DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

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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 October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 7.2%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.3%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	7.2%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct	7.3%
Other	81.4%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy

I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.

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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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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

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

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

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures."

"The most valuable feature for us is that we can adjust the size of the storage very easily, without stopping production."

"I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product."

"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."

"Continuous data protection (CDP), can be used to "protect" again ransomware by recording all write on disk in a log. You can recover your data with incredible time granularity."

"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."

"DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay."

"SANsymphony is flexible, with many potential options for implementation. SANsymphony's can be used with VMware, Hyper-V, or even with a hypervisor agnostic approach. It can also be used for strictly physical non-virtualized solutions."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

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

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

Cons

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

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

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"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."

"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 Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The main problem is there is no DataCore OS."

"The solution is constantly evolving."

"The graphical interface is not always very stable."

"SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has. For example, vSAN has a special feature called continuous data protection. It provides the ability to go back in time to a given moment. You can see what was on your disk in the past up to two weeks. That's a great feature because ransomware attacks are increasingly common, and that provides you some kind of protection."

"The cloud reporting interface is quite poor compared to other vendors."

"I found it a little unnecessary to have to rename the configurations within the graphics console in order to have unique names."

"We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony."

"The alert system could have more features."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"There is a lot of room for improvement. I would like to have more tools to monitor the function and problems."

"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."

"Documentation management could be improved"

"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."

"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."

"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"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."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"The price is a little high."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The solution is cost effective."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

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

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.

What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like...

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and s...

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?

Overall, I find the cost of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct to be affordable for the on-prem Windows pure solution, b...

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...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 57% 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 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

DataCore SANsymphony

October 2025

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

MS Storage Spaces Direct

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

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

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

Sample Customers

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

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct