Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Reviews

Name: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct
Brand: Microsoft
Rating: 3.6 (8 reviews)

3.6 out of 5

8 reviews
71% willing to recommend

324 followers

What is Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

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.

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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is the #8 ranked solution in top Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions. PeerSpot users give Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct an average rating of 7.2 out of 10. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is most commonly compared to Red Hat Ceph Storage: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 56% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 13% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

January 2025

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Featured reviews

Lawrence Tse

Founder, Professional Services Director, Lead Architect at Falcon Consulting

This solution has an on-premise clouding bridge, but actively, there is no cloud version. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine. For me, it's very difficult to deal with marketing, I need to handle it for Microsoft. When we try to engage with customers, they are not interested because Microsoft doesn't have the corresponding credit, and due to this, we lose customers. If I am going to be confident enough to promote this Microsoft solution, I need my customer to have 100% trust in me. I am not comfortable promoting this solution to new customers.

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Grzegorz Kedziora

General Manager and CTO at SIIT

I use this solution to make a few-to-one storage from the internal disk to the servers 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. There are strict compatibility methods.…

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reviewer984885

Infrastructure Lead at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We had challenges with stability in the first few months while testing S2D, just as we were migrating production to it. It was frustrating at times, there were learning curves, and when you run your storage over the network, you need to be fully confident in every aspect of your cluster's network configuration. I believe we would have had similar challenges with vSAN or any other storage solution using our network as the host/storage interconnect. After working with it and learning it more, I have much more confidence in the stability of the product, and with Storage Spaces Ready Nodes from vendors (which didn't exist when we bought and built), it is much easier to become confident quickly.

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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct mindshare

As of January 2025, the mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category stands at 8.2%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Software Defined Storage (SDS)	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	Jan 18, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Red Hat Ceph Storage	4.1	20.2%	81%	23 interviews Add to research
StarWind Virtual SAN	4.8	9.0%	100%	189 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

Room for Improvement

"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."
"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."

Pricing

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is perceived as cost-effective compared to VMware when using Hyper-V. Users highlight its affordability as a bundled feature of Windows Server with no ongoing costs or hidden fees. However, perceptions of cost vary; some users find the data center licensing relatively expensive. Despite mixed views on expense, the pricing is recognized as a one-time investment with benefits like free upgrades, making it attractive for enterprises evaluating hyper-converged infrastructure options.

"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."

Popular Use Cases

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is primarily implemented for full production and serves as a primary storage and hypervisor solution in a hyper-converged setup. System integrators utilize it mainly for consolidations, enhancing ACI and EDI processes, and supporting high IOPS needs. Customers use it for hybrid culture expansion, optimizing data costs, and site recovery. It facilitates consolidation of storage from internal disks to servers and competes with VMware due to lower maintenance costs.

Service and Support

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct users mention that Microsoft's frontline help is inadequate for business reliance, making Microsoft Premier support necessary for larger entities. Some prefer using support from providers like Dell or Lenovo, which have direct Microsoft assistance. Reliability varies with contract type; premium contracts offer access to advanced levels. Users rate support positively, with one rating it four out of five.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.