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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StorPool comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th), File and Object Storage (6th)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
StorPool
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 7.8%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StorPool is 2.4%, 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stanislaw Mielicki - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
it_user689271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enabled us to increase both our gross margins and performance while also decreasing latency
We initially started using StorPool at three locations with a capacity of 250+ TB.By implementing StorPool, we managed to increase both our gross margins and performance, while decreasing the latency to 0.19-0.26 ms up to 125,000 IOPS We now deliver all-flash performance and improved uptime with…

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 of this solution is performance."
"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"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."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"Its technical support is excellent."
"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."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"Performance, redundancy, scalability and cost-effectiveness. StorPool delivers superbly in all of these areas."
"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."
"The team behind it was very engaged and had the skills and ability to support a service provider."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."
"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."
"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."
"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."
"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 is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"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."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"he only place we feel they could improve is the time it takes to bring new features to production."
"Monitoring and statistics UI is a bit clumsy."
"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."
"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."
"At times we need to check the disks and do some minor operations. A friendlier user interface would be useful in such cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"The price could be cheaper."
"The product is very expensive."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price is a little high."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"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."
"StorPool software is cost-effective and gives us a pricing advantage over our competitors."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
22%
Performing Arts
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
 

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...
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...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
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?
Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct. Licenses can be on a monthly or yearly basis, depending on the addi...
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Also Known As

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MS Storage Spaces Direct
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Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. StorPool and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.