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 #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.3. Red Hat holds a 18.4% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 6.1% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

September 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 October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 18.4%, down from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 6.1%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	6.1%
Red Hat Ceph Storage	18.4%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
Other	71.4%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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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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Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support

The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

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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 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."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"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."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"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 initial setup is pretty quick."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug."

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

"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."

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

"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."

"Most valuable features include replication and compression."

"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."

"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."

"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."

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

"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."

"It's quite easy to manage."

"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."

"The primary purpose of this software is to create a virtual SAN between local storage on Hyper-V hosts. I find this feature most valuable since it accomplishes this quite well."

"The iSCSI protocol is quite simple to configure."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

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

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"Its configuration should be easier."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."

"The management features are pretty good, but they still have room for improvement."

"If troubleshooting is needed, the response should be faster."

"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."

"Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS."

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

"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."

"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."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

"I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."

"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."

"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."

"vSAN's free version does not have a graphical user interface."

"We just need more integration with Veeam."

"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."

"I would love to see more vendor selection to be available for the HCA/vSAN appliances."

"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"The price is a little high."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

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

"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."

"There is no cost for software."

"We never used the paid support."

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

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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

"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."

"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."

"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

17%

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	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	160
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	33

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?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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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...

See all answers

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN was okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Currently, StarWind Virtual SAN is working perfectly fine, so there are no changes I would suggest.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 41% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 20% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

September 2025

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

September 2025

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

September 2025

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

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