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Portworx Enterprise vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Executive Summary

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)
Portworx Enterprise
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd), Data Storage for Kubernetes (1st)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th), HCI (14th)
 

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.
Vishwanath Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer 3 at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Data management has become simpler and now supports flexible copies and retention decisions
The best feature is that we have integrated it with Kubernetes. When we have some servers that are going for patching or there is a hardware issue, I can replicate the data into other nodes very easily. I can use some pxctl commands and get the data replicated into other nodes which are healthy. That is the best feature. Managing the data after the initial setup is very easy in Portworx Enterprise. It is also easy to integrate with Kubernetes. We did utilize that functionality. In a disaster recovery scenario, Portworx Enterprise data recovery has been very effective. The only reason why we are moving from Portworx Enterprise to OpenEBS now is because of cost optimizations. I would classify this into two parts: my requirements and my operational efficiencies. My requirements are definitely met by Portworx Enterprise. Once my requirements were met, when I am doing any operational activity, any patching, purging, or any underlying node activities, it is easy for the operational team to manage Portworx Enterprise. They can simply give certain commands, get the underlying data transferred to other nodes, get the data cordoned, and they can take care of the underlying nodes. Portworx Enterprise has been very effective.
reviewer2865906 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Admin at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
High availability server failover has provided reliable on‑premises hardware redundancy
The best features StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers are easy and simple setup. Support did a lot of the work during the setup process, which made it easy for me. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has positively impacted my organization by giving us high availability. High availability has benefited my team and organization by providing redundancy for hardware failure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It worked flawlessly."
"We have seen a good reduction in the amount of total storage space that we're using because of the deduplication."
"Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer."
"From the first test that we have conducted, we are very satisfied with this solution."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"Service and support is phenomenal."
"Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great."
"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."
"Portworx is a great solution for managing container environments."
"If I containerize a database server, I know that not only is Portworx providing a persistent and resilient storage backend, but it also meets the database's IOPS requirements, in a containerized environment."
"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."
"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."
"In a disaster recovery scenario, Portworx Enterprise data recovery has been very effective."
"We are offering two kinds of environments: one for customers working with modern data and modern application development, and they are finding that it is easier for them to migrate workloads from on-premises to cloud or the other way around."
"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"Starwind HCA allowed us to provide customers with a much higher service level and guarantee 99.999% uptime, while reducing our physical server footprint, cutting data center costs, and giving us peace of mind by consolidating onto brand new powerful hardware."
"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"Using the StarWind solution, I was able to consolidate all the servers, hardware and firmware, with a three-node StarWind cluster, based on Hyper-V, and as a result I have seen gains in I/O rates on the order of ten times what they were and a better performing environment."
"StarWind HCA is much more reliable than our original failover cluster solution, the virtual SAN allowed us to dramatically decrease our footprint and power consumption in our data center, and it is much simpler to manage."
"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."
"You're getting a really good solution at a really good price, and you're not actually making any compromises."
"We have the ProActive Premium Support and it has reduced our monitoring efforts. It has been very useful. They have been able to detect things such as when there's an issue with the cluster or they're getting some kind of weird reading that I have no idea about. They're really quick to let me know about it and even set up a schedule to address it. I've been very happy with their level of support on that."
 

Cons

"For scalability, I rate it a six out of ten. We reach a limit. We never reached this limit, however, the architecture allows you to go until a certain size, and after that, you have to buy another array."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there are customers finding the pricing a little too high for the service they receive."
"The documentation could be better."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."
"The integration has room for improvement."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."
"As far as I know, Portworx Enterprise was a bit expensive when compared to OpenEBS."
"It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"We were slightly disappointed with the hardware footprint. We were led to believe, and all the pre-sales tech information requirements pointed to the fact, that it was coming on Dell hardware. Then it came on bulk servers."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."
"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."
"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."
"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Construction Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise8
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?
Pricing is good as the functionalities of Portworx Enterprise are explainable. Pricing is bearable, but licensing is ...
What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?
The only reason why we are moving from Portworx Enterprise to OpenEBS now is because of cost optimizations.
What advice do you have for others considering Portworx Enterprise?
I have so much experience in Dynatrace and also I have experience in Grafana and in Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the las...
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
I think nothing needs improvement in StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
My main use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is server failover. I use StarWind HyperConverged Appliance fo...
What advice do you have for others considering StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
Regarding StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's AI capabilities, I think it does not have any. I think it does not have...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about Portworx Enterprise vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.