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Pivot3 vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 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

Pivot3
Ranking in HCI
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 1.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.4%
Pivot31.6%
Other96.0%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1124199 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Stable, good technical support, and the the visual encoding works well
The most valuable feature is the visual encoding I would like to see better video compression. Snapshot notification would be a good addition. The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered. I have been using Pivot3 for between four and five years. This…
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

"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"It greatly streamlined the time it took to scale out the enterprise and it completely eliminated the need for a SAN/Storage engineer, with the simplicity the Pivot3 Stack Manager brought with it for managing storage."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The technical support is very good."
"All working perfectly, and we are able to make updates and upgrades without any cut on our current production where we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
"We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown."
"We now have a defined config that is easy to replicate and works well with no downtime or maintenance required."
"Since StarWind's solution has served us very well over the last two years already, I would recommend it."
"StarWind vSAN has solved the problem of cost-effectively providing a high-availability failover cluster utilizing standard server and networking hardware."
"It was absolutely a night and day difference, as we went from a drive system that peaked at 2000 IOPS to a system that could do over 200,000 IOPS, with everything running a lot faster and windows opening instantly for users."
"This solution has helped us maintain high performance and data high availability on minimalistic resources, and we have saved about 80 percent versus purchasing a physical SAN and gained peace of mind, which is important."
"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"I would like to see different levels of support offered."
"A big improvement would be to make it compatible with NFS protocol, not only iSCSI (for internal communication)."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"The pricing is more than reasonable."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."
"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business170
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN is very simple; that is another good thing about it, as the pricing is really straightforward. I got a quote, and it w...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN has latency that is not as good versus VMware vSAN, but I believe it is more of a Hyper-V limitation than it is StarWind Virtual SAN; it is not bad enough to be an issue, but i...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that it replaced our VMware vSAN. I transitioned from VMware vSAN to StarWind Virtual SAN due to the dramatic increase in VMware licensing costs followi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,056 professionals have used our research since 2012.