Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Red Hat and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Red Hat is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #11 with an average rating of 10.0. Red Hat holds a 3.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and Red Hat Gluster Storage compete in the integrated data storage solutions market. StarWind offers competitive pricing and customer service, while Red Hat Gluster Storage provides an extensive feature set justifying its higher cost.

Features: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance includes simplified management, fault tolerance, and hyperconverged infrastructure, targeting ease of use and operational efficiency. Red Hat Gluster Storage stands out with open-source flexibility, scalability, and a robust distributed file system offering significant customization and scalability for enterprise environments.

Room for Improvement: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance could enhance its scalability options, expand integration capabilities, and provide more advanced data analytics features. Red Hat Gluster Storage might improve its user interface friendliness, reduce complexity in its architecture for simpler deployment, and enhance native automation features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance focuses on streamlined deployment processes and offers strong proactive customer support to improve the onboarding experience. Conversely, Red Hat Gluster Storage involves more complex deployment procedures due to its intricate architecture, albeit with extensive documentation and strong community support aiding troubleshooting.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance provides cost-efficient initial setup options, possibly leading to a faster ROI due to lower entry expenses. Red Hat Gluster Storage requires a higher initial investment but presents long-term returns via expansive features and scalability, making it strategic for businesses anticipating significant growth.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

June 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 June 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 Gluster Storage is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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

GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…

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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.

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

"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."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."

"The technical support team is excellent."

"It's very easy to upgrade storage."

"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."

"StarWind is very resilient and built off of quality vendor hardware."

"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."

"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."

"The added speed of using standard HDD and SSD meant we could increase what services are stored on the servers without having to have additional servers."

"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."

"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."

"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."

"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"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."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"I would like to see better integration."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."

"The user interface could be simplified."

"The performance of the solution must be improved."

"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."

"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."

"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."

"One area for improvement of the solution is that I had to get Windows, which I really didn't want because of the extra maintenance or overhead, as well as viruses, etc. It's going to take time for them to get their Linux to that point. They already have Linux but it's not as mature and they don't really support it on HCAs. They have it for individuals who want to use it on their servers, but not on HCAs."

"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers."

"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."

"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."

"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."

"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."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The price could be cheaper."

"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."

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

"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 feel that the price could always be lowered."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

What do you like most about Red Hat Gluster Storage?

The technical support team is excellent.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Gluster Storage?

There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source versio...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Gluster Storage?

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is...

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

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

LizardFS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 23% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 16% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 13% of the time

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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 28% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 20% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 11% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

May 2025

Download Red Hat Gluster Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

May 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server

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 Gluster Storage (formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server) is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform designed to handle the requirements of traditional file storage—high-capacity tasks like backup and archival as well as high-performance tasks of analytics and virtualization. But unlike traditional storage systems, Red Hat Gluster Storage isn’t rigid and expensive. It easily scales across bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud deployments.

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

NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

June 2025

Free Report: Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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