We performed a comparison between FreeNAS and StarWind Storage Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two NAS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The ease of use of the 'jail', the management of backups, and copies to easily create test and pre-production scenarios have speeded up the development and distribution of business apps."
"Its stability is the most valuable. It is reliable, and we don't have to worry too much about it."
"It has the best storage capacity."
"FreeNAS is much simpler and easier to use than other solutions, but we don't have the complete range of features that come with the full version."
"It integrates well into either Windows or Linux environments."
"What I like about it is that I can work on it from any computer or any device. The initial setup is very simple. The setup wizard is really helpful."
"The solution has been very stable so far."
"The management interface is the most valuable feature for us."
"We are able to easily back up our data and send it to an offsite location."
"They call us when monitoring shows a possible issue and are very flexible in working with our schedule to troubleshoot when it is convenient for us."
"Having instant failover redundancy helps me sleep easier at night."
"Another good feature is that you can pause the appliance if you want to move it from one location to another and then once it's moved you can resume it, this way you can physically move the whole cluster or storage without any downtime. Its really easy to use, if you have a good foundation in storage and clustering then you will need less then one hour to figure out how to operate it."
"It is very easy to use and very cost effective."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it an attractive option, especially for customers who may not be highly tech-savvy."
"We saw an ROI. We have saved both time and money by using it."
"They should include clustering for the solution."
"The latest version of the dashboard doesn't work as good as the previous version."
"If you find the documentation, it is always incomplete and fragmented."
"The support for S3 needs to be improved."
"They can improve the integration with PSA systems. This functionality could be better."
"The one thing that I find difficult to do which is very time-consuming is that I like to have a backup of the important files."
"FreeNAS should be better prepared for clustering."
"StarWind no longer sells HDDs for primary storage."
"The dashboard features are not in the free version."
"StarWind should improve the synchronization time of its product. There should be a standard operating procedure (SOP) for synchronization to reduce the time it takes."
"An improvement would be if they reached out to education customers with other available products."
"With StarWind Storage Appliance, it would be better to have an overall easier setup with a little bit of configuration changes since, currently, even a small mistake may cause the setup process to go wrong."
"They offered onsite installation, but we chose to do it ourselves. That took longer and was more work for us but saved us a ton of money in the end."
"Other solutions, such as StorMagic, offer more flexibility in terms of handling caching and moving data between additional nodes."
"They could improve by providing integration with HP."
FreeNAS is ranked 9th in NAS with 9 reviews while StarWind Storage Appliance is ranked 10th in NAS with 9 reviews. FreeNAS is rated 8.4, while StarWind Storage Appliance is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of FreeNAS writes "Open-source with great disk management and task synchronization". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Storage Appliance writes "Offers stable performance even with a single node failure and manages everything with just two nodes". FreeNAS is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), HPE StoreEasy, Qumulo, NetApp FAS Series and Buurst SoftNAS, whereas StarWind Storage Appliance is most compared with StoneFly VSO NAS, VMware vSAN and StorMagic SvSAN. See our FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance report.
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