Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Red Hat and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3, while StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.3. Red Hat holds a 16.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and StarWind Virtual SAN are strong competitors in the enterprise storage solutions market, with StarWind Virtual SAN gaining an edge for its robust features that justify the investment.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage is known for its scalability, flexibility, and seamless cloud provider integration. It supports both block and object storage, aligning well with hybrid and open cloud environments. StarWind Virtual SAN offers streamlined management, advanced configuration options, and impressive virtualization capabilities, providing ease of installation and support.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could benefit from simplifying its deployment process, enhancing user interfaces, and improving initial setup costs. Additionally, increasing user-friendliness and broadening support documentation would be advantageous. For StarWind Virtual SAN, areas for improvement include expanding its hardware compatibility, reducing management complexities, and enhancing customization options for advanced users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for its straightforward deployment process that minimizes disruption and its proactive, expert customer service. It is designed for easy integration within existing infrastructures. In contrast, Red Hat Ceph Storage requires a more involved deployment, offering vast resources and support channels, which makes it suitable for meticulously planned environments and those aiming for a robust setup.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage generally incurs higher initial setup costs due to its scalability and extensive capabilities, leading to a gradual ROI, appealing to businesses focusing on long-term investments. StarWind Virtual SAN, with cost-effective initial setup and swift ROI due to efficient resource allocation, is attractive for businesses seeking quicker returns and lower entry costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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 December 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 16.0%, down from 21.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.6%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	5.6%
Red Hat Ceph Storage	16.0%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.5%
Other	74.9%

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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Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

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Jccerong Heron

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.

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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

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."

"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."

"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."

"Without any extra costs, I was able to provide a redundant environment."

"High reliability with commodity hardware."

"Most valuable features include replication and compression."

"Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

"When it comes to ease of installation, the whole process is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward."

"It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."

"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."

"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."

"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by saving money in skill set development, and certainly minimal downtime across all of our installations, where they maintain almost zero downtime in their 24/7 operations."

"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."

"The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price."

More StarWind Virtual SAN 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."

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

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"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."

"The speed could be improved."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"Its configuration should be easier."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The management features are pretty good, but they still have room for improvement."

"If troubleshooting is needed, the response should be faster."

"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."

"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."

"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."

"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."

"Some documentation is very hard to find."

"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

"For the StarWind VSA vSphere solution, I would like to see a simpler and automated virtual machine installation process in terms of network settings."

"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."

"We just need more integration with Veeam."

"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."

"A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one."

"We don't really have any issues with this product."

"StarWind really needs to market its product more."

"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

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

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"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."

"There is no cost for software."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"We never used the paid support."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."

"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"

"The pricing is more than reasonable."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."

"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	165
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

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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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 ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

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What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...

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What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost....

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 46% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 4% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

December 2025

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

December 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

Ceph

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

StarWind

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Dell, DreamHost

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

December 2025

Free Report: Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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