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Nexenta vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Nexenta
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (24th)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (20th), HCI (24th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Anil Rahulwar - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Storage Engineer at Capgemini
Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service
Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on, and the biggest selling point for me was the replacement of the hardware, the controllers, without any major expense to the clinic."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"The data reduction technology part of the scalability has been impressive, like its ability to host additional workloads, volumes of data, and databases."
"I am satisfied with this solution, and we plan to keep using this solution."
"Everpure FlashArray is very good with AI development and is very suitable for low downtime and critical mission storage, so customers who need critical mission storage and those chasing performance should consider this solution."
"At the time, it was a great way to get a proper SAN solution for a good price."
"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
 

Cons

"It needs to improve its price."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"We ran into some issues with the program at first and we had to work around those issues to fix our problems."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."
"Lots of tweaks had to be done in order to get everything working right, and support is now outsourced and horrible."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost-wise, I imagine that the product's price would probably give you a nosebleed if you were a younger company."
"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
Information not available
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
No data available
Outsourcing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.