StarWind Virtual SAN vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 2.2%, up from 1.3% 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	5.5%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library	2.2%
Other	89.0%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

Read full review

Jccerong Heron

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.

Read full review

reviewer1414572

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

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

"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 onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."

"Implementing Starwind in our organization has been a game-changer, particularly in terms of cost savings. By leveraging Starwind's virtual tape library (VTL) solution, we have been able to use virtual tapes for our backups, which are then saved in Azure Blob storage."

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

"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."

"The configuration is so much simpler than that of a traditional SAN with fewer points of failure to worry about."

"It's very easy to resize disks and they show up in VMware almost instantly."

"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very mature software that supersedes its capabilities with my use cases."

"It allows me to configure High Availability and failover clustering with some fault tolerance, at a cost point that doesn’t break the bank for a small business budget."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"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."

"The solution made our backups way more reliable."

"It is a stable solution."

"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."

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."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

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

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. 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."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"If there was one thing we could request, it would be the ability to shrink volumes. For example, we want to be able to decrease in the size of the volume."

"It would be nice to add the ability to use raw partitions instead of file containers."

"The number of different ways you can set it up can make it a little daunting."

"I would like additional documentation regarding possible networking configurations with 10GbE switching."

"There is no IPv6 support. That is our only issue at this time."

"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."

"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."

"The documentation could be better."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."

"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"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."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"We are happy with the price."

"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

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

"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."

"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."

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

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."

"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."

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.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	165
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

No data available

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost....

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little ...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 20% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 16% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 12% of the time

FalconStor FreeStor vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library

Compared 12% of the time

More StarWind Virtual Tape Library Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

StarWind Virtual SAN

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

December 2025

Download StarWind Virtual Tape Library product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

No data available

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

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

For SMB and Enterprises, who either look to get rid of backup tapes completely, or are willing to accelerate backup process and add an extra level of protection, our solution is StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL). It is an appliance that eliminates the need in physical tape and “pretends” to be a supported tape drive or autoloader, keeping all data on inexpensive, fast and high-capacity spinning disks.

Even with explosive data growth, StarWind VTL fits the backup into backup window by accelerating it, so the process does not overlap with production time. Optionally, it creates additional copy of backup data for better safety. It is also available in a software-only form, as part of StarWind VSAN functionality.

StarWind VTL targets those, who need to replace existing tape backup infrastructure or accelerate it if regulatory requirements prohibit replacement. In case the goal is just virtualizing tape backup or creating a stretched backup infrastructure, StarWind Tape Redirector will come in handy.

StarWind

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library