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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)
19th
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
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.1%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 8.2%, up from 7.5% 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.
Lawrence Tse - PeerSpot reviewer
A great solution for fostering the natural expansion of the traditional hybrid culture
Most of the VMware customers I have been engaging with say they have experienced engagement problems. VMware is trying to sell off the VMware enterprise cost and the whole solution is being sold down to a customer, whereas, usually they would try to intentionally avoid talking about the related Windows license. It's not very eye-catching but it's still sizable and we have implemented several Storage Spaces Direct projects for our customers. Currently, we're working hard to replace some of the special storage and hopefully even replace the harder converged storage, etc. Documentation management could be improved. The reason why this product is not being widely accepted by the public is that it doesn't include intuitive streamline, which makes it far from complete. Storage Spaces Direct is powerful and the performance is amazing, but if you need to deliver a high price-performance ratio and visible performance, you need to have expertise in tuning. Many people will not be able to enjoy this opportunity because it's not included in the training. In this case, you need to have a system integrator. A Complete management UI using a web-based interface would be a beneficial feature. They should also use a direct API — currently, they are only using partial API. Often, our customers need to work with other web-based solutions, so they require full API. I am writing my own API for this reason, and our customers are ok with that, but full API would be a very helpful feature that would lead to much more customer satisfaction. Microsoft should provide support for other channels. Microsoft OS supports other channels, but when they become the S2D storage solution, it's very easy to customize the quality. Technically, you can switch channels and replace your storage, but you will need to store away all of the fiber channel equipment, the hardware, and the cables, which can be very expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second."
"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."
"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."
"Simplicity of not having to buy FC or FCoE SAN. Instead, we buy servers with their own storage."
"It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime."
"It appears to be very stable and very robust."
"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."
"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."
 

Cons

"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."
"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."
"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."
"Product looks like it is in the end of development."
"It is a costly solution."
"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."
"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 management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"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."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"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."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

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...
 

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: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.