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Nexenta vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Nexenta
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (15th)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th), HCI (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
reviewer2393595 - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Storage Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We chose Pure Storage primarily because of its combination of performance and ease of use."
"One valuable feature of the Pure Storage FlashArray is its Flash-based architecture, which provides a significant advantage."
"Pure is simple to set up and manage on a day-to-day basis."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K, and the product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"Now they are trying to add more and more applications because they're getting better performance and stability."
"It is pretty much just plug and play. There is not that much to do with it. It is very easy to use."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."
"At the time, it was a great way to get a proper SAN solution for a good price."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"We managed to build a fault-tolerant and highly available IT environment with a reliable and cost-effective solution."
"We successfully migrated to a virtualized environment, storage performance was increased, and now we have a redundant, failure-tolerant infrastructure."
"These appliances are probably the best hardware decision I've made in my decade employed here."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."
"UI Options are simple and easy to find."
"The StarWind Hyperconverged Appliance really took us forward in terms of technology, delivery speeds, and management overheads."
 

Cons

"Improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial."
"The best way to improve Pure Storage FlashArray is the active DR because that can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to test a failover and replicate back; better instructions on how to do that would help because we actually lost an entire volume when we were testing out some stuff as the fingerprint got reinitialized, and when you replicated back, it didn't know about that volume, causing a failure in that process."
"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."
"It would be beneficial to have a health check command that can be run from the CLI to ensure that all hardware components are functioning properly rather than having to enable remote access and connect to support for a health check."
"When creating a support case, visibility should be extended to others involved in assisting."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."
"Lots of tweaks had to be done in order to get everything working right, and support is now outsourced and horrible."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone."
"Updates need improvement. We do not receive critical update notices from Dell."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint."
"If you are hard of hearing some of their team has strong accents, but I have never had an issue understanding them, nor has any of my team that had a bad interaction with them."
"What would have to be done urgently, however, is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"The truth is that the operation and support offered are good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."
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."
"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."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"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."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
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902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
Construction Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?
Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.
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.
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.