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HPE StoreVirtual 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:
 

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)
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)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
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 HPE StoreVirtual is 2.2%, up from 1.0% 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 (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade3.3%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct6.1%
HPE StoreVirtual2.2%
Other88.4%
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.
Vebjorn Nergaard - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Engineer at Guard Automation AS
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
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."
"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."
"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with glitches or bugs."
"Data is stored in two different places, leveraging more security and availability. Therefore, network problems are having less affect on iSCSI."
"The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second."
"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."
"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."
"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."
"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is hardware independent."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"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."
"The main advantages are price and performance, and I am happy with the combination."
"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."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"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."
"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."
"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"The speed could be improved."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."
"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."
"It is a costly solution."
"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."
"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."
"The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options."
"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."
"it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products."
"The management aspect of the solution needs to be improved in order to make the product stronger."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct a three, as there were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions."
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"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."
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Media Company
11%
Performing Arts
10%
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 Business19
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
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...
Ask a question
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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 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
HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA
MS Storage Spaces Direct
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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: December 2025.
879,443 professionals have used our research since 2012.