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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (8th)
Red Hat Gluster Storage
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
4
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
196
Ranking in other categories
HCI (5th)
 

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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Vladimir Simion - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"The initial setup is pretty quick."
"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."
"The solution provides many controllers."
"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."
"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."
"The technical support team is excellent."
"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."
"It's very easy to upgrade storage."
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful."
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"It has allowed me to effectively and confidently manage the maintenance of hosts where I can power off a host and have its VMs migrate to another one."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"The instant failover, with vSAN copying data to the second node, allowed for the continuous availability of our applications."
"StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN) offers a significant breadth of features."
"It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."
 

Cons

"Its configuration should be easier."
"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."
"The speed could be improved."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"The performance of the solution must be improved."
"The user interface could be simplified."
"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."
"Including their own hyper-visor would be a valuable improvement over simply integrating with Hyper-V."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"I had to buy upgraded support, which was not a problem, but it wasn't a prorated amount, so I paid for the support, the full upgrade, but I only got a couple of months out of it because it was only good until renewal time."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"This is a great product."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"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 understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"The price is a little high."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."
"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."
"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"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."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

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 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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.