Nexenta vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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 #1 with an average rating of 9.5. Additionally, 66% of Nexenta by DDN users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Nexenta and StarWind Virtual SAN compete in the software-defined storage market. StarWind Virtual SAN may have the upper hand due to its advanced features, making it a worthy investment despite higher costs.

Features: Nexenta offers robust data management capabilities concentrated on scalability and enterprise compatibility, alongside flexible deployment options. StarWind Virtual SAN provides advanced data protection, seamless integration, and focuses on high availability, making it suitable for businesses emphasizing reliability and manageability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nexenta allows flexible deployment with various hardware configurations, aiding in integration. It offers responsive customer service for efficient setup. StarWind Virtual SAN simplifies its installation process to minimize downtime and provides comprehensive support, highlighting its streamlined approach.

Pricing and ROI: Nexenta is known for being cost-effective, offering lower setup costs and satisfactory ROI. StarWind Virtual SAN requires a higher initial investment yet justifies the expense with a broad feature set and reliability, often delivering a substantial ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

March 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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WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

Seamless integrations, high availability, and offers a free version

Although I am generally satisfied with VSAN and its performance, there are some areas that could be improved to enhance its effectiveness even further. One area that could benefit from improvement is scalability. While the tool works well in its current configuration, allowing for greater ease and flexibility in adding new nodes to the cluster without complications would be very beneficial, especially in growing environments. Additionally, I would like to see additional features in the next version, such as better support for automated resource management. This could include proactive suggestions for optimizing storage and memory usage, as well as preventive alerts about the health status of the servers. A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.

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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

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

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"It has a nice, simple control panel. You can clearly see the state and health of storage along with the synchronization."

"The Windows-based StarWind GUI is easy to use and understand and integrates seamlessly with VMware's vSphere portal as well."

"Updates to server hardware are now painless and done during working hours with zero stress. We had a RAID failure a few months back, and nobody in the building even noticed and there was no after hours time used for repair."

"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."

"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."

"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."

"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."

"Although StarWind Virtual SAN free is fully functional and can be used in production, the support that comes with the license is priceless."

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Cons

"I would like to see better integration."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"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."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."

"While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."

"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."

"If it's possible to make a driver/solution that does not make use of the iSCSI targets of Windows, that would be great. I don't know if that's possible, however, it could make the configuration a little easier."

"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."

"For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there."

"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."

"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price is a little high."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"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 license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."

"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."

"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."

"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."

"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."

"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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 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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

I can't give a sincere opinion on the installation and licensing costs because, as I have mentioned repeatedly, I am ...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

Although I am generally satisfied with VSAN and its performance, there are some areas that could be improved to enhan...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO 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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VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 26% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

March 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

March 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

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

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

March 2025

Free Report: Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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