StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs Veritas Access comparison

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access

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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 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 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.0%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Access is 0.9%, 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 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."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

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

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

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."

"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."

"With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you."

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

"The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy."

"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."

"The sales process is easy."

"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

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

"The product deployment is easy."

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

Cons

"Its configuration should be easier."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"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 speed could be improved."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"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."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."

"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."

"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."

"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."

"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."

"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."

"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

"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."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

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

"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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Its cost was reasonable."

"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."

"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."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

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...

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...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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.

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...

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...

What do you like most about Veritas Access?

The product deployment is easy.

What needs improvement with Veritas Access?

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

What is your primary use case for Veritas Access?

We use the product for long-term data retention.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

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VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% 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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 31% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 20% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 9% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Veritas Access

Compared 37% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Veritas Access

Compared 31% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Veritas Access

Compared 31% of the time

More Veritas Access Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access