PeerSpot’s crowdsourced user review platform helps technology decision-makers around the world to better connect with peers and other independent experts who provide advice without vendor bias.
Our users have ranked these solutions according to their valuable features, and discuss which features they like most and why.
You can read user reviews for the Top 5 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solutions to help you decide which solution is best for you.
Users compare and give feedback on the best Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solutions that they’ve used — based on product reviews, ratings, and comparisons.
#1 Nutanix Acropolis AOS
Nutanix Acropolis AOS was ranked as the #1 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solution for 2022. PeerSpot users give Nutanix Acropolis AOS an average rating of 8 out of 10.
Samuel R., CTO Enterprise Cloud at Amanox Solutions (S&T Group), says, “Nutanix has several unique capabilities to ensure linear scalability. Over the years Nutanix has added lots of enterprise functionality like deduplication, compression, erasure coding, snapshots, (a)-sync replication and so on. While they are very useful, scale extremely well on Nutanix and offer VM granular configuration (if you don't care about granularity do it cluster wide by default).”
Gerhard J., IT Manager at Q4 Fuel, mentions, "One major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly. You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake."
A Solutions Architect at a computer software company explains, “From a Disaster Recovery perspective, it is very valuable. Some of my customers are getting into Flow. We don't use Flow, however, we're testing it. Flow is their micro-segmentation, which is very useful for protecting your VMs and the traffic that goes to them. From an automation perspective around deploying virtual machines, Calm is pretty good as well.” He goes on to add, “The initial setup is straightforward, the solution is very stable, and the product scales very well.”
#2 StarWind Virtual SAN
StarWind Virtual SAN was ranked as the #2 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solution for 2022. PeerSpot users give StarWind Virtual SAN an average rating of 10 out of 10.
A Senior Technical Architect at HS Data Ltd. says, “We have found the solution surprisingly simple to use. The management console allows us to monitor the solution and we have configured email alerts to alert us about critical issues. These alerts have been proven to work in an actual failure scenario, for example, when we had a memory issue with one of our servers that caused the entire server to crash. The management console also allows us to monitor the solution performance and provides us with access to system logs.”
An I.T. Director at MBI comments, “By far, the best features are the cost, implementation, and support. The VMWare equivalent license upgrade would have been quite a bit more than the StarWind solution, and the only additional hardware requirements were the dual 25GB fiber NICs needed for the storage Sync functionality.”
A Systems Administrator at Daifuku America states, “A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic. This is one less major thing to worry about. Before, we had a lot of stock and pressure on our singular backup server. It carried a lot of weight. Now with the VTL software in place, we have three backup targets. The primary backup server is still critical but if that server were to go down, we would still have backup data intact. If our data center went down, we would still have backup data intact thanks to the offsite options. We can rest easier knowing our data is fully protected. The fact we have a DR strategy is priceless.”
#3 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance was ranked as the #3 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solution for 2022. PeerSpot users give StarWind HyperConverged Appliance an average rating of 10 out of 10.
An I.T. Manager at a real estate/law firm expresses, “It's flexible. There are so many other solutions that have very specific requirements, like vSAN from VMware and Microsoft S2D. Those tend to be very specific in terms of their requirements. This is more flexible. We had two separate servers that were not the same spec and the ordered solutions required that at least these specs should be very close. We didn't want to go out and buy new servers. And so, in that sense, it's flexible. It can run without those strict restrictions that other ones have.”
PeerSpot user Paul T., Network and Information Systems Engineer at a financial services firm, claims, “Live migration between nodes was quick and simple. The management interface was clean and intuitive. The system ran with no issues whatsoever, it never had any problems. It was able to run all of our VMs without struggling one bit. We were able to run Hyper-v and Failover Cluster Manager. Therefore we already knew how to use these, being Microsoft certified engineers. These fit easily on top of Starwind, in fact, the Starwind software is pretty much invisible in the background, running cleanly underneath the Hyper-V and Failover Cluster Manager.”
A Senior Network Engineer at inSync Computer Solutions mentions, “The configuration we purchased was built on Hyper-V, so there was no additional training for staff. The rest of the management tools are on Windows, so anyone with a little bit of IT background should be able to figure it out. The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment. Support has been stellar and we're notified of an issue before we even knew about it. We worked with support to get parts replaced and delivered the next business day and there was no downtime to the users!”
#4 DataCore SANsymphony SDS
DataCore SANsymphony SDS was ranked as the #4 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solution for 2022. PeerSpot users give DataCore SANsymphony SDS an average rating of 10 out of 10.
Damon, System Engineering at Patriot LLC., says, "The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."
PeerSpot user Christian B., Senior IT Consultant / Architect at Mightycare Solutions GmbH, comments, "CDP is an important feature for avoiding data loss in the event of ransomware attacks. You need more storage capacity, however, you get the possibility to return at any time and use the data saved up to that point. The recovery is much faster than with a classic restore."
Raphael J., Architecte Infrastructures at IT-Med, explains, "The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."
#5 Zadara
Zadara was ranked as the #5 Software Defined Storage (SDS) Solution for 2022. PeerSpot users give Zadara an average rating of 8 out of 10.
A Platform and Infrastructure Manager at a tech services company expresses, "It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
A Chief Information Officer at a tech services company mentions, "One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
