StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs Veritas Access Appliance 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 #26. StarWind holds a 2.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to Veritas’s 0.8% 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 Appliance are competing in the data storage solutions category. Users lean towards StarWind due to better support and pricing, but Veritas is favored for its extensive feature set which may justify its higher cost.

Features: StarWind offers cost-effective scalability, integrated backup solutions, and rapid IT infrastructure consolidation suited for small to medium businesses. Veritas provides robust data protection features, comprehensive data management, and supports large enterprise storage solutions with extensive data handling capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind provides a straightforward deployment model with comprehensive support, simplifying the setup process. Veritas involves a more complex deployment due to its extensive features, but offers highly specialized support throughout.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind is known for a cost-efficient setup and provides high ROI for budget-conscious businesses. Veritas requires a higher initial investment but offers substantial long-term value with its advanced features, catering to larger enterprises needing robust data management solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access Appliance

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 Appliance is 0.8%, up from 0.8% 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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M Amin Anwar

Sr. Technical Support Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Overall functions well, stable, but technical support could improve

Veritas Access Appliance installation is user-friendly. You need network team cooperation for the setup of the cluster configuration. The Veritas Access Appliance initial configuration process is broken into two phases. The first phase requires that you perform each configuration step on each individual node. You should have two terminal windows open during the first phase, each logged into one of the nodes. During the second phase of the initial configuration, you should only perform the steps on one of the nodes. When you start the second phase of the initial configuration, close one of the terminal windows and continue doing the steps on only one of the nodes. When you initiate the cluster configuration, the settings that you configured on the current node are copied over to the second node in a one-time synchronization event.

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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

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

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

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

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

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

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

"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."

"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."

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

"High-availability is what I bought it for."

"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."

"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..."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

"It is a very stable program."

"Overall the solution works well."

Cons

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

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

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

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

"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."

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

"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."

"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."

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

"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

"The Veritas support for Access Appliance could improve. They are a pioneer in the industry, and they provide an enterprise-level solution. However, when comparing the storage, they can't compete with the NetBackup solution."

"I would like to see more platforms added."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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."

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

"The price is a little high."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Its cost was reasonable."

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

"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

"The solution is not expensive compared to other storage solutions."

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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...

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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

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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

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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

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Veritas Access Appliance

Compared 100% of the time

More Veritas Access Appliance 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 Appliance product report

Also Known As

No data available

Access 3340 Appliance, Veritas Access 3340 Appliance

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

The Veritas Access Appliance enables a turnkey deployment of Veritas’ software-defined Access scale-out network attached storage - a storage solution optimized for unstructured data use cases. The appliance is cost-optimized and tuned for high-capacity workloads like long-term retention (LTR), tape replacement and backup archiving.

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 Appliance

July 2025

Free Report: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. Veritas Access Appliance

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

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