VMware Software Defined Storage vs Zadara comparison

Broadcom and Zadara are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Broadcom is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while Zadara is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.5. Broadcom holds a 1.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Zadara’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Zadara and VMware Software Defined Storage compete in the storage management category. Zadara appears to satisfy users with its pricing and support, while VMware's performance and functionality are deemed to justify its cost.

Features: Zadara integrates seamlessly with cloud services, supports hybrid storage options, and offers a managed service model with dedicated expertise. VMware Software Defined Storage offers features like high availability, redundancy, and scalability that are crucial for IT administrators, making it a preferred choice for robust enterprise deployments.

Room for Improvement: Zadara could improve its proactive patch management and accelerate feature releases like auto-tiering, while it also needs to broaden its compute service offerings. VMware needs to enhance its performance to keep up with competitors like ScaleIO, improve its hardware compatibility, and reconsider its pricing structure due to high initial costs and licensing limitations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zadara provides flexible deployment across public and hybrid clouds with 24/7 proactive customer service, beneficial for continuous operations. VMware focuses on on-premises deployments and is noted for effective customer support, although it lacks Zadara’s round-the-clock service.

Pricing and ROI: Zadara's predictable pay-as-you-go pricing aligns infrastructure costs with customer needs, leading to savings and significant ROI. In contrast, VMware Software Defined Storage is considered expensive due to upfront and licensing fees, which can be a barrier despite its functionality.

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

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage vs. Zadara

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 VMware Software Defined Storage is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 2.1%, up from 1.5% 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%
Zadara	2.1%
Other	92.7%

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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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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KirillKolesnikov

IT Technical Architect at AVALIS

Troubleshooting becomes more accessible and management improves over time

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara Zadara's troubleshooting feature is very valuable for me. After the last update, managing the product became easier. Management is more straightforward and useful. These improvements are…

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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 most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

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

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

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

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

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

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."

"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"Zadara saves both time and money."

"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."

"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."

"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."

More Zadara pros

Cons

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

"Its configuration should be easier."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"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."

"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."

"I have not seen ROI."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

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

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"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."

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

"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."

"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."

"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."

"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."

"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."

"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

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

"The price is a little high."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is very expensive."

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

"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 price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Government

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	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Large Enterprise	4

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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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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

See all answers

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

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

Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs Zadara

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Zadara

Compared 7% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Zadara

Compared 6% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage

December 2025

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

Zadara

December 2025

Download Zadara product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware SDS

No data available

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

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

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

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

Helse Nord, Sky

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage vs. Zadara

December 2025

Free Report: VMware Software Defined Storage vs. Zadara

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