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StarWind Virtual SAN vs Veritas Access Appliance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
Veritas Access Appliance
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (25th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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.
MA
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"The speed is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Everpure FlashArray is very good with AI development and is very suitable for low downtime and critical mission storage, so customers who need critical mission storage and those chasing performance should consider this solution."
"After switching to Everpure FlashArray, we saw significant results, as whatever hardware we used before is now compressed to 80%, maximizing space utilization in a single system."
"The tool has reduced our power consumption."
"It is very easy to use."
"It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data."
"The seamless integration into the public cloud has improved my organization."
"We also appreciate the long term cooperation that has lasted for years, with a consistent level of service."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"This is a cost effective solution that allows us to have an HA clustered environment with redundancy and scalability."
"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."
"The best feature that StarWind Virtual SAN offers is clustering without buying the SAN."
"The Virtual SAN product has greatly improved the organization's infrastructure by allowing us to create a scalable, highly-available, and cost-effective storage system."
"It has great free trials that allow end users to test a large variety of their products before deciding to buy the full product."
"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."
"It is a very stable program."
"Overall the solution works well."
"Veritas Access Appliance is doing everything for us, such as system recovery, backup, and cloud data protection."
 

Cons

"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"Regarding documentation, it would be helpful if we could have access to the root passwords for administrative tasks."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"It falls far short of protocol support."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array."
"To enable the proactive support capability that is part of our support agreement, I would ask that the terms and conditions be revised and made acceptable to corporate security."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"Improvements in documentation and support resources could enhance the user experience."
"High availability for direct attached hardware drives (without virtual disk layer) could be useful to increase the performance of StarWind virtual storage cluster."
"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."
"StarWind currently has a Windows native application that it uses for management. There is not a web-based GUI at this time."
"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."
"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 would like to see more platforms added."
"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."
"It currently only supports five of the cloud platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
"The solution is not expensive compared to other storage solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business168
Midsize Enterprise55
Large Enterprise34
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN is very cost-effective for mid-level companies like ours, costing about one-sixth of what we wou...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
I'm not certain how StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved. Perhaps they could have better technical support available ...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
We are operating in a remote area in Madagascar where networking and communication services are very limited, so we n...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
StarWind SAN & NAS
Access 3340 Appliance, Veritas Access 3340 Appliance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
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902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.