HPE StoreVirtual vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #21, while Microsoft is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to Microsoft’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

HPE StoreVirtual and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct compete in the network storage domain, with HPE StoreVirtual having the edge in integrated platform capabilities and broad hypervisor support.

Features: HPE StoreVirtual offers high availability with its Network RAID feature, broad hypervisor support, and a single-point contact for issue resolution. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is notable for its performance via RDMA, feature integration within the Windows Server environment, and scalability for Microsoft ecosystem users.

Room for Improvement: HPE StoreVirtual needs better partner implementation strategies, a simplified licensing process, and improvements in latency and configuration. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct requires more comprehensive documentation, better API support, and improvements in network capabilities and management interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE StoreVirtual is acclaimed for easy on-premises deployment and has a reliable customer service team. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is valued for its integration within Windows systems and benefits from a broad support network.

Pricing and ROI: HPE StoreVirtual offers competitive licensing but can become costly without careful management, yet it typically provides excellent ROI. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, part of the Windows Server suite, offers cost efficiencies for Microsoft users with positive ROI, although initial costs can be high.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

September 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, 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%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.2%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct	7.3%
HPE StoreVirtual	1.5%
Other	87.0%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Read full review

Vebjorn Nergaard

Senior IT Engineer at Guard Automation AS

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.

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Stanislaw Mielicki

Solution architect at Netland

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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"All of the administrative tasks are easy and everything is centralized."

"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."

"It's very stable and it's easy to use."

"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."

"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."

"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."

"StoreVirtual is that it is our software-defined solution and it's everywhere."

"It appears to be very stable and very robust."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."

"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."

"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."

"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"

"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 initial setup is straightforward."

"Its technical support is excellent."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

Cons

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"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."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"f you're doing the 10Gb adapters, SFPs don't come with it, but it doesn't say that. It might say that somewhere else, but it's not clear."

"I would like to have this solution easily integrate with VMware."

"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."

"Hardware and disk failures are happening frequently."

"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."

"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."

"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."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."

"There is a lot of room for improvement. I would like to have more tools to monitor the function and problems."

"The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses."

"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."

"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."

"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."

"Documentation management could be improved"

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price could be cheaper."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."

"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."

"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."

"The solution is expensive."

"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

12%

Performing Arts

12%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 54% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 46% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 58% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 8% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 6% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

September 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

August 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

MS Storage Spaces Direct

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

HPE StoreVirtual storage ensures that organisations can optimise the benefits of server virtualisation with cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery. The iSCSI-based, scale-out storage platform is easy to manage and change – meeting ongoing business demands without creating IT bottlenecks or application downtime. Overcoming the cost and management limitations of traditional storage area networks (SANs), HPE StoreVirtual nodes use storage clustering to form a single pool of resources that enable organisations to buy only what they need today, scaling non-disruptively to meet requirements in the future.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Storage Spaces Direct uses industry-standard servers with local-attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable software-defined storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional SAN or NAS arrays. Its converged or hyper-converged architecture radically simplifies procurement and deployment, while features like caching, storage tiers, and erasure coding, together with the latest hardware innovation like RDMA networking and NVMe drives, deliver unrivaled efficiency and performance.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

September 2025

Free Report: HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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