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 9.6. Nexenta by DDN holds a 0.8% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Nexenta by DDN users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Nexenta

Read 2 Nexenta reviews

119 Views
95 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 189 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

3,357 Views
1,215 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nexenta

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

January 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

Nexenta

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

15th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

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

7.7

Number of Reviews

189

Ranking in other categories

HCI (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Nexenta is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 9.0%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

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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MIT

IT System Administrator at Ludwig Meyer GmbH & Co. KG

Easy to set up and maintain with good performance capabilities

Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline. ATM (20220609) is still necessary, since taking a node offline without properly activating the maintenance mode on the vSAN would trigger a full sync of the vSAN nodes. This is fine and a good thing since it ensures data integrity. However, there is something in the making that would ensure integrity without a full sync after a node goes down, which, as stated above, one could "abuse" to patch (and boot = take down) the hypervisors during business hours 😁 Other than that, the thing is rock stable and chugging along without issues. We are an SMB so we "only" have around 50 VMs on our FO cluster, which is a medium load for SSDs. If you plan to go more to the "max" side of performance use, do proper testing!

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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

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

"Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."

"User friendly interface and straight forward implementation."

"Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost."

"The virtual tapes can be uploaded to the object storage of your choice with object locking/governance which gives you an extra layer of protection."

"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."

"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."

"We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."

"High Availability is the best feature of product."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

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

"With data verification, I would like to know how does the solution perform validation of data being synced between two VSANs."

"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."

"The main issue we ran into was the documentation. We attempted to set up the product in our test environment by ourselves and ran into several areas of the documentation that were unclear to us."

"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."

"The console is something that I feel could be improved. There is nothing technically wrong with it, but it can be jazzed up and/or made to be a little more intuitive."

"A mobile app to sync up for overview and status would really be helpful."

"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 found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."

"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."

"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."

"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."

"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

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 needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent issues with the SMBs. So, it got resolved in version 5.5 FP3. In future releases,...

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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 node goes down, the other nodes take over and take care of everything. It has a fea...

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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.

See all answers

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) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...

See all answers

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

Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a str...

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 100% of the time

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Compared 26% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% 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 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

January 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

December 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

Learn More

Nexenta by DDN

StarWind

Overview

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.

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.

Sample Customers

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

January 2025

Free Report: Nexenta vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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