StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

May 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

8.5

Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.

Sentiment score

6.8

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reduced costs, improved stability, and streamlined operations, quickly achieving substantial ROI and enhancing management efficiency.

Sentiment score

7.3

StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, high-availability solutions with quick ROI through reduced downtime, maintenance, and hardware expenses.

It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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

Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.0

Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.

Sentiment score

8.5

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's 24/7 customer service is praised for quick responses, proactive monitoring, and expertise despite language barriers.

Sentiment score

8.3

StarWind Virtual SAN’s support is praised for expertise, quick responses, and comprehensive assistance in technical and account-related issues.

I would rate them an eight out of ten.

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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

When we set it up, they validate our settings and configurations to ensure we don't miss anything.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.8

Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.

Sentiment score

7.9

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers scalable options for SMBs, supporting expansion through nodes, RAM, or storage to align with cloud strategies.

Sentiment score

7.7

StarWind Virtual SAN excels in scalable storage, easy expansion, broad capabilities with premium licensing, and infrastructure growth compatibility.

Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

I have never needed to scale up or add additional nodes with StarWind Virtual SAN, but we have had to expand, and customer support has been excellent.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

StarWind Virtual SAN's scalability is good, and I have had an easy experience adding more space to the system.

Gregory McGrady

PC Network Specialist at Watauga County

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.8

Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.

Sentiment score

8.7

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers exceptional stability, zero downtime, excellent support, and ease of use, ensuring reliable performance.

Sentiment score

8.5

StarWind Virtual SAN is stable, reliable, and handles workloads seamlessly, with issues often due to external factors, not the software itself.

In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is stable as I haven't encountered any downtime or issues.

Charles Opio

Tech Support Engineer at Sybyl

Room For Improvement

Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance needs hardware, software, and management improvements, with focus on Linux support and streamlined scalability.

StarWind Virtual SAN needs better automation, documentation, interface, and centralized management for enhanced user experience and efficiency.

Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

Its configuration should be easier.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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.

WJHG

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers competitive, cost-effective pricing, significantly cheaper than competitors like Nutanix, with transparent, all-inclusive fees.

StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for cost-effectiveness, flexible licensing, affordable pricing, and excellent support for small enterprises and nonprofits.

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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

I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that it was easy to implement, license, and the cost was very good.

Gregory McGrady

PC Network Specialist at Watauga County

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance provides ease of use, high availability, flexible deployment, and cost-effective, reliable performance with excellent support.

StarWind Virtual SAN offers ease of installation, high availability, excellent support, and integration with existing hardware for seamless virtualization.

We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.

IT Field Support Engineer at Unisys

The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pure Storage FlashBlade report

System admin at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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.

WJHG

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 6.7%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

Russ Le Puill

IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School

Proactive support with improved speed and resilience

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Read full review

Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

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.

Read full review

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...

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...

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

I have had no setup costs and no challenges with setup and installation for StarWind Virtual SAN. The costs are accep...

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

There are times when the feedback in the event of an impending issue or an actual failure can be limited. The remedia...

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Product Reports

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

June 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

StarWind Virtual SAN

June 2025

Also Known As

No data available

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

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

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

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School