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StarWind Storage Appliance vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.0
StarWind Storage Appliance users saw reduced costs, improved performance, and increased efficiency, with easy scalability and high reliability.
Sentiment score
6.9
StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost savings by reducing hardware expenses and simplifying management, leading to quick returns.
StarWind Virtual SAN has definitely shown to be a good investment.
I.T. Manager at H&R Reit
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
9.0
StarWind Storage Appliance customer service is praised for 24x7 troubleshooting, professionalism, high technical support ratings, and helpful videos.
Sentiment score
7.8
StarWind Virtual SAN offers unparalleled, responsive customer service with proactive support and unmatched satisfaction compared to competitors.
Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
StarWind Storage Appliance is scalable, adaptable, hardware-independent, supports unlimited storage, and is effective in standalone and hyperconverged environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
StarWind Virtual SAN is renowned for its scalability, flexibility, and ability to effortlessly accommodate business growth and infrastructure changes.
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
IT Support Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.
Manager of Systems Administration at Monster Digital
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for stability, robust performance, and high user ratings, especially on well-maintained Windows OS.
Sentiment score
8.5
StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for its exceptional stability, seamless upgrades, and reliable performance, even during hardware failures.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.
Hosting Operations Senior Analyst at Equinix Brasil
 

Room For Improvement

StarWind Storage Appliance requires improved integration, easier setup, better insights, and feature parity between demo and paid versions.
Users criticize StarWind Virtual SAN for complex management, inadequate documentation, limited scalability, and lack of user-friendly features.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its affordability, straightforward licensing, and excellent value compared to competitors for SMEs.
StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for its cost-effectiveness, straightforward setup, and flexible pricing, ideal for small to mid-sized businesses.
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
StarWind Virtual SAN is very cost-effective for mid-level companies like ours, costing about one-sixth of what we would pay for a hardware solution that would require redundant hardware due to our remoteness.
VP, IT at NextSource Materials
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
 

Valuable Features

StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its user-friendly interface, high performance, reliability, excellent support, affordability, and robust data protection.
StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, scalable solutions with high availability, seamless integration, and robust support for growing businesses.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind Storage Appliance
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
NAS (20th), All-Flash Storage (34th)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. StarWind Storage Appliance is designed for NAS and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
StarWind Virtual SAN, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 4.4% mindshare, down 6.4% since last year.
NAS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Storage Appliance1.9%
Dell PowerScale13.8%
NetApp FAS Series10.3%
Other74.0%
NAS
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN4.4%
Red Hat Ceph Storage10.0%
DataCore SANsymphony6.7%
Other78.9%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineering Assistant at Bharat Electronics Limited
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Transportation Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business170
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is acceptable for now, but I hope in the future we can find a better offer.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved by adding a certificate with the virtual switch in Hyper-V, reducing the license cost, and not having a minimum of 3 TB requirement.
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is for clustering in our store, specifically using Windows OS and Hyper-V for the virtual machine. In our store, we have services for our customers, and I ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Storage Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.