Red Hat Gluster Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Gluster Storage is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 6.7%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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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GiovanniRamirez

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…

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Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support

The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

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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

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

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

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"The technical support team is excellent."

"This solution made it possible to deploy a new infrastructure in the shortest amount of time, at a low cost without purchasing expensive hardware storage, and use unused servers."

"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."

"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."

"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."

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

"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."

"It provides shared storage to multiple hypervisor hosts. Times had changed, however. StarWind Virtual SAN is the “software replaces hardware” for SAN. We have access control and CCTV systems up and running using Microsoft clustering and shared storage"

"StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by saving money in skill set development, and certainly minimal downtime across all of our installations, where they maintain almost zero downtime in their 24/7 operations."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The speed could be improved."

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

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The user interface could be simplified."

"The performance of the solution must be improved."

"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."

"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."

"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."

"In the next release, they could make some graphs of the real-time loading, speed of storage, and interfaces. Of course, these can be viewed in other places. But, in the event of a malfunction or troubleshooting, this would be convenient."

"One point for improvement is to increase the performance capabilities of the Windows-based executable as compared to its Linux Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) equivalent."

"It should be improved in the way it detects the right filesystem image after a complete shutdown of the system or in the case of disaster recovery."

"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."

"The dashboard is functional, but it could benefit from a more modern and visually appealing design."

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

"I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

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

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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."

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

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"StarWind is best price/performance for SMB."

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

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

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

"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

More StarWind Virtual SAN 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

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

What do you like most about Red Hat Gluster Storage?

The technical support team is excellent.

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 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...

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that it was easy to implement, license, and the cost was ve...

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

StarWind Virtual SAN could be improved, and I wish the management GUI worked better.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

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LizardFS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 22% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 18% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 14% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat Gluster Storage Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 25% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 15% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

StorPool vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 4% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Download Red Hat Gluster Storage product report

StarWind Virtual SAN

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server

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

Red Hat Gluster Storage (formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server) is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform designed to handle the requirements of traditional file storage—high-capacity tasks like backup and archival as well as high-performance tasks of analytics and virtualization. But unlike traditional storage systems, Red Hat Gluster Storage isn’t rigid and expensive. It easily scales across bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud deployments.

Red Hat

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

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

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN