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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
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
206
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
SteelFusion
Ranking in HCI
30th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.2%
SteelFusion1.1%
Other96.7%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user866178 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA
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

"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."
"Still, it never lets us down, and we never lost our data."
"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."
"StarWind SANs provide fast and reliable storage, and migration from the old system has meant the storage is much faster now, which has improved our virtual infrastructure's reliability and access times, and they come with outstanding support, including understanding what we were trying to achieve, offering the best help and guides, and providing remote assistance where necessary."
"StarWind VSAN eliminates the NAS/SAN as a single point of failure and is an affordable synchronous HA storage solution which allows us to use extremely fast direct-attached SSD storage in an HA environment."
"This combination of low price with enterprise-grade HA features is key in the market."
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."
"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."
"All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers, so users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central and protected, and if an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."
"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."
 

Cons

"The only thing that I have any difficulty with is that in order to perform upgrades, it is required that the SANs be detached from the Hosts before that can happen."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"For the StarWind VSA vSphere solution, I would like to see a simpler and automated virtual machine installation process in terms of network settings."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online by users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc."
"There is no Italian-language version of the software available."
"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."
"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

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"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
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business166
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any cost.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available. I wanted to see better understanding of...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specif...
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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
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