Self-hosted / open sourceVirtualisation & ContainersHeadquarters: US

StarWind VSAN: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

StarWind VSAN is software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure software from StarWind Software. It turns standard x86 servers into shared storage for virtualised workloads, with block and file access over protocols such as iSCSI, iSER, NVMe over Fabrics, NFS and SMB3. The software runs on the customer's own hardware, so it is delivered as installed software rather than as a hosted service.

StarWind Software is headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, in the United States. In May 2025 it was acquired by DataCore Software, which is also US-based and has its headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Because storage runs on the customer's own servers, data generally stays within the organisation's infrastructure. For a European organisation the key questions are therefore the US ownership and its consequences for legal access, the support relationship and the data processing terms, all of which should be reviewed before purchase.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with StarWind VSAN pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

55 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-3100
No hosting in Europe (US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 11, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in US (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Virtualisation & Containers
Type	Product
Website	starwindsoftware.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to StarWind VSAN

The European alternatives to StarWind VSAN come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

20 European Virtualisation & Containers vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with StarWind VSAN

StarWind VSAN is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

StarWind VSAN runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

StarWind VSAN is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs StarWind VSAN together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to StarWind VSAN?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to StarWind VSAN include APPUiO (VSHN), Gardener and Giant Swarm. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to StarWind VSAN?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to StarWind VSAN include Gardener, Giant Swarm, Harvester, IncludeOS, K3s, Kamaji and Kubermatic. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is StarWind VSAN GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

StarWind VSAN is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 11, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

We found none of these signals on the vendor's own site when we checked.

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 11, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Virtualisation & Containers

Virtualisation & Containers: Virtualisation platforms, container management, Kubernetes distributions and hypervisors. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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