Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs QoreStor comparison

Microsoft and Quest Software are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Microsoft is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8, while Quest Software is ranked #23 with an average rating of 7.0. Microsoft holds a 7.4% mindshare in SDS, compared to Quest Software’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and QoreStor are key players in the data storage solutions market. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct holds the upper hand in scalability and seamless Windows Server integration, making it ideal for environments within the Microsoft ecosystem. QoreStor differentiates itself with impressive data management and optimization features, positioning it as the preferred choice for enterprises focused on storage efficiency.

Features: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers high scalability, integration with Windows Server, and advanced data resiliency featuring robust storage pooling. QoreStor excels with its superior deduplication, compression, and replication capabilities aimed at maximizing storage efficiency. It further enhances storage optimization, proving beneficial for enterprises focused on data reduction.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct could improve its cost structure, as initial setup costs are often high. There's room for enhanced flexibility in non-Microsoft environments and improvements in user-friendly interfaces. QoreStor can improve on storage scalability beyond deduplication and compression. Integrating more seamlessly with broader environments beyond backup solutions would enhance its appeal. Increasing compatibility with additional operating systems could broaden its utility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct provides seamless deployment within existing Windows Server environments, appealing to organizations already using Microsoft systems. Its integration enables an intuitive setup process. QoreStor features a flexible deployment model and strong platform adaptation, supported by comprehensive customer service options. Its deployment versatility offers an edge across diverse platform environments.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct's initial setup can be costly, yet its integration efficiencies lead to significant ROI benefits within Microsoft ecosystems. QoreStor offers competitive pricing that maximizes ROI through its focused data reduction capabilities, enabling cost savings over time. Its pricing structure, combined with performance features, offers excellent ROI potential, especially for cost-conscious organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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 August 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.4%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QoreStor is 0.1%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

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…

Read full review

Jeff Manuszak

CTO at EDSI

Cost-efficient, highly scalable, and installable on different types of hardware

They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved. We are pretty lenient as we do a lot of IT support ourselves. We are not very hard on support organizations, but when a customer has a support issue, it would be easier if the support processes were a little bit more automated. It would be beneficial to have an easier way to upload diagnostic dump files. They can make it easy for the customer to collect the diagnostic data. There can be some kind of monitoring solutions to alert users to issues with the appliance or software, making it easy for customers to monitor their systems in the field. This is especially critical because it stores customers' backups, and a failure can have significant business impacts. If a customer does not have the backups and has a disaster, they can be out of business, so monitoring is key.

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 product is scalable and easy to expand."

"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 initial setup is pretty quick."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"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."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"Quest QoreStor is very stable compared to our previous solution."

"The features we use for the data deduplication are nice because we're able to back up a much larger amount of data, yet it doesn't necessarily take up that much data on the devices."

"The dedupe and compression are pretty extreme. On disk, we're getting dedupe rates of up to 65 percent of data and compression of 34 percent. When you go to the cloud, it's more like 76 percent for dedupe and almost 50 percent for compression."

"QoreStor has helped us to reduce our backup storage requirements on-premises. We've been using the same devices for quite a while, and so it lets us keep using them as opposed to having to rip out all that hardware and create a new on-prem solution. The advantage here is even if we had to retire the hardware tomorrow, the QoreStor part doesn't change. We just have to have additional hardware and put the solution back on whatever hardware we pick and it'll do the same thing."

"I would rate QoreStor a ten out of ten for what it offers for the price."

"It integrates with various backup software solutions, which makes it compatible with existing backup workflows and processes."

"The extreme compression of data is a big thing for us. We were looking for an online backup solution, and QoreStor is very good in terms of data compression. It helps us minimize the required storage in the Blob Storage environment."

"Data deduplication and replication would be the top two features. The encryption and cloud tiering are also attractive for the future."

More QoreStor pros

Cons

"I would like to see better integration."

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

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"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."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"The importance of support is significant to me. I was working for a service provider, and all of our customers had a Quest or warning. Sometimes the support really underperforms."

"There can be some kind of monitoring solutions to alert users to issues with the appliance or software, making it easy for customers to monitor their systems in the field."

"The ransomware protection of QoreStor could use improvement."

"In terms of improvement, we would like to have an Air Gap feature to prevent a virus from attaching to something. So that when we don't do a backup, we want the QoreStor to stay offline. It would be a nice feature to have."

"They need to increase their maximum capacity. Other than that, they're doing a pretty good job."

"Support is one point of improvement for Quest QoreStor. Support is sometimes not adequate."

"They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved."

"The management interface is in need of improvement. The graphical user interface (GUI) for the web management tools appears clunky, and not super intuitive."

More QoreStor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"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."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

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

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

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

"Its pricing model is very attractive. You have one price, and you get everything from QoreStor."

"Quest QoreStor's pricing is affordable. We evaluated Veeam, a well-known company for backup solutions, but found their pricing to be quite high. Veeam's price was almost double. For us, Quest QoreStor is very affordable."

"The cost is per terabyte, and overall, the cost was reasonable when compared to some competitors."

"The pricing is good. It is competitive for a managed services provider. I like the ability to pay by the terabyte, allowing for an incremental cost that we and our customers can afford, so the solution grows with the customer."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What else besides data replication does QoreStor offer?

Quest QoreStor can be used for multiple things besides data replication. For example, it can be trusted to make a bac...

See all answers

How does Quest QoreStore protect your data?

One of our favorite features of Quest QoreStore for data protection isn't the backup, actually, though we're using it...

See all answers

How does Quest QoreStore solve repetitive data replicas?

When I first found out about data replication and the many benefits it had, I couldn't help but wonder - what about t...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 59% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 7% 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

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs QoreStor

Compared 100% of the time

More QoreStor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

August 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Buyer's Guide

QoreStor

August 2025

Download QoreStor product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

QoreStor

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

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

QoreStor optimizes storage costs through advanced deduplication and compression, seamlessly integrating with backup infrastructures and supporting diverse hardware. It enhances data security with replication and offers flexible deployment with minimal maintenance.

QoreStor offers significant benefits in deduplication, which leads to space savings and reduced storage expenses. This system integrates effortlessly with backup platforms like NetVault and Veeam, functioning as a reliable backup target for both on-premises and cloud environments. The ease of integration is complemented by its replication capabilities, which add a layer of data security by enabling geographically dispersed backups. Its cloud tiering functionality extends storage capabilities, ensuring cost-effectiveness compared to other solutions. While enhancements are needed in areas like Cloud Tier support, Air Gap features, and GUI intuitiveness, the continued developments aim to further optimize storage and backup solutions.

What are QoreStor's key features?

Deduplication and Compression: Achieves high deduplication rates and space savings.
Seamless Integration: Works well with diverse backup infrastructures.
Replication: Facilitates data security through multi-location backups.
Cloud Tiering: Extends storage capabilities efficiently.
Minimal Maintenance: Requires low maintenance efforts.

What benefits should be considered in user reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing and optimized storage.
Storage Optimization: Reduces storage needs with advanced data handling.
Flexibility: Supports diverse hardware and deployment options.
Data Security: Enhances protection with robust replication features.

QoreStor is widely implemented in industries for backup and restore operations, providing data deduplication and compression as key functionalities. Its integration as a backup target across platforms like NetVault and Veeam makes it ideal for enterprises that require efficient data management and storage cost control. Many organizations utilize its features to optimize cloud storage seamlessly while focusing on internal data handling or acting as service resellers.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

American Airlines, at&t, Bank of America. Barclays, ebay, Ford

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor

July 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor report.

See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors.

We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.