaboration with commodity hardware-centric "Software-Defined Storage" (SDS) innovation.

Nexenta by DDN

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

July 2025

Free Report: Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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