FreeNAS vs StarWind Storage Appliance comparison

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Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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."

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"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."

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Cons
"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."

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"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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We use the free version of the program."
  • "For our configuration, we pay a little bit less than €10,000 ($12,000 USD) per year."
  • "Its price is okay. It suits our needs."
  • "Its licensing cost is based on the hardware capacity."
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  • "It costs about 50,000 euros."
  • "StarWind by far provides the best bang for the buck."
  • "On the homepage, you can not see the pricing."
  • "The cost is determined by various factors, including the amount of terabyte storage you require, the number of nodes you want to purchase, and the duration of your maintenance agreement"
  • "With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company."
  • "We found that the price of StarWind was very good compared to VMware or Nutanix."
  • More StarWind Storage Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer:The system itself allows you to add any feature. The only bad thing is that this maybe depends on FreeBSD, and sometimes finding documentation is difficult. For example, we knew that previous versions… more »
    Top Answer:I would say data protection and easy management are the most valuable features of the product...I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
    Top Answer:With StarWind Storage Appliance, the payments made towards the licensing part of the product are on a per-node basis, making it cost-effective for us to use the solution in our company. StarWind… more »
    Top Answer:From an improvement perspective, I can't comment much about StarWind Storage Appliance since we use only two to three nodes in our company, with which I am currently happy. If I use the product at an… more »
    Ranking
    9th
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    1,628
    Comparisons
    1,170
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    346
    Rating
    8.7
    10th
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    543
    Comparisons
    411
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    698
    Rating
    8.5
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview
    FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data. FreeNAS is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

    For SMB and Enterprises who are looking for high performance primary storage for server virtualization, VDI, database and Big Data scenarios, or inexpensive secondary backup tier, our solution is StarWind Storage Appliance. It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, and associated software into an easily scalable storage platform.

    Additionally, the appliance features an optional gateway to Azure public cloud, which helps to implement an effective Disaster Recovery plan or meet regulatory requirements. StarWind SA scales up by adding individual disks and flash modules, or JBODs, while adding ready controller nodes allows scaling out. 

    StarWind SA targets those, who need high-performance primary storage or secondary storage for backup. In case there is a whole virtualization infrastructure to build from scratch, StarWind HCA will come in handy. Otherwise, if all the required hardware is present, StarWind Virtual SAN will be enough to build a high-performance virtualization setup. 

    Sample Customers
    Morroni Technologies Inc., Creative Integrations
    Bosch, EC2 IT, Solid Earth Inc., Canon
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company38%
    Media Company25%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    University13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Educational Organization8%
    University8%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government9%
    University7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business78%
    Large Enterprise22%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise52%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise22%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about FreeNAS vs. StarWind Storage Appliance and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.

    See our list of best NAS vendors.

    We monitor all NAS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.