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StarWind Virtual SAN vs SteelFusion comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 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

StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
3rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
SteelFusion
Ranking in HCI
30th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.3%
SteelFusion1.4%
Other96.3%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user866178 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA
Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices
The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization as we are not having to worry about licensing costs; it is paid for, and we have the license perpetually."
"The storage system has been a great expansion of our capabilities to store large amounts of data since we previously relied on cloud storage which became exponentially more expensive as we expanded our data collection and our pipelines which required more virtual machines and hence more storage."
"Highly available storage is the most valuable feature. The entire rollout is hyper-converged and requires no extra storage further than the hosts in which Hyper-V is running. Another feature that has been great is the support from StarWind in general. We have their proactive support package on the main cluster that employs Starwind Virtual SAN."
"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by saving money in skill set development, and certainly minimal downtime across all of our installations, where they maintain almost zero downtime in their 24/7 operations."
"StarWind Virtual San has improved our organization by giving us access to a product and technology that is very affordable, easy to use and understand, and is covering our backs by offering awesome premium support behind all our operations."
"StarWind has provided an active-active HA storage system that keeps our systems running 24/7."
"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs."
"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."
"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."
"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."
 

Cons

"The documentation could be a little more concise, but, for the most part, it just works."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"The cluster configuration is time-consuming and tedious."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"This is a great product."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing."
"I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode."
"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."
"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

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 thing about it, as the pricing is really straightforward. I got a quote, and it w...
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 limitation than it is StarWind Virtual SAN; it is not bad enough to be an issue, but i...
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 StarWind Virtual SAN due to the dramatic increase in VMware licensing costs followi...
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Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, StarWind and others in HCI. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.