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Scality RING vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.2
Everpure FlashArray offers reduced costs and maintenance, improved performance, and notable ROI through efficient resource usage and data management.
Sentiment score
7.3
Scality RING's flexible model reduces storage costs, though additional security can increase expenses; operational efficiencies vary by user.
Sentiment score
6.9
StarWind Virtual SAN provides cost-effective, high-performance storage with quick ROI, maximizing equipment use and simplifying management.
Operational tasks such as provisioning storage and monitoring performance happen faster, and less downtime risk and hardware consolidation mean we support more workloads with fewer resources and less data center overhead.
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We have never had an outage in my four and a half years, but in our company's ten or eleven years, there has never been any planned upgrades that required downtime.
System Engineer at Data Sciences Corporation
In the long term, spanning three to five years, the total cost of ownership becomes cheaper, considering power consumption, data center footprint, and NVMe technology usage.
Manager, Infrastructure Services Storage & Backup Vmware UNIX at Mphasis
I think RING's ability to maintain predictable costs while providing scalable storage solutions impacts our budget by allowing us to pay only for capacity.
Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
For instance, while the cost per gig on a block storage platform may be $2, it's $1.50 for NAS, and only $0.50 for object storage, leading to a remarkable 75% reduction in costs by utilizing the Scality platform.
Storage Engineering Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Scality RING has reduced our operating costs.
Engineer at MinArm
StarWind Virtual SAN has definitely shown to be a good investment.
I.T. Manager at H&R Reit
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Everpure FlashArray's globally available customer service excels in responsiveness and expertise, ensuring minimal downtime with proactive support.
Sentiment score
6.8
Scality RING's support is generally effective with knowledgeable staff, though response times and consistency can vary.
Sentiment score
7.8
StarWind Virtual SAN offers fast, knowledgeable 24/7 support with quick resolutions, dedicated assistance, and a commitment to client satisfaction.
Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the technical support an 11 out of 10.
Cyber Security Consultant at Jonkoping Energi AB
Everpure FlashArray is probably not cheap storage, but it provides great performance, scalability, and everything a customer needs.
Sr. Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
I've always received responses within the required timeframe, the answers were technically relevant, and there was follow-up—people called us back to check if everything was okay and if the ticket could be closed.
Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Individuals such as Peter Mikolastik really make a difference by saying, 'Come on, what is the problem? I will help you,' rather than just brushing things off.
data center manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Technically, when we have major issues in P1, they are very responsive and we can't say that we don't get a response.
Operational Infrastructure Pilot at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
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 who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Everpure FlashArray is praised for scalable modular design, though noted for challenges in large expansions and higher costs.
Sentiment score
7.1
Scality RING offers strong scalability and flexibility, managing large infrastructures with smooth upgrades but occasionally slow rebalancing.
Sentiment score
7.6
StarWind Virtual SAN is scalable and cost-effective, ideal for small to mid-size systems with flexible expansion capabilities.
A big banking client had around 300 petabytes of data on Pure Storage.
Manager, Infrastructure Services Storage & Backup Vmware UNIX at Mphasis
Our customers can scale up or scale out, raise the performance, and expand the storage spaces by investing every year.
Senior Ai Architect at Logicalis
We have successfully upgraded the controllers, scaled capacity, and scaled arrays without much impact on the system and with seamless planning.
Platform Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Upwards, I think, almost unlimited by what we can imagine.
System Engineer - Head of Engineering at a retailer with 11-50 employees
I've never had issues with scalability.
Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We are relatively well informed about their new features, what will be implemented in future versions, and the scalability of the solution.
Operational Infrastructure Pilot at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.
IT Support Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.
Manager of Systems Administration at Monster Digital
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Everpure FlashArray ensures high reliability with minimal disruptions, offering robust stability and exceptional performance for mission-critical applications.
Sentiment score
7.4
Scality RING ensures stable, continuous data access with quick recovery and reliable performance, even with aging hardware.
Sentiment score
8.5
StarWind Virtual SAN is reliable and stable, preventing data loss, ensuring uptime, and integrating seamlessly with platforms like VMware.
For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten.
Senior Storage Administrator at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We have continuous 99.9% uptime and do not experience any users reporting performance issues due to latency.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
The vision Pure Storage FlashArray offers through the GUI is clearer; we can discern the status, what is cabled, and how direct flash is enabled.
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
It is a platform that is very stable at the customer level and does not generate incidents or blockages that you might encounter with standard storage solutions, where you can lose data.
Operational Infrastructure Pilot at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
I find that Scality RING is very stable because it allows for many maintenance operations without service loss.
Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
There are factors that can cause Scality RING to become occasionally unavailable, but due to the system's resilience, it is capable of recovering or degrading gracefully.
Senior ICT Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.
Hosting Operations Senior Analyst at Equinix Brasil
 

