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 #15 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #12 with an average rating of 10.0. Nexenta by DDN holds a 1.5% 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

December 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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance	2.2%
Nexenta	1.5%
Other	93.0%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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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

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

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

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."

"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."

"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."

"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."

"With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you."

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

"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."

"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"I would like to see better integration."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers."

"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."

"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."

"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."

"Updates need improvement."

"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."

"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."

"The truth is that the operation and support offered is good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."

"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."

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

"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."

"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."

"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."

"Its cost was reasonable."

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

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	8

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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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.

See all answers

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 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 53% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nexenta

Compared 47% of the time

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DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

December 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

December 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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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

December 2025

Free Report: Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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