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DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade reduces total cost of ownership by enhancing efficiency, enabling fast restorations, and supporting diverse use cases.
Sentiment score
6.8
DataCore SANsymphony enhances security and availability, offering high ROI through hardware reuse and cost-effective storage and uptime savings.
Sentiment score
5.3
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers cost savings by enabling self-management, reducing fees, and providing long-term financial benefits.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
While our systems will be out of life in a few years, I believe that in that time, the payback from Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct will save us money on virtualization and storage costs, making it extremely beneficial after six years of use.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I see some ROI in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, such as saving time and money, and I estimate these savings to be about 30%.
IT Professional at NIPOS
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade's support is generally praised for responsiveness, despite occasional delays and communication issues, maintaining a favorable reputation.
Sentiment score
6.4
DataCore SANsymphony's support is praised for being rapid, knowledgeable, effective, and highly rated, despite occasional inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
4.4
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct support varies; many prefer hardware brands' support over Microsoft's, finding frontline support sometimes inadequate.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Their technical support has been perfect lately, so I would give it a 10.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
Owner at Arsium
The customer support is perfect.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
There were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft focuses on Azure as a cloud service.
Solution architect at Netland
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Pure Storage FlashBlade excels in scalability, with seamless expansion, downtime-free growth, and praised support across various sectors.
Sentiment score
8.5
DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its scalability, hardware independence, and adaptability to both small and large environments.
Sentiment score
6.1
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers scalability and flexibility, though users report challenges with minimal node setups affecting stability.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
There are between 5 and 10,000 people using it in our organization.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has been extremely good, allowing for both vertical and horizontal expansion.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It has limitations; it's configured for eight servers per site but can be scaled to 16 servers.
Solution architect at Netland
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is limited.
IT Professional at NIPOS
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers exceptional reliability and impressive stability, featuring 99.999% uptime, seamless upgrades, and high performance.
Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is stable with skilled management, but initial setup challenges require proper configuration and familiarity.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has been incredibly stable as long as it is configured correctly; incorrect configurations lead to surprises, which is common with any product.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Storage Spaces Direct is stable enough, however, there can be some glitches.
Solution architect at Netland
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend better pricing, cloud integration, support, documentation, and analytics for Pure Storage FlashBlade, improving efficiency and compatibility.
DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct requires improved management, integration, performance clarity, and better tools for monitoring and issue resolution.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Its configuration should be easier.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
One way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
System Engineer at Bechtle
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
Owner at Arsium
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
The licensing for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct could be improved to be clearer, as calculating license requirements requires significant expertise; even Microsoft resources do not provide the full picture needed for licensing, leaving gaps that become evident once we move to deploy solutions.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
One year ago, I had a problem, and it was difficult to identify and solve due to a lack of tools.
Owner at Micronet Systems
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and there are problems regarding performance that need to be addressed.
IT Professional at NIPOS
 

Setup Cost

Pure Storage FlashBlade is costly but valued for performance, reliability, and reduced administrative overhead, justifying its premium price.
DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is cost-effective with Hyper-V integration, despite potential unexpected costs with Azure monitoring tools.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making it good for us.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
Owner at Arsium
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
System Engineer at Bechtle
I find the Azure Local to be a bit expensive, especially due to hidden costs associated with additional tools needed for monitoring and alerting.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct.
Solution architect at Netland
 

Valuable Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade excels with ease of use, fast performance, scalability, seamless integration, and efficient storage features.
DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers high performance, redundancy, and reliability with seamless integration into Windows Data Center and cost-effectiveness.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
IT Field Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades.
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
System Engineer at Bechtle
DataCore SANsymphony's ability to enhance storage utilization is very good because it's agnostic and it can be deployed on every environment, which is perfect for my clients.
Owner at Arsium
This flexibility and scalability have helped our organization in practice because it is important for us as it decouples the storage management software from the physical hardware, creating a software layer of intelligence.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
The redundancy and fault tolerance features of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct have helped maintain data integrity and availability in my company by providing multiple copies through three-way mirroring, delivering hardware performance needed for our applications, which is crucial.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
For caching, I use disks with more total bits written, which protects the main storage because writes are combined.
Owner at Micronet Systems
The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.
Solution architect at Netland
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), File and Object Storage (8th)
DataCore SANsymphony
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (3rd)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 6.3%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 6.1%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony6.3%
Pure Storage FlashBlade3.3%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct6.1%
Other84.3%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stanislaw Mielicki - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Performing Arts
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
DataCore Virtual SAN
MS Storage Spaces Direct
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,927 professionals have used our research since 2012.