No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

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)
Red Hat Gluster Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (17th)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (3rd)
 

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.
GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Consultant at Xerif
Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs
Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everpure FlashArray has helped my customers reduce downtime; I cannot tell you how much downtime, but definitely one hundred percent."
"This improves our organization because we can just set it up and we forget about it, everything works, and we do not need to worry about storage or bandwidth issues."
"We have perfect run through times and latency."
"From the first test that we have conducted, we are very satisfied with this solution."
"The scalability is good."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"Like I tell everybody else that I deal with, if you want to focus your time on doing more valuable things for your company, and you deal with storage on a day-to-day basis like I do, the best thing you can do is put Pure in your environment."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"It's very easy to upgrade storage."
"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of the product is that it's very easy to upgrade storage."
"If it is designed correctly, it can be used for everything, it has high availability, and that is what we need it for, and the price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."
"The technical support team is excellent."
"With the redundancy and efficiency of the software and servers, we are running better than ever, with room to grow."
"The system is basically running itself 24/7, 365 days a year, and there's not much to do."
"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"Failover happens smoothly, recovery and maintenance are less stressful, and we no longer need to worry about downtime."
"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."
"We were able to build an entirely new SAN with much greater performance and more capacity for less than the cost of just upgrading our previous SAN, so the ROI was immediate."
"The feature I have found most valuable in VSAN is its high availability capability."
 

Cons

"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility."
"FlashArray could improve on the administrative side. For example, when you need to upgrade the boxes, we can't do that ourselves. We need to open a ticket with support and have them do that for us. You don't need to be on the call with them. We tell them we have a slot that we want to upgrade, and they send us an email when it's done."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease the total cost of ownership, and I believe our total cost has probably gone up, but that's balanced by our increased amount of data and number of use cases."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions."
"The file functionality could be better."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"During heavy load situations with 100K IOPS on one specific port, it requires more granularity level for distribution."
"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."
"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."
"In terms of improvement, my initial suggestion would be that the user interface could be simplified."
"The performance of the solution must be improved."
"For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper."
"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."
"I am expecting to see it more user-friendly in the future."
"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."
"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business170
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise34
 

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN is very simple; that is another good t...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN has latency that is not as good versus VMware vSAN, but I believe it is more of a Hyper-V limita...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that it replaced our VMware vSAN. I transitioned from VMware vSAN to Sta...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.