StarWind Virtual SAN vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

Download the complete report

Helped 879,853 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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Software Defined Storage is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	5.5%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
VMware Software Defined Storage	1.9%
Other	89.3%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

Read full review

Jccerong Heron

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.

Read full review

MohammadJundiah

Solutions Architect at Logicom Sales Inc

Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

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 of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

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

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

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"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."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."

"Active-active work mode leads to true redundancy of storage and allows us to distribute the load between multiple nodes."

"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."

"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by saving money in skill set development, and certainly minimal downtime across all of our installations, where they maintain almost zero downtime in their 24/7 operations."

"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."

"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."

"I like the asynchronous replication and failover features. They are what I'm primarily using it for. The asynchronous replication is helpful because our servers are backed up continuously throughout the day. If anything goes wrong we just fail over immediately. That is a very nice feature to have."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

Cons

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"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."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."

"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."

"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."

"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."

"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."

"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."

"This is a great product."

"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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."

"The price is a little high."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"We are happy with the price."

"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."

"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."

"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."

"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."

"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

"The solution is very expensive."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

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

879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	165
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost....

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...

What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 42% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 31% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 28% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

StarWind Virtual SAN

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

VMware Software Defined Storage

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

VMware SDS

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

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Helse Nord, Sky

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware Software Defined Storage