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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Red Hat and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Red Hat is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while StarWind is ranked #10 with an average rating of 10.0. Red Hat holds a 21.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.
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Pure Storage FlashBlade
Read 37 Pure Storage FlashBlade reviews
  • 849 Views
  • 618 Comparison Views
97% willing to recommend
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Read 26 Red Hat Ceph Storage reviews
  • 3,589 Views
  • 3,123 Comparison Views
82% willing to recommend
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Read 66 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reviews
  • 750 Views
  • 267 Comparison Views
98% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance are competing in the data storage and management category. StarWind seems to have the upper hand with its efficient storage management, ease of operation, and superior deployment model.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides integration with OpenStack services, high availability, and a single solution for managing the entire infrastructure. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers high availability in a small setup, ease of management through a single console, and flexibility to deploy without specific hardware requirements.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could enhance its deployment ease, reduce initial setup complexity, and streamline customer support responsiveness. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance might benefit from improving its integration capabilities with diverse platforms, expanding its feature flexibility beyond existing hardware, and refining its support documentation for broader audiences.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides comprehensive documentation and training resources for deployment but may be seen as requiring more effort in initial setup. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance focuses on a streamlined process, offering personalized customer support which enhances the user experience throughout deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage, while having a higher initial cost, offers substantial ROI through long-term scalability. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is noted for its cost-effectiveness, providing a fast ROI due to relatively lower setup costs and immediate operational efficiency.

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To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: May 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
May 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
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (6th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (2nd)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
10th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
HCI (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 21.1%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.0%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
Read full review
ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration
Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.
Read full review
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"The initial setup is pretty quick."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"The solution provides many controllers."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros
"The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations."
"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."
"Ceph has simplified my storage integration. I no longer need two or three storage systems, as Ceph can support all my storage needs. I no longer need OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, I no longer need NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and most importantly, I no longer need LVM or DRBD for my virtual machines in OpenStack."
"The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good."
"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."
"Replicated and erasure coded pools have allowed for multiple copies to be kept, easy scale-out of additional nodes, and easy replacement of failed hard drives. The solution continues working even when there are errors."
"I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components."
"The community support is very good."
More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros
"The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."
"The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great."
"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."
"We have the ProActive Premium Support and it has reduced our monitoring efforts. It has been very useful. They have been able to detect things such as when there's an issue with the cluster or they're getting some kind of weird reading that I have no idea about. They're really quick to let me know about it and even set up a schedule to address it. I've been very happy with their level of support on that."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."
"UI Options are simple and easy to find."
"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros
 

Cons

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"The speed could be improved."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"I would like to see better integration."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."
"Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure."
"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."
"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."
"Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."
"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."
More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons
"I honestly cannot think of anything else to be improved, as I rarely have to interact with the Starwind product."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
"The only thing I have run into is that I did want to add more hard drives into the host, so that we could look at doing a RAID 10, and the hard drive prices were pretty expensive... that's pretty nit-picky and I don't think it has anything to do with StarWind itself. I think it's more on whomever they work with for their hardware."
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."
"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 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 price is a little high."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"There is no cost for software."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice
"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."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"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."
"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."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
See all answers
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
See all answers
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.
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

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Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 9% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
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Compared 39% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage Logo
NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage
Compared 6% of the time
Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage Logo
Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage
Compared 4% of the time
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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage
Compared 3% of the time
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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 30% of the time
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StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 19% of the time
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 13% of the time
Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 12% of the time
DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 11% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Pure Storage FlashBlade
May 2025
Pure Storage FlashBlade reportDownload Pure Storage FlashBlade product report
Buyer's Guide
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
April 2025
Red Hat Ceph Storage reportDownload Red Hat Ceph Storage product report
Buyer's Guide
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
May 2025
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reportDownload StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Ceph
No data available
 

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
Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.
Red Hat

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
Dell, DreamHost
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
May 2025
Free Report: Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
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