StarWind Virtual SAN vs Veritas Access Appliance comparison

StarWind and Veritas are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.4, while Veritas is ranked #26. StarWind holds a 6.4% mindshare in SDS, compared to Veritas’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of StarWind users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Veritas users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind Virtual SAN and Veritas Access Appliance compete in the software-defined storage market. StarWind Virtual SAN holds an advantage with cost-effectiveness and ease of integration, while Veritas Access Appliance is favored for its scalability and data management capabilities.

Features: StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability, cost-efficient infrastructure using commodity hardware, and efficient performance management. Veritas Access Appliance provides advanced scalability, automated tiering, and cloud integration for intricate data management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Virtual SAN features a simple deployment model and is known for responsive customer service. Veritas Access Appliance's deployment is more complex due to its features, but detailed documentation and robust support services facilitate implementation.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind Virtual SAN presents a competitive pricing model with significant ROI, especially for smaller to mid-sized operations. Veritas Access Appliance involves a higher initial investment but offers enhanced functionality for long-term data management.

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

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. Veritas Access Appliance

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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 Virtual SAN is 6.4%, down from 8.8% 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.

Read full review

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

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 features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

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

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."

"Azure AD is much more user-friendly and has a better integration with our existing infrastructure."

"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."

"VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage."

"The most valuable feature for us is having the ability to configure our local storage using a limited number of disks and using the StarWind VSAN software to keep the cluster nodes in perfect sync."

"The StarWind Virtual SAN management console is intuitive and easy to use."

"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."

"Implementing Starwind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging Starwind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"Overall the solution works well."

"It is a very stable program."

Cons

"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."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

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

"I have not seen ROI."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."

"We just need more integration with Veeam."

"High availability for direct attached hardware drives could be useful for increasing the performance of a storage appliance."

"You have to do a "full" sync on write-back cache disks instead of a quick sync if there is an issue."

"This solution should be more self-sufficient, running without creating domains or failover clusters."

"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."

"While we had no problems setting the system up, and service technicians from StarWind could assist us very well, they could provide some form of in-depth documentation."

"Some of the documentation seems to be a bit older and refers to deprecated items."

More StarWind Virtual SAN 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

"The price is a little high."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"The product is very expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"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."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is more than reasonable."

"This solution has a great price for the functionality."

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."

"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"

"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."

"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."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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) combin...

See all answers

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 t...

See all answers

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,...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 24% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

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 Virtual SAN

July 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download Veritas Access Appliance product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

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

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. Veritas Access Appliance

July 2025

Free Report: StarWind Virtual SAN vs. Veritas Access Appliance

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our StarWind Virtual SAN vs. Veritas Access Appliance report.

See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors.

We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.