QoreStor vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Quest Software and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Quest Software is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.0, while StarWind is ranked #12 with an average rating of 10.0. Quest Software holds a 1.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and QoreStor compete in the data management and storage optimization sector. StarWind appears to have the upper hand in redundancy and cost-effectiveness, while QoreStor stands out in data deduplication and compression efficiency.

Features: StarWind offers significant redundancy and simplicity in management, which reduces the infrastructure footprint. Its integration with existing IT systems ensures flexibility with scalable solutions. QoreStor's data deduplication reduces storage needs and costs, supporting efficient backup solutions and making it a favorite for storage optimization tasks.

Room for Improvement: StarWind could improve by decreasing reliance on Windows Server, offering better multi-cluster support, and diversifying tech support locales. Installation and communication clarity are areas where users see potential for enhancement. QoreStor could upgrade its ransomware protection, improve support response time, and facilitate an easier installation, as users encounter interface intuitiveness issues and require expanded backup media support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind is praised for its straightforward on-premises deployment and proactive customer support, which assures users during setup and operation. QoreStor offers ease in data management deployment but receives mixed reviews regarding customer support, indicating a need for a more streamlined assistance process.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind's all-inclusive pricing can lead to substantial cost savings over competitors, enhanced by bundled hardware and proactive support that reduces additional expenses. QoreStor provides flexible, capacity-based pricing that aids users in effective cost management as storage needs grow. Both products are noted for providing positive ROI, although StarWind is particularly noted for its cost efficiency and reduction of infrastructure complexity.

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

Buyer's Guide

QoreStor 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 QoreStor is 1.0%. 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%
QoreStor	1.0%
Other	93.5%

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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Jeff Manuszak

CTO at EDSI

Cost-efficient, highly scalable, and installable on different types of hardware

They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved. We are pretty lenient as we do a lot of IT support ourselves. We are not very hard on support organizations, but when a customer has a support issue, it would be easier if the support processes were a little bit more automated. It would be beneficial to have an easier way to upload diagnostic dump files. They can make it easy for the customer to collect the diagnostic data. There can be some kind of monitoring solutions to alert users to issues with the appliance or software, making it easy for customers to monitor their systems in the field. This is especially critical because it stores customers' backups, and a failure can have significant business impacts. If a customer does not have the backups and has a disaster, they can be out of business, so monitoring is key.

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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 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."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

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

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

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

"It's very easy-to-use."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"We need revisions and safe backup so that it could be held up in court, but deduplication and compression are the main features why we have Quest QoreStor. That's where it really shines. I use ZFS and XFS at home, and Quest QoreStor is even better."

"Quest QoreStor is very stable compared to our previous solution."

"Quest QoreStor definitely saved us money."

"The features we use for the data deduplication are nice because we're able to back up a much larger amount of data, yet it doesn't necessarily take up that much data on the devices."

"The dedupe and compression are pretty extreme. On disk, we're getting dedupe rates of up to 65 percent of data and compression of 34 percent. When you go to the cloud, it's more like 76 percent for dedupe and almost 50 percent for compression."

"The extreme compression of data is a big thing for us. We were looking for an online backup solution, and QoreStor is very good in terms of data compression. It helps us minimize the required storage in the Blob Storage environment."

"Data deduplication and replication would be the top two features. The encryption and cloud tiering are also attractive for the future."

"I would rate QoreStor a ten out of ten for what it offers for the price."

More QoreStor pros

"The customer service has been the most valuable feature of the product to me."

"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."

"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 initial setup seems to be very straightforward."

"We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network."

"We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."

"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."

"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"I would like to see better integration."

"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial."

"They need to increase their maximum capacity. Other than that, they're doing a pretty good job."

"They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved."

"There can be some kind of monitoring solutions to alert users to issues with the appliance or software, making it easy for customers to monitor their systems in the field."

"The installation could use improvement. The initial installation was a little touchy and it's not really user-installable. You have to have a connection to support to install."

"The ransomware protection of QoreStor could use improvement."

