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FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

FreeNAS and StarWind are both solutions in the NAS category. FreeNAS is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. FreeNAS holds a 3.0% mindshare in N, compared to StarWind’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of FreeNAS users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.
FreeNAS
Read 9 FreeNAS reviews
  • 969 Views
  • 672 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
StarWind Storage Appliance
Read 10 StarWind Storage Appliance reviews
  • 284 Views
  • 231 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

FreeNAS and StarWind Storage Appliance compete in the network-attached storage market. StarWind Storage Appliance appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features and professional support.

Features: FreeNAS is open-source, offers ease of use through a web interface, and provides flexibility in managing storage. It is known for container integration, dynamic disk management, and simple task synchronization. StarWind Storage Appliance features high availability, automated storage tiering, and hyper-convergence. It offers instant failover redundancy, iSCSI support, and proactive expert support.

Room for Improvement: FreeNAS could benefit from more comprehensive professional support, enhanced enterprise features, and reduced complexity for enterprise-level functionality. StarWind Storage Appliance may improve by offering more budget-friendly options, refining its setup process for less technical users, and enhancing community-driven support options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FreeNAS offers straightforward deployment and robust community resources, making it suitable for tech enthusiasts. StarWind Storage Appliance provides professional deployment options and dedicated customer support, ensuring smooth integration and minimal downtime for businesses.

Pricing and ROI: FreeNAS has low initial setup costs and is ideal for small teams or personal use, providing excellent ROI. StarWind Storage Appliance, with higher upfront costs, delivers strong ROI for businesses focused on performance and scalability due to its extensive feature set and professional support.

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To learn more, read our detailed FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance Report (Updated: October 2024).
Buyer's Guide
FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance
October 2024
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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:
 

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
FreeNAS technical support is praised for excellence, stability, reliability, and effective issue resolution with consistent quality assistance.
Sentiment score
9.0
StarWind Storage Appliance customer service is praised for 24x7 troubleshooting, professionalism, high technical support ratings, and helpful videos.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
3.4
FreeNAS needs improved Hyper-V cluster support, documentation clarity, better dashboard, S3, PSA integrations, and efficiency for backups.
Sentiment score
6.0
StarWind Storage Appliance requires improved integration, easier setup, better insights, and feature parity between demo and paid versions.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
FreeNAS scales well for some users, though challenges with hardware costs and storage expansion are noted by others.
Sentiment score
7.5
StarWind Storage Appliance is scalable, adaptable, hardware-independent, supports unlimited storage, and is effective in standalone and hyperconverged environments.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
FreeNAS is a free, open-source solution with significant hardware costs, suitable for enterprises with technical expertise.
Sentiment score
8.0
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its affordability, straightforward licensing, and excellent value compared to competitors for SMEs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
FreeNAS offers high stability and reliability, efficiently handling drive failures and maintaining 99.9% uptime with proper hardware.
Sentiment score
8.9
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for stability, robust performance, and high user ratings, especially on well-maintained Windows OS.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
7.6
FreeNAS provides reliable, user-friendly storage with seamless integration, robust management, and effective data protection across multiple platforms.
Sentiment score
8.3
StarWind Storage Appliance is praised for its user-friendly interface, high performance, reliability, excellent support, affordability, and robust data protection.
 

Categories and Ranking

FreeNAS
Ranking in NAS
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Storage Appliance
Ranking in NAS
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the NAS category, the mindshare of FreeNAS is 3.0%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Storage Appliance is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NAS
 

Featured Reviews

Vincenzo D'Aniello - PeerSpot reviewer
Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions automatically enabled the Linux kernel, yet with the recent version, this was no longer the case. Now, there was the possibility of being able to create Debian-based jails, and finding the documentation was not easy or fast. That said, in the end, we succeeded. If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented.
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Kishore CA - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes.
The only drawback is that it takes a bit of time during initial synchronization, especially after restarting the environment. This is a potential area of improvement. There's a synchronization time, but it takes time. Initially, when we start the first environment deployment, it starts synchronizing between the storage. So, it is taking time. One thing is that even when you restart. Let's assume that the synchronization is completed and the storage is synchronized. Both storages are fully synchronized, and it is in sync mode. Now, if we want to restart both nodes, there is a case for maintenance purposes. You took both nodes for maintenance, and we rebooted it. Then, it should not synchronize again. It should be a checksum. And if there is a checksum match, there should be no synchronization again. So, one thing that should be taken care of. Another thing is that I used freeware- the community version, free license, which we deployed using PowerShare. In that case, it was very difficult to bring back another node when one node was faulty. Let's assume that both the nodes are working fine. And we found one node faulty. And we destroyed all the volumes in that and tried to bring it back. So that was a difficult factor. The final solution is that we were not able to bring back the failed node. So, we reconstructed a new data source for that. That is another drawback. In future releases, I would like to see the integration with VMware or some other things as a plugin model for VMware.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FreeNAS?
The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FreeNAS?
The core version is free and open-source.
See all answers
What needs improvement with FreeNAS?
The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versi...
See all answers
What do you like most about StarWind Storage Appliance?
I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Storage Appliance?
I rate StarWind Storage Appliance's pricing an eight out of ten.
See all answers
What needs improvement with StarWind Storage Appliance?
StarWind Storage Appliance's demo version should be similar to the paid one.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 19% of the time
HPE StoreEasy vs FreeNAS Logo
HPE StoreEasy vs FreeNAS
Compared 17% of the time
NetApp FAS Series vs FreeNAS Logo
NetApp FAS Series vs FreeNAS
Compared 14% of the time
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DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance Logo
DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Storage Appliance
Compared 22% of the time
StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance Logo
StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Storage Appliance
Compared 21% of the time
More StarWind Storage Appliance Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
FreeNAS
November 2024
FreeNAS reportDownload FreeNAS product report
Buyer's Guide
StarWind Storage Appliance
October 2024
StarWind Storage Appliance reportDownload StarWind Storage Appliance product report
 

Learn More

FreeNAS
StarWind
 

Overview

FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data. FreeNAS is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out. 

StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup. 

 

Sample Customers

Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
Buyer's Guide
FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance
October 2024
Free Report: FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance
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