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Red Hat Gluster Storage 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
223
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Red Hat Gluster Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st), HCI (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Consultant at Xerif
Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs
Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…
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 solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"The predictive performance analytics are good."
"The snapshot feature is valuable. It protects data based on the policy."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"This was our first all-flash storage enclosure, so we saw huge boost in performance for all of our servers."
"I recommend this solution for production because it has good performance and capacity management."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"The technical support team is excellent."
"If it is designed correctly, it can be used for everything, it has high availability, and that is what we need it for, and the price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."
"It's very easy to upgrade storage."
"The most valuable feature of the product is that it's very easy to upgrade storage."
"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."
"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"Overall it has been a great product and company to work with for the past five years and many more to come."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage, is pretty straightforward to install and set up, and so far has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"StarWind vSAN for Hyper-V solves the problem without any kind of hardware lock-in and with its low impact, easy to configure vSAN solution."
"It's quite easy to install."
"The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price."
"Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software."
"This solution improves many areas in our company including performance, data availability, and data security."
 

Cons

"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"The areas that have room for improvement include the scheduling process for upgrades."
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says it is completely full."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"The performance of the solution must be improved."
"The user interface could be simplified."
"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."
"In terms of improvement, my initial suggestion would be that the user interface could be simplified."
"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."
"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
"If there are domain controllers inside the cluster, there needs to be some sort of logic allowing them to boot independently so all the rest of the domain clients can gain the authority they need to come online."
"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."
"There is no IPv6 support."
"They require more media visibility."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"The gathering of monthly consumption and performance reports for future dissemination to concerned parties is also very important. Unfortunately, StarWinds vSAN doesn't offer this functionality, however, it is something that would be greatly welcomed should they choose to develop it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
"I would suggest that you download the free version, deploy in your lab, and play with it."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
895,272 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business68
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise156
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business166
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Gluster Storage?
There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source versio...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Gluster Storage?
Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Gluster Storage?
I would highly recommend Gluster FS to others considering it. The system is robust, flexible, and easy to use. I'd ra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any ...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in t...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is ...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,272 professionals have used our research since 2012.