"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial. After everything is set up and configured, there should be a way to export the configuration. In case something happens to the QoreStor server, and we need to reinstall and configure everything, being able to import the configuration would be helpful. This feature does not currently exist."

"In terms of improvement, we would like to have an Air Gap feature to prevent a virus from attaching to something. So that when we don't do a backup, we want the QoreStor to stay offline. It would be a nice feature to have."

More QoreStor cons

"It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance."

"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."

"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."

"It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well."

"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."

"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial. Currently, you can only work with a single cluster at a time. The console is new so I expect much growth in this area in the near future. The other area that could be improved is the tech support locale."

"Most meetings are done via Zoom, and I'm sure you could switch to a text based conversation if needed as they seem like a very accommodating team. It's not something I would worry about if you are a potential client."

"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The price is a little high."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Its pricing model is very attractive. You have one price, and you get everything from QoreStor."

"The pricing is good. It is competitive for a managed services provider. I like the ability to pay by the terabyte, allowing for an incremental cost that we and our customers can afford, so the solution grows with the customer."

"Quest QoreStor's pricing is affordable. We evaluated Veeam, a well-known company for backup solutions, but found their pricing to be quite high. Veeam's price was almost double. For us, Quest QoreStor is very affordable."

"The cost is per terabyte, and overall, the cost was reasonable when compared to some competitors."

"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."

"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."

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

"Its cost was reasonable."

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

"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."

"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."

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

Performing Arts

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

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 else besides data replication does QoreStor offer?

Quest QoreStor can be used for multiple things besides data replication. For example, it can be trusted to make a bac...

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How does Quest QoreStore protect your data?

One of our favorite features of Quest QoreStore for data protection isn't the backup, actually, though we're using it...

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How does Quest QoreStore solve repetitive data replicas?

When I first found out about data replication and the many benefits it had, I couldn't help but wonder - what about t...

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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

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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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Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs QoreStor

Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Hitachi Thin Image Advanced vs QoreStor

Compared 9% of the time

Dell Avamar vs QoreStor

Compared 9% of the time

Fivetran vs QoreStor

Compared 9% of the time

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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

QoreStor

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

December 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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Also Known As

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QoreStor

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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

QoreStor optimizes storage costs through advanced deduplication and compression, seamlessly integrating with backup infrastructures and supporting diverse hardware. It enhances data security with replication and offers flexible deployment with minimal maintenance.

QoreStor offers significant benefits in deduplication, which leads to space savings and reduced storage expenses. This system integrates effortlessly with backup platforms like NetVault and Veeam, functioning as a reliable backup target for both on-premises and cloud environments. The ease of integration is complemented by its replication capabilities, which add a layer of data security by enabling geographically dispersed backups. Its cloud tiering functionality extends storage capabilities, ensuring cost-effectiveness compared to other solutions. While enhancements are needed in areas like Cloud Tier support, Air Gap features, and GUI intuitiveness, the continued developments aim to further optimize storage and backup solutions.

What are QoreStor's key features?

Deduplication and Compression: Achieves high deduplication rates and space savings.
Seamless Integration: Works well with diverse backup infrastructures.
Replication: Facilitates data security through multi-location backups.
Cloud Tiering: Extends storage capabilities efficiently.
Minimal Maintenance: Requires low maintenance efforts.

What benefits should be considered in user reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing and optimized storage.
Storage Optimization: Reduces storage needs with advanced data handling.
Flexibility: Supports diverse hardware and deployment options.
Data Security: Enhances protection with robust replication features.

QoreStor is widely implemented in industries for backup and restore operations, providing data deduplication and compression as key functionalities. Its integration as a backup target across platforms like NetVault and Veeam makes it ideal for enterprises that require efficient data management and storage cost control. Many organizations utilize its features to optimize cloud storage seamlessly while focusing on internal data handling or acting as service resellers.

Quest Software

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

American Airlines, at&t, Bank of America. Barclays, ebay, Ford

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

QoreStor vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

December 2025

Free Report: QoreStor vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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

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