Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE StoreVirtual vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

Sponsored
 

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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), File and Object Storage (8th)
HPE StoreVirtual
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
21st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.3%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade4.1%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct7.3%
HPE StoreVirtual1.5%
Other87.1%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
Vebjorn Nergaard - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable with helpful support and good replication
The setup is okay, however, it comes with a moderate amount of difficulty. If you are new to the product, it is difficult. You do get used to the process over time and it gets easier. A company just needs one person to maintain the solution as it just runs. You don't need any support staff. It's very, very hands-off except when you do updates. The product is living its own life.
Stanislaw Mielicki - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieve cost-effectiveness with superior performance while needing to address cluster support
I am working with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct for applications, SQL, and VRS. I am an integrator for this solution The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. They introduced the All-Flash array using SSD or NVMe drives without cache drives. It is…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."
"The initial setup is pretty quick."
"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."
"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."
"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."
"StoreVirtual is that it is our software-defined solution and it's everywhere."
"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."
"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."
"A company can scale it easily."
"The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second."
"It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime."
"Simplicity of not having to buy FC or FCoE SAN. Instead, we buy servers with their own storage."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The main positive impact that Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has had on my company over the years is increasing performance; our checks show it is three times faster than VMware, making us extremely happy and motivated to keep using it."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"The solution is expensive."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"I would like to have this solution easily integrate with VMware."
"The product is coming to end-of-life in the next three years."
"In our country, Qatar, most of the industry isn't using too much HP. StoreVirtual doesn't move fast. It's not a popular product."
"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."
"It is a costly solution."
"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."
"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."
"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"There is a lot of room for improvement. I would like to have more tools to monitor the function and problems."
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct a three, as there were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions."
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"The management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"The product is very expensive."
"The price is a little high."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"If you buy a five-year license, not only does the technical support expire after five years, but you also lose the ability to change and expand the VSA, and the systems won't go down."
"One of the key features about it is that when you buy either a VSA license or a StoreVirtual appliance, all your software's included."
"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."
"It costs less than $10,000 for one machine. If it costs more than 15% higher than this, then the customer may change to another solution."
"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."
"For our organization, I believe the cost is 16,000 Euros for a three-year license. It costs a bit more to do the maintenance on our servers as well. It's also on an HP ProLiant server and an organization will need to do the maintenance there also. I believe the price for that is around 2000 Euros a year."
"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
872,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
14%
Transportation Company
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is bes...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
Overall, I find the cost of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct to be affordable for the on-prem Windows pure solution, b...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
Microsoft should improve the management aspect of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, as we have raised multiple recomme...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA
MS Storage Spaces Direct
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.