Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

Red Hat and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Red Hat is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while StarWind is ranked #9 with an average rating of 10.0. Additionally, 81% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance are competing in the data storage and management category. StarWind seems to have the upper hand with its efficient storage management, ease of operation, and superior deployment model.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides integration with OpenStack services, high availability, and a single solution for managing the entire infrastructure. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers high availability in a small setup, ease of management through a single console, and flexibility to deploy without specific hardware requirements.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could enhance its deployment ease, reduce initial setup complexity, and streamline customer support responsiveness. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance might benefit from improving its integration capabilities with diverse platforms, expanding its feature flexibility beyond existing hardware, and refining its support documentation for broader audiences.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides comprehensive documentation and training resources for deployment but may be seen as requiring more effort in initial setup. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance focuses on a streamlined process, offering personalized customer support which enhances the user experience throughout deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage, while having a higher initial cost, offers substantial ROI through long-term scalability. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is noted for its cost-effectiveness, providing a fast ROI due to relatively lower setup costs and immediate operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

February 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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ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI

IT Private Cloud & Infrastructure Leader at Sicredi

Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration

Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

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

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing."

"We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment."

"It's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."

"Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest."

"The solution is pretty stable."

"Most valuable features include replication and compression."

"We use the solution for cloud storage."

"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

"Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."

"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."

"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."

"I do like that I can manage StarWind with a console running on my local desktop."

"However, StarWind HCA won us over in two areas: price and support. We were actually able to install an all-flash StarWind HCA for less than other vendors' spinning rust solutions! We were able to roll five years of warranty and support into the purchase price and still save thousands of dollars upfront."

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

"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."

"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

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

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"I would like to see better integration."

"The solution is expensive."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"Its configuration should be easier."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."

"Ceph does not deal very well with, or takes a long time to recover from, certain kinds of network failures and individual storage node failures."

"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."

"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."

"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."

"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."

"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."

"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."

"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""

"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."

"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."

"CSVs require the storage to be configured through iSCSI, even though the storage is local."

"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

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

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

"The price is a little high."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"We never used the paid support."

"There is no cost for software."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"The price of this product isn't high."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."

"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."

"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."

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

"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."

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

"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."

"Its cost was reasonable."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

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

See all answers

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.

See all answers

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 12% 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

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 42% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 40% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 23% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 11% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

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 Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

March 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

Also Known As

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Ceph

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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

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

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

Dell, DreamHost

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

February 2025

Free Report: Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

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