Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Red Hat and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3, while StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.2. Red Hat holds a 14.3% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and StarWind Virtual SAN are strong competitors in the enterprise storage solutions market, with StarWind Virtual SAN gaining an edge for its robust features that justify the investment.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage is known for its scalability, flexibility, and seamless cloud provider integration. It supports both block and object storage, aligning well with hybrid and open cloud environments. StarWind Virtual SAN offers streamlined management, advanced configuration options, and impressive virtualization capabilities, providing ease of installation and support.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could benefit from simplifying its deployment process, enhancing user interfaces, and improving initial setup costs. Additionally, increasing user-friendliness and broadening support documentation would be advantageous. For StarWind Virtual SAN, areas for improvement include expanding its hardware compatibility, reducing management complexities, and enhancing customization options for advanced users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for its straightforward deployment process that minimizes disruption and its proactive, expert customer service. It is designed for easy integration within existing infrastructures. In contrast, Red Hat Ceph Storage requires a more involved deployment, offering vast resources and support channels, which makes it suitable for meticulously planned environments and those aiming for a robust setup.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage generally incurs higher initial setup costs due to its scalability and extensive capabilities, leading to a gradual ROI, appealing to businesses focusing on long-term investments. StarWind Virtual SAN, with cost-effective initial setup and swift ROI due to efficient resource allocation, is attractive for businesses seeking quicker returns and lower entry costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

January 2026

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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 Red Hat Ceph Storage is 14.3%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	5.5%
Red Hat Ceph Storage	14.3%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
Other	76.9%

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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Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

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Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs

The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades."

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

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"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."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest."

"I can compare Red Hat Ceph Storage with products from other vendors; I explored quite a few, but I still find that Red Hat Ceph Storage is making the most disruption."

"Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing."

"It has helped to save money and scale the storage without limits."

"We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage."

"We use the solution for cloud storage."

"It's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."

"The community support is very good."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

"The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well."

"When we need additional storage but want to keep the size of the SANs manageable, the StarWind Virtual SAN has allowed me to do everything needed."

"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."

"It's quite easy to install."

"Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."

"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs."

"The best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers in my experience are that there is a free version and it can be used as hyper-converged storage over multiple nodes."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"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 documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

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

"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"We have encountered slight integration issues."

"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."

"It took me a long time to get the storage drivers for the communication with Kubernetes up and running. The documentation could improve it is lacking information. I'm not sure if this is a Ceph problem or if Ceph should address this, but it was something I ran into. Additionally, there is a performance issue I am having that I am looking into, but overall I am satisfied with the performance."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."

"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."

"I would like to see different levels of support offered."

"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."

"The main thing I would like to see improved is the level of documentation."

"We would like the documentation to be more complete. Most items are covered, but if you don't know something, you may need to contact their support."

"Ability to to test the virtual storage are network area and storage speed from StarWind Management Console."

"One point for improvement is to increase the performance capabilities of the Windows-based executable as compared to its Linux Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) equivalent."

"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

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 price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"The price is a little high."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"We never used the paid support."

"There is no cost for software."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."

"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."

"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."

"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."

"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

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	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	165
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

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...

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...

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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) combin...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost....

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 48% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 4% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2026

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

January 2026

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

January 2026

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

Ceph

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

StarWind

Sample Customers

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

Dell, DreamHost

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

January 2026

Free Report: Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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