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StarWind Virtual SAN vs VMware vSAN 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
StarWind Virtual SAN offers high performance, cost savings, and rapid ROI by maximizing existing hardware and ensuring operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.6
Organizations found VMware vSAN impacts varied, with cost savings and productivity gains, but faced challenges in precise financial measurement.
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
Starting with a smaller infrastructure and scaling as required allows us to save costs initially.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.4
StarWind Virtual SAN's support is efficient, knowledgeable, proactive, and highly rated for prompt responses and effective communication.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSAN support is generally praised for responsiveness and competence, though users note variability in response times and delays.
When we set it up, they validate our settings and configurations to ensure we don't miss anything.
I would rate their support nine points.
I am not satisfied with VMware support, particularly with the reaction times, SLAs, and those kinds of issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
StarWind Virtual SAN offers seamless scalability and flexibility, accommodating diverse IT environments with high performance and adaptability.
Sentiment score
7.3
VMware vSAN offers flexible scaling, enabling efficient infrastructure expansion, appreciated for seamless storage and performance boost across workloads.
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
It supports up to 64 nodes in a cluster, allowing us to add nodes and expand the cluster as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for reliability, minimal downtime, handling updates smoothly, and requiring little administrative effort.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSAN is generally stable with high performance, though hardware compatibility and minor glitches are occasionally reported.
In terms of stability, I give VMware vSAN nine points.
 

Room For Improvement

StarWind Virtual SAN needs improved documentation, integration, monitoring, automation, intuitive UI, simpler pricing, and enhanced cloud, security, and geolocation features.
VMware vSAN requires improvements in management, compatibility, cost, monitoring, and stability, with challenges in user interface and integration.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
Having more visibility on what's actually happening when an error occurs would be beneficial.
Initially, there was a bit of a learning curve for some of our users, but Microsoft's documentation was helpful.
A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.
Maybe incorporation of automation to build clusters in a more automated way would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective pricing and scalability with a perpetual license, minimizing setup and maintenance expenses.
VMware vSAN offers enterprise storage features with potential cost savings but can be costly for smaller businesses.
The pricing can be a bit complex depending on the features you need.
This has resulted in a slight cost increase.
 

Valuable Features

StarWind Virtual SAN excels in support, integration, and performance, offering cost-effective, reliable storage using existing hardware and software.
VMware vSAN offers high performance, scalability, cost-efficiency, easy deployment, and integration, providing flexible storage for evolving business needs.
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
The multi-factor authentication also adds a much-needed layer of security, especially with so many people working remotely these days.
Hot add features are available by default in vSphere, allowing us to immediately increase memory, CPU, and hard drive without any downtime.
A one-stack solution from one vendor is the main benefit here.
 

Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
192
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 15.0%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

WJHG - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless integrations, high availability, and offers a free version
Although I am generally satisfied with VSAN and its performance, there are some areas that could be improved to enhance its effectiveness even further. One area that could benefit from improvement is scalability. While the tool works well in its current configuration, allowing for greater ease and flexibility in adding new nodes to the cluster without complications would be very beneficial, especially in growing environments. Additionally, I would like to see additional features in the next version, such as better support for automated resource management. This could include proactive suggestions for optimizing storage and memory usage, as well as preventive alerts about the health status of the servers. A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources
Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 can't give a sincere opinion on the installation and licensing costs because, as I have mentioned repeatedly, I am currently using the free version. However, I can say that I have submitted a req...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
More comprehensive reporting and educational resources for error resolution would enhance the user experience. There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SA...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
 

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.