Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

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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 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 VMware Software Defined Storage is 0.9%, down from 1.1% 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.

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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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RashidAnwar

Senior Project Lead at Tetra Pak

A stable solution that can be used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations

VMware Software Defined Storage is used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption. Redundancy and scalability are the other valuable features of the solution. You can scale it on the go,…

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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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"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."

"It's very easy-to-use."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Its technical support is excellent."

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

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

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

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

Cons

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

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

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

"Its configuration should be easier."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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 optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

"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."

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

"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."

"Documentation management could be improved"

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The price is a little high."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"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."

"The price could be cheaper."

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

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."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

"The solution is very expensive."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

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850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

No data available

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 do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

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...

What do you like most about VMware Software Defined Storage?

VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% 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 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 64% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 13% 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 5% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 100% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

VMware Software Defined Storage

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

VMware SDS

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

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

Helse Nord, Sky

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. VMware Software Defined Storage