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HPE StoreVirtual vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE StoreVirtual
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
20th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 8.3%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Vebjorn Nergaard - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable with helpful support and good replication
The setup is okay, however, it comes with a moderate amount of difficulty. If you are new to the product, it is difficult. You do get used to the process over time and it gets easier. A company just needs one person to maintain the solution as it just runs. You don't need any support staff. It's very, very hands-off except when you do updates. The product is living its own life.
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"he interface and the installation makes it easy as it's all in one piece of hardware and it doesn't need to be connected to anything else."
"StoreVirtual is that it is our software-defined solution and it's everywhere."
"The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with glitches or bugs."
"It appears to be very stable and very robust."
"Simplicity of not having to buy FC or FCoE SAN. Instead, we buy servers with their own storage."
"It's very stable and it's easy to use."
"All of the administrative tasks are easy and everything is centralized."
"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."
"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 most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
 

Cons

"It is a costly solution."
"f you're doing the 10Gb adapters, SFPs don't come with it, but it doesn't say that. It might say that somewhere else, but it's not clear."
"Hardware and disk failures are happening frequently."
"The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options."
"it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products."
"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."
"Product looks like it is in the end of development."
"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important 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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."
"For our organization, I believe the cost is 16,000 Euros for a three-year license. It costs a bit more to do the maintenance on our servers as well. It's also on an HP ProLiant server and an organization will need to do the maintenance there also. I believe the price for that is around 2000 Euros a year."
"One of the key features about it is that when you buy either a VSA license or a StoreVirtual appliance, all your software's included."
"It costs less than $10,000 for one machine. If it costs more than 15% higher than this, then the customer may change to another solution."
"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."
"If you buy a five-year license, not only does the technical support expire after five years, but you also lose the ability to change and expand the VSA, and the systems won't go down."
"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."
"The solution is expensive."
"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
24%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
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 addition of software assurance.
 

Also Known As

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA
MS Storage Spaces Direct
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.