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...

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (17th), File and Object Storage (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.8%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% 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 initial setup is straightforward."

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

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

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

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

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

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"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."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

"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 solution provides many controllers."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."

"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."

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

"Documentation management could be improved"

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

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"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."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"The solution is expensive."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"I would like to see better integration."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

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

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

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

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

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The product is very expensive."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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 do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

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 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 64% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 13% 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 5% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% 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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% 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