StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs Veritas Access comparison

StarWind and Veritas are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. StarWind is ranked #11 with an average rating of 10.0, while Veritas is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. StarWind holds a 2.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to Veritas’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of StarWind users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Veritas users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and Veritas Access compete in server and storage solutions. While StarWind benefits from its aggressive pricing and straightforward support, Veritas retains an edge with its rich features and high perceived value.

Features: StarWind offers integrated management, efficient resource utilization, and minimalistic infrastructure needs. Veritas is known for advanced scalability options, comprehensive data management, and flexibility for complex infrastructures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind is known for rapid deployment and user-friendly setup with supportive customer service. Veritas, though potentially more complex, provides structured deployment and may require more expertise for optimization.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind provides a cost-effective solution with favorable ROI due to lower setup costs. Veritas, while generally more expensive, is seen as valuable for high data reliability and advanced features, justifying the cost through long-term efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access

July 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 August 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Access is 1.1%, up from 0.7% 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.

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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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Jayson Martin

Head IT Data Storage at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Provides seamless integration within the existing infrastructure and has an easy deployment process

We leverage Veritas Access for efficient management of our extensive unstructured data. Its cost-effectiveness, notably providing the lowest cost per terabyte, has influenced our decision to use it for extended data retention periods. We aim to minimize yearly expenditure on capacity while ensuring high-performance levels. Despite focusing on long-term retention, it enables direct and efficient data recovery from the client, ensuring that accessibility is maintained. The most essential feature of Veritas Access for our storage needs is its support for both block and object storage. The data tiering capability of Veritas Access has had a positive impact on our storage efficiency by preventing unnecessary expenditures on capacity, especially in terms of backup operations. It provides seamless integration within the existing infrastructure. It helps us meet compliance and data retention requirements, particularly from an insurer's perspective. I rate the product a nine out of ten.

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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 product is scalable and easy to expand."

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

"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 solution provides many controllers."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

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

"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."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"The hardware footprint is perfect. It fits in our rack perfectly, and we were able to condense a lot of physical servers we had. It has greatly eliminated the excess stuff in our server rack..."

"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."

"It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime."

"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."

"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."

"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

"The product deployment is easy."

"Veritas Access is user-friendly and the NAS and SAN volumes are valuable."

"It has a huge deduplication ratio for backups of long-term archives."

Cons

"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."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"The speed could be improved."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"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."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."

"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."

"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."

"The truth is that the operation and support offered is good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."

"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."

"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."

"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."

"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

"I would like to see Veritas Access included as an S3 target."

"They could improve additional fees for the platform's data capacity. It could be more cost-effective."

"The downtime of Veritas Access could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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 rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price is a little high."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."

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

"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."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

"This product is not cheap. The only extra cost is the licensing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Non Profit

No data available

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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

What do you like most about Veritas Access?

The product deployment is easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Veritas Access?

They could improve additional fees for the platform's data capacity. It could be more cost-effective.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Veritas Access?

We use the product for long-term data retention.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 27% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 20% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 18% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Veritas Access

Compared 35% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Veritas Access

Compared 24% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs Veritas Access

Compared 22% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Veritas Access

Compared 20% of the time

More Veritas Access Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

July 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download Veritas Access product report

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

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

Veritas Access is a software-defined, scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) solution for unstructured data that uses intelligent policies to optimize data placement on-premise or on public clouds. Access provides resiliency, multi-protocol access and automated data movement to realize application performance, cost-effectiveness and scalability gains.

Veritas

Sample Customers

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

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access

July 2025

Free Report: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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