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Scality RING vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Scality RING
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th), File and Object Storage (5th)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (23rd), HCI (27th)
 

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.
Sebastien Foucou - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management
I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators."
"The seamless integration into the public cloud has improved my organization."
"Pure Storage technology allowed us to automate tasks, reducing something which started as a 12-hour turnaround down to about 15 minutes."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"Once we solved the data reduction and what Pure does we were hooked."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"I like the speed, and I like the API and how programmable it is."
"The best functionality in Scality RING is the ability to handle three interfaces over a single infrastructure: S3, NFS, and SMB."
"Scality RING is very robust."
"I think it's the economic factor. This solution has the lowest cost for storage systems."
"The best functionality of Scality RING is its ease of administration; it is out of the box and was set up for us in collaboration with Scality and HP."
"Scality RING's capacity and performance scaling across sites and clouds have positively affected our operational efficiency."
"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. It allows us to store, sort, and analyze data effectively while meeting our performance thresholds."
"The most valuable feature of Scality RING8 is its performance and good interface."
"The improvement with Scality RING is the ability to manage huge volumes and the easy scalability when dealing with capacity growth and management."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
 

Cons

"We have not had a good experience with the IBM device."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"The way Pure Storage does the controller storage warranty or replacement has been an issue for some people who just replace the controllers every couple of years, and that's where some of the confusion with pricing and support has come in."
"Technical support needs improvement. With respect to them being able to respond, they're more marketing people, less technical."
"When we used this solution in 2015, it was not scalable at all. I don't know if they have improved on that, but at the time, scalability was just horrible."
"When considering the initial setup of Scality RING in 2015, it was, at first, very complicated. Installation and documentation were still being finalized."
"Scality RING has contributed to overall company costs in that it has not reduced costs but rather increased them because we are now using this product as an additional protection mechanism for the backup."
"Scality RING8 could improve by having more features. We have to use two automation tools to meet our needs. We would prefer to use only one."
"They should prioritize quality over timeliness to minimize customer disruptions and not force customers into a cycle of fixes that interfere with daily work."
"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product. Apart from the UI improvements, I would like to see more features implemented with S3 since not all features are implemented in Scality RING, particularly features such as the S3 select in AWS and the possibility to manage all RINGs with one portal."
"Sometimes we need to restart components, including metadata, so it is not just plug and play; day-to-day attention is necessary, but we can leverage vendor-provided monitoring tools, including dashboards to identify potential issues, allowing us to help manage overhead as much as possible."
"I typically have at least three different views with three user interfaces open when I work on something. I find it quite complicated at times."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"The cost of Scality RING8 could be less expensive. It is difficult for smaller businesses to afford it."
"The initial cost (CAPEX) to set up the infrastructure is expensive due to the specific hardware required."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Legal Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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 ...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Scality RING, RING8
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about Scality RING vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.