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LizardFS 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
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
LizardFS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (19th)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
213
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.
it_user504762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead solution architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Providing relatively cheap NAS solution with great scale-out functionality.
Management console - today it is managed via scripts and flat files which need to be synchronized among all master/shadow nodes in a cluster. There are severall possible problems in such approach: - it is possible to 'damage' config by mistake - it is required to copy modified config file to other servers (typically you change it on master server and populate this to other - shadow servers using scp). If one forgets this, shadow servers have incorrect/old config and in case the cluster failovers the new master service is using wrong config I would suggest to write a dedicated program or script which checks syntax and do all the changes in a proper way in background. It could look like this: to create new export: - lizard-admin create-export to modify: - lizard-admin modify-export etc.
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 features that are there now are really what we need."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"Having an intuitive user interface to get things running is great."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit we saw, from our very first benchmarks, was that our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other changes."
"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over, and we have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, which has been really great for us."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"So far, I found it to be the best distributed storage solution I ever worked with."
"Providing relatively cheap NAS solution with great scale-out functionality."
"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."
"StarWind Virtual San has improved our organization by giving us access to a product and technology that is very affordable, easy to use and understand, and is covering our backs by offering awesome premium support behind all our operations."
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"The main benefit is that StarWind is almost maintenance-free."
"If you compare StarWind to EqualLogic EMC or NetApp, it's a cheaper option."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"Having support is also very valuable to us as we are a small team."
 

Cons

"It falls far short of protocol support."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"If there is one thing that I did not appreciate about Pure, it is that between the two different lines, which would be FlashBlade and Everpure FlashArray, there is no easy way to migrate LUNs as far as being able to replicate across those platforms."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"Well, if you don't have a support contract and therefore don't have access to the automated failover mechanism, you need to build it yourself."
"Management console - today it is managed via scripts and flat files which need to be synchronized among all master/shadow nodes in a cluster."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"Android app for monitoring and receiving push notifications as alarms or monitoring I/O from any mobile device could be a good feature and nice to have as we are not always on our desk."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"If there was one thing we could request, it would be the ability to shrink volumes. For example, we want to be able to decrease in the size of the volume."
"I would like additional documentation regarding possible networking configurations with 10GbE switching."
"Some of the new hyper-converged tools seem basic as a single pane of glass dashboard."
"The documentation is good yet is still lacking in a few areas."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"The price is too high."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
Information not available
"This solution has a great price for the functionality."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"
"The cost, including OPEX, is lower compared to other solutions."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"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."
"The licensing is straightforward, with free and trial versions available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business170
Midsize Enterprise57
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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN is very simple; that is another good t...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN has latency that is not as good versus VMware vSAN, but I believe it is more of a Hyper-V limita...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is that it replaced our VMware vSAN. I transitioned from VMware vSAN to Sta...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Orange Polska, Platige Image, United State Department of Agriculture, Virtu Financial
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about LizardFS vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.