Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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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 Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.3%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 5.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)	5.0%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct	7.3%
Other	83.6%

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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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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Amarnath Charugundla

System Engineer at Tata Consultancy

Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings

Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

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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

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

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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 most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

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

"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"The best features of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are its simplified management, scale, and performance; data services can be easily consolidated, which help in disaster recovery services, replication, and reducing complexity and costs associated with this architecture."

"The interface is quite simple. It is very good. It is easy to configure. It also has a powerful CLI."

"The scalability, data redundancy, and security are valuable."

"The inclusion of it in the Nutanix Objects Storage platform simplifies my process as I am no longer required to acquire a separate platform. Instead, I can simply purchase additional licenses as needed. All management can be performed from a single unified interface, making it a convenient and streamlined experience."

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Unified Storage is SMB file sharing."

"Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language."

"We have seen reduced overheads and increased efficiency with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)."

"It is more stable and scalable compared to the Windows file server."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"The solution is expensive."

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

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

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

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"I would like to see better integration."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"We couldn't access Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) from Prism Central due to bugs. The bugs that Nutanix fixed in newer versions prevented us from accessing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) from Prism Central."

"Security is an area for improvement. When there are vulnerabilities, there needs to be a faster approval process. The solution needs to automatically target the vulnerabilities and not waste too much time."

"The only thing I would say is missing for us it is FTP protocol compatibility."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved in the area of big data workloads, as we still need to improve performance there."

"The solution needs to be more open to integration with other vendors. Sometimes, we struggle with the support process. Our skilled engineers must explain our problems to everyone, even though we've already done preliminary investigations. The support team follows standard procedures, which can be painful. We're not a small customer, especially in the life sciences sector, so we'd appreciate more specialized support. I've heard Nutanix Unified Storage has teams dedicated to life sciences and healthcare; we should be part of that."

"There is no tagging concept in Nutanix Unified Storage where you can tag the servers."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved in the area of big data workloads, as we still need to improve performance there."

"The management is pretty clunky, in my opinion. It could be a little bit better."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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 product is very expensive."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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."

"Nutanix Unified Storage pricing is reasonable."

"Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive."

"The solution's pricing is fair."

"The licensing currently works based on a software license. If we have files, volumes, and other licenses combined, that would be more valuable. I don't want to go for a separate license for files and a separate license for volumes. We have unified storage, so the licensing should also be unified. That would be helpful."

"I hope that it will stay the way it is. We have seen the changes in VMware and what happened to them. I have heard that Nutanix will raise the prices, but I hope that they will not do that."

"If we compare the cost of Nutanix Objects Storage to other solutions such as VMware licenses, our current choice is Nutanix Objects Storage. This solution is more cost-effective. However, adding VMware to Nutanix would not be a cost-efficient decision, which is why we do not use it anymore."

"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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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

15%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

29%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	63

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...

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...

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

It is very cost-effective compared to the traditional environment. With new hardware, it's a long-term investment but...

What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

The cybersecurity features are used for protecting unstructured data against threats such as ransomware.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 20% 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

Scality RING vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 7% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Storage Fusion vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 4% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

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

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

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)