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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
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
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
206
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

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"Pure Storage FlashArray provides immediate benefits to our customers with its easy setup process, allowing for instant use and rapid realization of advantages."
"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time. I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes. Now, it takes thirty seconds."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"I would definitely suggest this solution to a colleague because of the ease of use."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"It's actually very stable"
"The most valuable feature of the product is that it's very easy to upgrade storage."
"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."
"The technical support team is excellent."
"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."
"It's very easy to upgrade storage."
"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."
"Failover happens smoothly, recovery and maintenance are less stressful, and we no longer need to worry about downtime."
"The solution provided me the ability to share storage between three physical VMware hosts in my environment, giving me HA for my VMs to move across hosts once they are stored on the vSAN using VMotion while allowing me to utilize the storage I already have on servers and save the expense of purchasing a new storage appliance."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
"The product creates opportunities with hybrid on-premise solutions."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"Ease of installation, configuration, and management."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"We were able to leverage our previous hardware capital investment and converted our infrastructure to use StarWind VSAN; the migration process was simple, and afterwards, we had a highly reliable SAN system."
 

Cons

"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"They could improve the price."
"The user interface could be simplified."
"In terms of improvement, my initial suggestion would be that 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."
"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."
"The performance of the solution must be improved."
"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes..."
"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."
"At this moment, I have not seen a return on investment with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"That limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."
"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."
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886,426 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
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?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
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 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 ...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
Our main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is hyper-convergence of a two-node cluster. We have multiple servers up an...
 

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: March 2026.
886,426 professionals have used our research since 2012.