StorPool vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

StorPool and Broadcom are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. StorPool is ranked #18, while Broadcom is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3. StorPool holds a 2.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Broadcom’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of StorPool users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StorPool and VMware Software Defined Storage compete in the software-defined storage market. StorPool seems to have the upper hand with competitive pricing and robust support, but VMware offers comprehensive features appealing to feature-focused buyers.

Features: StorPool excels in performance scalability, seamless integration with open-source platforms, and impressive data resilience. VMware Software Defined Storage provides a range of enterprise features like high availability, and deep integration with VMware's virtualization ecosystem, making it attractive for enterprises invested in VMware.

Room for Improvement: StorPool could benefit from enhanced enterprise feature sets and broader integrations with legacy systems. Optimized management interfaces and improved user onboarding might also enhance user experience. VMware Software Defined Storage could improve by streamlining the setup process, reducing complexity in deployment, and offering more cost-effective solutions for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StorPool provides straightforward deployment with strong, responsive customer support. VMware Software Defined Storage offers an extensive setup process with a support system embedded within VMware's infrastructure, assisting complex environments but potentially delaying initial deployment.

Pricing and ROI: StorPool offers lower setup costs and faster ROI, which is enticing for businesses with tighter budgets. VMware Software Defined Storage has higher initial costs but justifies these with a robust feature set and strong integration capabilities, suitable for businesses seeking comprehensive storage solutions within a VMware environment.

To learn more, read our detailed StorPool vs. VMware Software Defined Storage Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

StorPool vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

December 2025

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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 StorPool is 2.9%, up from 2.1% 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 (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
VMware Software Defined Storage	1.9%
StorPool	2.9%
Other	91.9%

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.

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reviewer1721697

Managing Director at CloudScale365, Inc.

Great service and support with a constant addition of new features

As of now, the product has been working really well for us. They keep updating and launching new features. Their support has been great and have always been available. I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them. This is a great product.

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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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

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

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

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The team behind it was very engaged and had the skills and ability to support a service provider."

"The speed of the storage solution also allows us to provide service to applications that are very I/O intensive."

"With StorPool we were able to build live failover on top of our LXC infrastructure. This allows us both to live-migrate containers between compute nodes without any downtime and, in case of an entire node suffering any type of failure, we can bring all containers back online within a minute on a spare compute node."

"The two 10GE networks provide redundancy and increased performance as they serve as two separate networks doubling the throughput and doing multipathing and load balancing. We now have a high performance shared storage system which enables us to run on private cloud. Our previous system used bare-metal hardware, which provided high performance but inflexible management. Now we have best of both worlds, SSD-class performance with flexibility of a private cloud system."

"Creating snapshots within seconds for big disks has helped our different migration projects since it allows us to perform them in a short period of time."

"Performance, redundancy, scalability and cost-effectiveness. StorPool delivers superbly in all of these areas."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cons

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Monitoring and statistics UI is a bit clumsy."

"At times we need to check the disks and do some minor operations. A friendlier user interface would be useful in such cases."

"Live and historical performance statistics would be useful, though my understanding is that this is on the way in a future release."

"I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them."

"It would be good if, with next releases, StorPool provide a better GUI for monitoring and statistics. This would make our experience even better and complete."

"he only place we feel they could improve is the time it takes to bring new features to production."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The price is a little high."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"StorPool's pricing and licensing model is very transparent. As always, one has to due his due diligence when choosing a product like distributed storage solutions."

"It provides us with a significant reduction in TCO due to their pay-as-you-grow licensing model, which means we don’t have to pay upfront for hardware and licensing for capacity thStorPoolat we don’t yet need to use."

"StorPool software is cost-effective and gives us a pricing advantage over our competitors."

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

"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."

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

"The solution is very expensive."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Performing Arts

17%

Manufacturing Company

15%

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	6
Large Enterprise	1

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...

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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...

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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...

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Earn 20 points

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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% 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

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StorPool

Compared 56% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs StorPool

Compared 18% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs StorPool

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StorPool

Compared 13% of the time

More StorPool 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

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

StorPool

December 2025

Download StorPool product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage

December 2025

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

StorPool is intelligent storage software that runs on standard servers and builds scalable, high-performance storage system out of these servers (software-defined storage). It focuses on the block-level storage and excels at it. It is incredibly flexible and can be deployed in both converged setups (on compute nodes, alongside VMs and applications) or on separate storage nodes.

StorPool has advanced fully-distributed architecture and is arguably the fastest and most efficient block-storage software on the market today. It is the best storage system when building a cloud.

StorPool

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

CloudSigma, Kualo, Togglebox, Neterra, Serveo, Superhosting.bg, GroupOne, DRFortress, Metanet, Dia, Server Storage Solutions

Helse Nord, Sky

Buyer's Guide

StorPool vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

December 2025

Free Report: StorPool vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

Find out what your peers are saying about StorPool vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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