Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Veritas Access comparison

Microsoft and Veritas are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Microsoft is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8, while Veritas is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 7.3% mindshare in SDS, compared to Veritas’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Veritas users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and Veritas Access are competing in the software-defined storage solutions category. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct holds an advantage in Windows integration, while Veritas Access offers broader environmental support.

Features: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct provides strong performance, scalability, and native Windows Server integration. Veritas Access offers versatile multi-platform support, comprehensive data management, and diverse storage configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct enables simpler deployment for Windows users due to its native integration. Veritas Access, while facing complexity due to broad platform support, provides thorough documentation and expert customer service for diverse setups. Both offer reliable support tailored to their ecosystems.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct's competitive pricing benefits organizations within Microsoft infrastructure, offering potentially higher ROI through lower licensing costs. Veritas Access may require a higher initial investment but delivers long-term ROI in cross-platform environments with its data management capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Veritas Access Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Veritas Access

September 2025

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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.3%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Access is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.2%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct	7.3%
Veritas Access	1.1%
Other	87.4%

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.

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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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Jayson Martin

Head IT Data Storage at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Provides seamless integration within the existing infrastructure and has an easy deployment process

We leverage Veritas Access for efficient management of our extensive unstructured data. Its cost-effectiveness, notably providing the lowest cost per terabyte, has influenced our decision to use it for extended data retention periods. We aim to minimize yearly expenditure on capacity while ensuring high-performance levels. Despite focusing on long-term retention, it enables direct and efficient data recovery from the client, ensuring that accessibility is maintained. The most essential feature of Veritas Access for our storage needs is its support for both block and object storage. The data tiering capability of Veritas Access has had a positive impact on our storage efficiency by preventing unnecessary expenditures on capacity, especially in terms of backup operations. It provides seamless integration within the existing infrastructure. It helps us meet compliance and data retention requirements, particularly from an insurer's perspective. I rate the product a nine out of ten.

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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 features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"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."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

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

"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 initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Its technical support is excellent."

"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."

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"The product deployment is easy."

"It has a huge deduplication ratio for backups of long-term archives."

"Veritas Access is user-friendly and the NAS and SAN volumes are valuable."

Cons

"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."

"The speed could be improved."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

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

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

"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."

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."

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"I would like to see Veritas Access included as an S3 target."

"The downtime of Veritas Access could be improved."

"They could improve additional fees for the platform's data capacity. It could be more cost-effective."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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."

"This product is not cheap. The only extra cost is the licensing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

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...

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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...

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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...

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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 do you like most about Veritas Access?

The product deployment is easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Veritas Access?

They could improve additional fees for the platform's data capacity. It could be more cost-effective.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Veritas Access?

We use the product for long-term data retention.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% 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

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 58% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 8% 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

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NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Veritas Access

Compared 100% of the time

More Veritas Access 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

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2025

Download Veritas Access 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

Veritas Access is a software-defined, scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) solution for unstructured data that uses intelligent policies to optimize data placement on-premise or on public clouds. Access provides resiliency, multi-protocol access and automated data movement to realize application performance, cost-effectiveness and scalability gains.

Veritas

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Veritas Access

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Veritas Access

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