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StarWind Virtual SAN vs SteelFusion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
5th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
SteelFusion
Ranking in HCI
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 1.9%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Vladimir Simion - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support
The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. 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. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.
it_user866178 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices
The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved our organization in terms of its uptime as our main cluster has never been offline due to a SAN failure."
"In addition to the main functions of the software, I want to note the excellent work of technical support."
"The most useful aspect is the hyper-converged SD SAN and the ease to expand it by just adding cheap SSD or NVME disks."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
"The software is easy to setup and manage, and the support is excellent."
"The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing."
"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."
"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."
 

Cons

"An update caused a syncing issue and it took over a month to resolve it"
"The configuration can a bit cumbersome."
"At this moment, I have not seen a return on investment with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"Maybe in the future, the replication will be supported in more cloud providers."
"There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"We are happy with the price."
"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."
"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
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 StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I had experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing through using the free version of StarWind Virtual SAN for testing purposes, so there was no cost involved during my evaluation. That made i...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
One area for improvement regarding StarWind Virtual SAN is the lack of a full-feature trial. At the time I tested it, I had access only to the free version, which required using PowerShell scripts ...
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Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, VMware, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: August 2025.
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