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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th), File and Object Storage (8th)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS)
HCI
 

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…
Pramod-Talekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features
While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

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 is Safe Mode."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"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 price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
"It is more stable now than it was before. It's not like it was in the first year. Now it is stable, and we trust it more."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is stable."
"We didn't only choose vSAN; we chose VMware because of SR-IOV, which is more on the hypervisor level and not on the vSAN storage. It's part of the whole system."
"VMware vSAN is a global solution, so we can manage all the storage solutions in one place. It's embedded in VCI solutions."
"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."
"When we do to do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodes"
"it's easy to scale, it's easy to predict IOP needs, and you can design for low latency using all-flash... Also, for setting up new clusters for VDI quickly, it's nice. You don't have to wait on an order for a storage vendor to ship you a system and help you configure it, you do it all yourself. And the sizing guides are pretty straightforward."
"I would suggest customers use VMware vSAN because VMware offers a stable solution with good hypervisors and the best features compared to other solutions."
 

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."
"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."
"The speed could be improved."
"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."
"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."
"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."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"There could be improvements in public 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."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"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."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"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."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"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."
"I think it needs to be more cost-effective. I would also say that even though the capacity is good, there is also room for improvement there. Also, they could improve the security of the system."
"A vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this."
"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."
"It can be very expensive."
"When we talk about improvements for vSAN, there is some way to go from a at least stability perspective. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level that most of the features you need in production are there."
"Troubleshooting tools could be improved."
"There could be more features with the automatic backup."
"One of the things that we've had challenges with are when we place hosts into maintenance mode. Sometimes doing so triggers large re-sync processes which can be time-consuming and which have, at times, pushed the capacity to the threshold. I definitely think making some changes in that area would provide some big improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"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."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"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."
"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."
"We have increased our user productivity."
"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."
"The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."
"Cost-wise, the Nutanix licenses were cheaper, but in terms of the hardware, there was some contention around it. So, in terms of implementation, the way Nutanix was projecting the implementation on their end was that there were a lot of open-source admin platforms. vSAN is a licensed product in VMware, and Nutanix was proposing a KVM solution, which is open source. That's why their pricing was a bit cheaper, but when we were trying to compare it with an enterprise version of their management platform, it boiled down to the VMware vSAN being most effective in the long run."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
"The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable."
"I'd love for this product to be cheaper."
"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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...
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...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS Storage Spaces Direct
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
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