Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StorPool comparison

Microsoft and StorPool are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Microsoft is ranked #10 with an average rating of 6.5, while StorPool is ranked #20. Microsoft holds a 7.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to StorPool’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StorPool users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StorPool and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct are competing in the software-defined storage solutions category. StorPool is preferred for its cost-effectiveness and excellent efficiency, while Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers strong ecosystem integration which benefits users embedded in Microsoft environments.

Features: StorPool's features include scalability, data efficiency, and integration with various workloads delivering low latency and high throughput with simple management. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct provides integration with Windows Server, Hyper-V support, and broad compatibility within Microsoft infrastructures.

Room for Improvement: StorPool can enhance its documentation and support for non-standard environments and broader ecosystem integration. Improvements in multi-site replication and detailed analytics could also enhance its offering. Microsoft can refine its initial deployment complexity, improve licensing cost transparency, and streamline updates to improve user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StorPool offers straightforward deployment with excellent customer service and flexibility across different environments. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct enjoys integration advantages with existing Microsoft tools but may require more time and effort for optimal configuration. Support from Microsoft is comprehensive within its ecosystem.

Pricing and ROI: StorPool provides competitive pricing with significant ROI driven by efficiency and scalability, appealing to budget-conscious users. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct might entail higher initial costs due to licensing but can offer considerable long-term ROI when leveraging Microsoft infrastructure.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StorPool

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 859,129 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 June 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.5%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StorPool is 2.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. 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

reviewer1721697

Managing Director at CloudScale365, Inc.

Great service and support with a constant addition of new features

As of now, the product has been working really well for us. They keep updating and launching new features. Their support has been great and have always been available. I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them. This is a great product.

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 snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

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

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

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"With StorPool we were able to build live failover on top of our LXC infrastructure. This allows us both to live-migrate containers between compute nodes without any downtime and, in case of an entire node suffering any type of failure, we can bring all containers back online within a minute on a spare compute node."

"Performance, redundancy, scalability and cost-effectiveness. StorPool delivers superbly in all of these areas."

"The two 10GE networks provide redundancy and increased performance as they serve as two separate networks doubling the throughput and doing multipathing and load balancing. We now have a high performance shared storage system which enables us to run on private cloud. Our previous system used bare-metal hardware, which provided high performance but inflexible management. Now we have best of both worlds, SSD-class performance with flexibility of a private cloud system."

"The team behind it was very engaged and had the skills and ability to support a service provider."

"The speed of the storage solution also allows us to provide service to applications that are very I/O intensive."

"Creating snapshots within seconds for big disks has helped our different migration projects since it allows us to perform them in a short period of time."

Cons

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

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

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

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

"Documentation management could be improved"

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

"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 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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"At times we need to check the disks and do some minor operations. A friendlier user interface would be useful in such cases."

"I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them."

"Live and historical performance statistics would be useful, though my understanding is that this is on the way in a future release."

"he only place we feel they could improve is the time it takes to bring new features to production."

"It would be good if, with next releases, StorPool provide a better GUI for monitoring and statistics. This would make our experience even better and complete."

"Monitoring and statistics UI is a bit clumsy."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"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."

"The price could be cheaper."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"StorPool software is cost-effective and gives us a pricing advantage over our competitors."

"StorPool's pricing and licensing model is very transparent. As always, one has to due his due diligence when choosing a product like distributed storage solutions."

"It provides us with a significant reduction in TCO due to their pay-as-you-grow licensing model, which means we don’t have to pay upfront for hardware and licensing for capacity thStorPoolat we don’t yet need to use."

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

859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

25%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Performing Arts

12%

Government

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 for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

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

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?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 62% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 14% 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

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StorPool

Compared 56% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs StorPool

Compared 22% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs StorPool

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StorPool

Compared 9% of the time

More StorPool Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

June 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Buyer's Guide

StorPool

May 2025

Download StorPool product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

No data available

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

StorPool is intelligent storage software that runs on standard servers and builds scalable, high-performance storage system out of these servers (software-defined storage). It focuses on the block-level storage and excels at it. It is incredibly flexible and can be deployed in both converged setups (on compute nodes, alongside VMs and applications) or on separate storage nodes.

StorPool has advanced fully-distributed architecture and is arguably the fastest and most efficient block-storage software on the market today. It is the best storage system when building a cloud.

StorPool

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

CloudSigma, Kualo, Togglebox, Neterra, Serveo, Superhosting.bg, GroupOne, DRFortress, Metanet, Dia, Server Storage Solutions

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StorPool

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StorPool

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StorPool 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.