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StarWind Virtual SAN vs Veritas Access Appliance 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
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 (3rd)
Veritas Access Appliance
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (25th)
 

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.
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.
MA
Sr. Technical Support Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Overall functions well, stable, but technical support could improve
Veritas Access Appliance installation is user-friendly. You need network team cooperation for the setup of the cluster configuration. The Veritas Access Appliance initial configuration process is broken into two phases. The first phase requires that you perform each configuration step on each individual node. You should have two terminal windows open during the first phase, each logged into one of the nodes. During the second phase of the initial configuration, you should only perform the steps on one of the nodes. When you start the second phase of the initial configuration, close one of the terminal windows and continue doing the steps on only one of the nodes. When you initiate the cluster configuration, the settings that you configured on the current node are copied over to the second node in a one-time synchronization event.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features that are there now are really what we need."
"I would recommend Pure Storage, as it is well-established."
"My advice to others looking into using Everpure FlashArray is that it's a really good product, especially if your main purpose is to get high speed with more redundancy and reliability; then go for it."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"Pure Storage has been the go-to storage array for me; it's a lot smaller, easier to set up, faster to upgrade, more reliable, and the performance is very stable."
"What I appreciate most about Everpure FlashArray is that it performs compression and deduplication fantastically."
"The best features of Pure Storage are their support and analytics."
"One feature that's particularly valuable for our finance customers is Pure Storage's safe mode. It protects against ransomware attacks by taking snapshots. Our customers were very impressed with this capability. The data reduction is also impressive compared to other providers."
"Failover happens smoothly, recovery and maintenance are less stressful, and we no longer need to worry about downtime."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"The ProActive support gives me peace of mind because I am a one man shop, but with the technical support behind me, I feel like more than just one person. We spent two to three hours, depending on what we have to do, always on the phone, and they do not push to end the call."
"StarWind Virtual SAN, and specifically its implementation in their StarWind Hyper-Converged Appliance, gave us a competitive advantage in the bidding process."
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"The user interface for this application is amazing, very easy to learn from the beginning, with a great introductory period that allows you to get used to everything the software has to offer, and the customer support is also amazing, answering questions very quickly and always being available at the most important times."
"In summary, I think it's the best solution I could buy to achieve my goals."
"StarWind is cost effective; there's no need to purchase additional hardware as shared storage and they have great technical support."
"Overall the solution works well."
"It is a very stable program."
"Veritas Access Appliance is doing everything for us, such as system recovery, backup, and cloud data protection."
 

Cons

"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contract clarity."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports went down, there was a possibility to highlight that particular port which has gone down."
"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."
"The cost of the storage needs improvement."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"The best way to improve Pure Storage FlashArray is the active DR because that can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to test a failover and replicate back; better instructions on how to do that would help because we actually lost an entire volume when we were testing out some stuff as the fingerprint got reinitialized, and when you replicated back, it didn't know about that volume, causing a failure in that process."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"For someone entering the IT sector with little knowledge of storage, iSCSI, and virtual disks, they might not find the GUI immediately obvious."
"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."
"It currently only supports five of the cloud platforms."
"The Veritas support for Access Appliance could improve. They are a pioneer in the industry, and they provide an enterprise-level solution. However, when comparing the storage, they can't compete with the NetBackup solution."
"I would like to see more platforms added."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"Licensing is easy and the whole package is cost-effective."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."
"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 solution is not expensive compared to other storage solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
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 Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business170
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise34
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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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 t...
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 limita...
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 Sta...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
StarWind SAN & NAS
Access 3340 Appliance, Veritas Access 3340 Appliance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
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