StarWind Virtual SAN vs VMware vSAN comparison

StarWind and VMware are both solutions in the HCI category. StarWind is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.6, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. StarWind holds a 2.3% mindshare in HCI, compared to VMware’s 16.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of StarWind users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 189 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

4,209 Views
1,486 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware vSAN

Read 229 VMware vSAN reviews

19,643 Views
14,087 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

VMware vSAN

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

VMware vSAN and StarWind Virtual SAN compete in the virtual storage solutions arena. VMware vSAN has the upper hand due to its seamless integration within the VMware ecosystem.

Features: VMware vSAN features tight integration with VMware products, supporting operations like vMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler for effective resource management. It provides strong performance by moving storage closer to the CPU, offers policy-based storage management, and seamless scalability. StarWind Virtual SAN offers affordability and ease of use with features like fast deployment on off-the-shelf hardware, efficient data replication, and high availability, making it flexible for various deployments.

Room for Improvement: VMware vSAN could improve its encryption, deduplication, and compatibility with diverse hardware. Users seek better monitoring and integration with different platforms. StarWind Virtual SAN needs enhanced documentation, more intuitive management interfaces, and improved automation capabilities to extend its user-friendliness and reporting features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware vSAN is favored for integrating well within VMware environments, though it requires expert handling. Its technical support is highly rated. StarWind Virtual SAN offers straightforward deployment across various infrastructures and is known for responsive, knowledgeable support, enhancing user experience with a customer-focused approach.

Pricing and ROI: VMware vSAN is considered expensive due to its licensing costs but provides significant operational savings over traditional SANs, justifying its cost with robust features. StarWind Virtual SAN offers a more competitive pricing model, appealing to SMBs with cost-effectiveness and transparent licensing. It delivers similar benefits in functionality leading to a positive return on investment.

To learn more, read our detailed StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware vSAN

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

StarWind Virtual SAN

Ranking in HCI

4th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

189

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)

VMware vSAN

Ranking in HCI

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

229

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the HCI category, the mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 16.7%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Featured Reviews

Ahmed Hosni

Senior System Engineer at Giza Systems

Provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor

You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the cost of a Highly Available HCI solution down to a very cost-effective point. Having used Starwind Virtual SAN for many years both for clients and for internal systems, it has always done exactly what it set out to do. It provides a cost-effective way to run an HCI storage platform for almost any hypervisor, but it is most effective with Hyper-V. It's simple and easy to use, The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation.

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Lipaz Hessel

Integration Manager at Gilat Satellite Networks

Expensive solution that requires professional services for installation and implementation

I'm still using a different solution. I only took two servers with vSAN to support one application that needs one feature that only VMware has. If not for that feature, I wouldn't touch VMware. Now, I'm looking at products like Nutanix, Silver Peak, Flexione, and FortiGate. For products that I choose, I don't need a specialist of that vendor. In VMware, I need a specialist in VMware. That's the issue I have with VMware. It's not like I can take any IT person, and they will know what to do. I need to make sure he will do the call, get the certificate and time to practice.

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

"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."

"It's quite easy to install."

"Active-active HA provides top performance and redundancy."

"The solution offers easy one-click PowerShell scripts that are ready to run."

"The best part is the easy way it operates with a very clear GUI without any unnecessary items."

"Their support goes above and beyond with the integration of their software."

"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."

"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

"vSAN has just one datastore. so customers do not need to think where to put their VMs, how to design the physical disk RAID, the LUN size, the LUN mapping, etc. when they use NetApp/EMC/HDS or other storage systems."

"I have found that the multi-homing feature is very valuable in VMware vSAN. It is an easy-to-use solution."

"Flexibility, growth, and expansion are probably the more important features for us. As our environment grows, the more users come on, the more VDI workstations that we need, we can easily expand either horizontally or vertically with the environment"

"The scalability of the solution is most valuable."

"Easy to deploy and manage."

"This product has very good performance when it comes to virtualization storage and works well with solutions such as SAP HANA, Exadata, Hadoop, and Big Data Analytics."

"We don't have to order a storage system, we can just use whatever we have on hand and roll it into our virtualization system."

"To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"The software monitoring should be web-based to be reachable from any VLAN workstation."

"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."

"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."

"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."

"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."

"The only thing that I have any difficulty with is that in order to perform upgrades, it is required that the SANs be detached from the Hosts before that can happen."

"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."

"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

"he list of hardware supported should be increased in the future."

"If one node out of your ten nodes fails, it takes a lot of time to replicate and rebalance VMware vSAN. This time can be reduced. When a node fails and the data is not accessible, vSAN has to be rebalanced to make the redundancy level of two again. However, if it is taking a lot of time and any other hardware fails during that time, then we have a problem. Two disk failures mean that all data will be lost, and we may have to recover it from the backup. So, the number of threads that run to do the rebalancing could be more so that the time taken to make it fully redundant again is not so much."

"It could be cheaper."

"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."

"Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it."

"The price for the hard drive, for vSAN, is very expensive."

"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten."

"Only the stretched cluster requires a minor improvement."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."

"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"

"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."

"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."

"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

"What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing."

"It is expensive. It should be cheaper. It has a perpetual license as well as a subscription-based license, but they are moving towards subscription-based licenses."

"There is a license required for this solution, it is a one-time payment. However, if they want support for the solution, it can be paid annually or for three years."

"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."

"There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive."

"The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license."

"The vSAN licensing is not an inexpensive product. It does cost more than hypervisor."

"It is not a subscription model. It is a purchase model, but it is very important that you also buy technical support from VMware. This is probably the only disadvantage of vSAN. It depends on the use case, but it can be very expensive."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

52%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...

See all answers

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

Choose StarWind Virtual SAN, it is the most flexible, reliable and cheap solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing. It is true that we are using it in a very strict project in which we were looking for a solution that would satisfy a str...

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...

See all answers

Comparisons

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 13% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 15% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs VMware vSAN

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

November 2024

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

November 2024

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

StarWind SAN & NAS

vSAN

Learn More

StarWind

VMware

Overview

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.

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

Sample Customers

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN vs. VMware vSAN

December 2024

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