Room For Improvement

Everpure FlashArray upgrades focus on user customization, cloud integration, scalability, encryption, automation, and reducing pricing for SMBs.
Users seek improved stability, simplified management, complete S3 compliance, security enhancements, and better scalability for Scality RING.
Enhancements in interface, documentation, integration, scalability, pricing, support, and features like encryption would improve StarWind Virtual SAN.
Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
Storing cold data on expensive arrays doesn't make financial sense, and tiering to any of the big three cloud providers would be advantageous.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Encryption and data security need improvement. We don't have a solution for customers who need confidentiality.
Operational Infrastructure Pilot at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
They should prioritize quality over timeliness to minimize customer disruptions and not force customers into a cycle of fixes that interfere with daily work.
Storage Engineering Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
What we are currently missing and will be demanding in the new tender is an additional external backup of all data, ideally on a simple system, to safeguard against any severe local incidents so that we still have the data protected elsewhere.
data center manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Everpure FlashArray offers cost-effective premium storage with predictable costs, justifying its price with performance, features, and reliability.
Scality RING requires high initial and ongoing investment, challenging unless enterprises handle 10 PB, with unexpected costs possible.
StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for its cost-effectiveness, scalability, and suitability for small to mid-sized businesses seeking reliable storage.
They're expensive.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
While they say it's free, we actually pay for support upfront.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Some smaller organizations may find it slightly expensive, but for enterprises, when considering performance, future hardware investments, and overall benefits, it is a very cost-effective solution for mid and enterprise organizations.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
Fortunately, in terms of the license, we are able to expand the disks without having to adjust the license.
System Engineer - Head of Engineering at a retailer with 11-50 employees
In the end, it always depends on how much you pay for it.
Senior ICT Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Regarding setup costs and licensing, our initial experience is somewhat dated now as we made a comprehensive purchase, including hardware, software, and system setup, which Scality handled at the time.
data center manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
StarWind Virtual SAN is very cost-effective for mid-level companies like ours, costing about one-sixth of what we would pay for a hardware solution that would require redundant hardware due to our remoteness.
VP, IT at NextSource Materials
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer
 

Valuable Features

Everpure FlashArray offers fast performance, scalability, and user-friendly management with data reduction, seamless upgrades, and comprehensive support.
Scality RING enhances performance and scalability with metadata separation, supporting multiple interfaces, praised for durability, security, and cost-effectiveness.
StarWind Virtual SAN impresses with easy setup, high availability, cost-effectiveness, robust performance, and exceptional support, enhancing user satisfaction.
FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Another noteworthy aspect is their platform, Pure One, a cloud-based analytics platform that automatically creates a case and sends out a part if a disk or controller fails.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
It handles internal data migration seamlessly in the background without going offline, achieving a hundred percent uptime.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
When a server is lost, the data is still accessible.
Operational Infrastructure Pilot at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
It is even better stored when there is only one copy on a system and there is a second copy on an immutability system, which is almost equivalent to backing it up on tape and taking it offline, making it completely inaccessible.
System Engineer - Head of Engineering at a retailer with 11-50 employees
Scality RING has influenced our approach to scaling in different dimensions by providing a cost-effective solution for the tremendous amount of data we generate every day for each customer.
Storage Engineering Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
Soporte IT at Sildan Security
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Scality RING
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th), File and Object Storage (5th)
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 (4th)
 

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.
Nourreddine AISSAOUI - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at Transactis France
Object storage has transformed backup capacity management and supports modern AI-ready workloads
The separation of metadata from object data significantly influences storage performance, as metadata uses NVMe flash storage, serving as an accelerator for accessing data. While data resides on traditional spinning hard disk drives, using NVMe storage for metadata allows for fast access to data, especially for large volumes and a large number of objects. The performance regarding metadata is particularly vital when managing a high number of objects; thus, dedicating servers and fast storage to metadata improves handling those large object counts, which we optimized during our operations, resulting in satisfactory outcomes. The improvement with Scality RING is the ability to manage huge volumes and the easy scalability when dealing with capacity growth and management. We can buy servers, install them, and hot upgrade the capacity without requiring downtime. Everything is available through an API, allowing end users to manage their storage conveniently without needing requests or tickets; they can allocate, delete, and move storage as required, making operations easier for the end user.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What needs improvement with Scality RING8?
Scality RING has room for improvement, particularly in having a supervisor external to Scality RING, which is key for...
What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?
Scality RING is used exclusively for S3 object storage. Scality RING is an alternative to Amazon S3, allowing custome...
What advice do you have for others considering Scality RING8?
I assess the simplicity of managing large volumes of data with Scality RING's interface as feasible, but it requires ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is acceptable for now, but I hope in the future we can find a b...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved by adding a certificate with the virtual switch in Hyper-V, reducing the license...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is for clustering in our store, specifically using Windows OS and Hyper-V f...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Scality RING, RING8
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Scality RING vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.