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Nexenta vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), File and Object Storage (8th)
Nexenta
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
1st
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
204
Ranking in other categories
HCI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.6%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN5.6%
Pure Storage FlashBlade3.4%
Nexenta1.5%
Other89.5%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
Anil Rahulwar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."
"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."
"The best features are the software's ease of setup and the excellent technical support."
"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."
"Having support is also very valuable to us as we are a small team."
"Having the ability to scale horizontally if needed is a huge plus for future growth."
"The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down."
"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"The control panel is nice. It gives you a lot of good feedback as to the status and health of the VSAN."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a highly flexible solution, as it can be deployed on physical servers or on top of virtual machines running on hypervisors such as VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."
"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."
"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."
"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."
"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."
"Some configuration options still demand service restarting."
"This is a great product."
"There should be publicly available tutorials on YouTube or other platforms that help the users to integrate this solution with other platforms, for example."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"More comprehensive reporting and educational resources for error resolution would enhance the user experience."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"StarWind Command Center's single-pane management solution only works with Hyper-V."
"The system performs as expected, but we're always looking for performance improvements regarding the best utilization of NVMe disks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."
"The product is very expensive."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"The price could be cheaper."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"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."
Information not available
"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
"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 support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business165
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
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...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?
Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.
What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost....
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

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
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.