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Nexenta vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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 Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
 

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.
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs
The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit."
"All my customers are pretty happy with most Pure Storage solutions."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc."
"FlashArray's data reduction and NAS features are incredible. Its performance is the best I've worked with."
"The intuitive way of managing storage is what I appreciate about Pure Storage FlashArray, along with the clever use of flash modules, and absolutely the data reduction, because they are using that in a very clever way to do compression and deduplication."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"At the time, it was a great way to get a proper SAN solution for a good price."
"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"Implementing Starwind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging Starwind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage."
"This combination of low price with enterprise-grade HA features is key in the market."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"As a medical facility, it's important for our products to be up and available, and this system allows us to do that."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"The ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"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."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"The product could improve by providing the capability to support NAS storage – CIFS and NFS."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can save their investment."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"Lots of tweaks had to be done in order to get everything working right, and support is now outsourced and horrible."
"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."
"In testing, we found some features in the Linux appliance were missing."
"The only point they should improve is the amount of documentation available for the user, especially in the first preliminary phase in which we were testing the product on our own."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided. That way, the customer doesn't have to log in to a specific server where the product is running."
"A detailed performance monitoring of the storage system."
"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."
"It is difficult to control all of the hardware components."
"A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful."
"I hope you can try to have a multiple deployment option like ceph which covers several nodes and replicas"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"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."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
Information not available
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"The pricing is more than reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business168
Midsize Enterprise55
Large Enterprise34
 

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 Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN is very cost-effective for mid-level companies like ours, costing about one-sixth of what we wou...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
I'm not certain how StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved. Perhaps they could have better technical support available ...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
We are operating in a remote area in Madagascar where networking and communication services are very limited, so we n...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

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
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.