Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

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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

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

9th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

8th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.6%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

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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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

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 are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

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

"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."

"Its technical support is excellent."

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

"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct 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."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

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

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price could be cheaper."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct. Licenses can be on a monthly or yearly basis, depending on the addition of software assurance.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution. At the moment, the new version does not support shared clusters. The system is easy to destroy as it is integrated ...

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 outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensure...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and performance it delivers, including quick response times.

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Comparisons

Compared 62% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 15% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 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

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Also Known As

MS Storage Spaces Direct

No data available

Overview

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

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

Sample Customers

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

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

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade