No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Tomas Basus - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Professional at NIPOS
Optimized storage has supported high availability but performance and node limits still need work
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and there are problems regarding performance that need to be addressed. I have found that performance is not as good as expected with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. It is risky because of quorum; it is better in three nodes, but my budget only allows for two nodes, so I need to use a witness, which is not an optimal configuration. I am not using the automatic rebalancing feature that much in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. I have not utilized nested resiliency in my operations. I am using the most standard features available in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited
Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments
I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Remote assist is a valuable feature that supports customers and engineers in troubleshooting and resolving issues, allowing for easy problem identification and repair."
"We clearly have seen the difference between having storage on Dell EMC or NetApp versus what we have now on Pure Storage, and the investment was a clear win for us."
"We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"The most valuable feature is its data reduction."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"We chose Microsoft due to its simplicity, affordability, reliability and performance."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"For an on-prem campus, it has been fine."
"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."
"In terms of reliability, scalability, performance, security and so forth, it is definitely very good."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The product allows our OpenStack environment to move away from the classic network type of backend storage and enables increased resilience using commodity hardware pricing, which is a major benefit."
"Companies that can afford completely flash-based pipe servers should go for Ceph because it's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."
"The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations."
"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."
"Red Hat Ceph Storage is working exactly as it should be; it's running in the background, it's working, and it doesn't bother me."
"It's possible that we should have used the solution a long time ago as it appears to cost the business less money to run some of our data systems using it."
"The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good."
"radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity."
 

Cons

"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"If there is one thing that I did not appreciate about Pure, it is that between the two different lines, which would be FlashBlade and Everpure FlashArray, there is no easy way to migrate LUNs as far as being able to replicate across those platforms."
"I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliability and features are commendable."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"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."
"The reason why this product is not being widely accepted by the public is that it doesn't include intuitive streamline, which makes it far from complete."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"Microsoft's frontline support is not adequate if you rely on this for your business."
"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."
"It took me a long time to get the storage drivers for the communication with Kubernetes up and running. The documentation could improve it is lacking information. I'm not sure if this is a Ceph problem or if Ceph should address this, but it was something I ran into. Additionally, there is a performance issue I am having that I am looking into, but overall I am satisfied with the performance."
"When it comes to the capabilities of Red Hat Ceph Storage such as object, block, and file storage, I am not fully satisfied."
"Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure."
"Ceph is not a mature product at this time. Guides are misleading and incomplete. You will meet all kind of bugs and errors trying to install the system for the first time. It requires very experienced personnel to support and keep the system in working condition, and install all necessary packets."
"Ceph Storage lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication. That is a huge loss in terms of performance."
"We have encountered slight integration issues."
"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."
"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"The license for Pure Storage FlashArray includes the support and there are no additional payments that are needed. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you use a backup solution."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"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."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"We never used the paid support."
"There is no cost for software."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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?
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and...
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Ceph Storage?
I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool. I have plenty of experienc...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
MS Storage Spaces Direct
Ceph
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.