Nexenta vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Nexenta by DDN and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Nexenta by DDN is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0, while StarWind is ranked #9 with an average rating of 10.0. Additionally, 66% of Nexenta by DDN users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Nexenta and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure market. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance seems to have the upper hand, as many find its features and performance superior, making it worth the investment despite Nexenta being favored for pricing and support.

Features: Nexenta offers robust open-source storage solutions, flexibility, and cost-effective options focusing on software-defined storage. It is known for its versatile software tools. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance features an all-in-one architecture, high availability, and an emphasis on simplicity and efficiency. It stands out for its comprehensive integrated hardware-software synergy, offering streamlined operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Nexenta's deployment is flexible but requires more technical know-how. It provides customer service focused on software support. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers streamlined deployment with its integrated systems, providing proactive customer service that supports both hardware and software, leading to smoother implementations and superior all-around support.

Pricing and ROI:Nexenta is known for competitive pricing with lower initial setup costs, offering significant return on investment through its software-focused model. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance may involve higher initial costs due to its hardware and software bundle but provides a strong ROI by reducing the need for additional components and enhancing operational efficiency. Nexenta delivers cost-effective solutions highlighting flexibility, while StarWind provides greater long-term efficiency with a higher upfront cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

April 2025

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service

Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.

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Russ Le Puill

IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School

Proactive support with improved speed and resilience

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

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

"The solution provides many controllers."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."

"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."

"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."

"Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."

"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."

"Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."

"It is a safe, fast, and cost-effective storage system that improved our systems to have zero downtime."

"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure..."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."

"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."

"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."

"The response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."

"One area for improvement of the solution is that I had to get Windows, which I really didn't want because of the extra maintenance or overhead, as well as viruses, etc. It's going to take time for them to get their Linux to that point. They already have Linux but it's not as mature and they don't really support it on HCAs. They have it for individuals who want to use it on their servers, but not on HCAs."

"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."

"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."

"It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well."

"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

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

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

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

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

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."

"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."

"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."

"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."

"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."

"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."

"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."

"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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What needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent i...

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What is your primary use case for Nexenta?

It's for file systems. It's a NAS solution, and it has flexibility. There shouldn't be any outages because if one nod...

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What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 100% of the time

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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 33% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 19% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 10% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

March 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

March 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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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

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage - what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS).We uniquely integrate software-only "Open Source" collaboration with commodity hardware-centric "Software-Defined Storage" (SDS) innovation.

Nexenta by DDN

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

Sample Customers

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

GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

April 2025

Free Report: Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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