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

Microsoft and Nutanix are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Microsoft is ranked #8 with an average rating of 6.5, while Nutanix is ranked #5 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 8.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to Nutanix’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Read 8 Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct reviews

1,845 Views
1,272 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Read 72 Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) reviews

970 Views
348 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Report (Updated: September 2024).

Buyer's Guide

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

September 2024

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Helped 801,394 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

8th

Average Rating

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

5th

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (6th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), File and Object Storage (4th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 8.2%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 3.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Grzegorz Kedziora

General Manager and CTO at SIIT

Apr 29, 2024

The initial setup is straightforward, but the solution has strict compatibility methods

I use this solution to make a few-to-one storage from the internal disk to the servers 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. There are strict compatibility methods.…

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Rajadurai Mani

Storage and Backup Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jul 10, 2024

Easy to manage and provides a centralized management console

There is no tagging concept in Nutanix Unified Storage where you can tag the servers. It is more useful for backups because I manage backups as well. In other solutions, you can group servers in the backup. Although we can do a complete cluster of VMs in Nutanix, we cannot tag the server to a particular tag ID or number you can pull from the backup solutions. If you call for that number, the server should ideally take the backups irrespective of the cluster in which it is present. We faced issues with those things. We have to protect the entire cluster manually. The server tagging feature could be added to the solution's future releases. We didn't face any issues in Nutanix after the upgrade, but we had issues with the Cohesity backups. We consistently work with both the vendors, and that has been fixed. So that is the only thing that we had faced up to the upgrade.

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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

"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."

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

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

"The product's initial setup phase was simple."

"It is unified. This is the best thing that Nutanix gave to the world. You can do everything from one point."

"The solution is easy to use, share, and manage."

"The scalability, ease of use, and technical support are the most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage."

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

"It is a highly scalable solution."

"We have been able to save local disk space by using Data Lens. We upload 18 GB to the cloud and are able to save 20% to 25%."

"My company has benefitted from Nutanix Unified Storage because we have everything in a centralized place. With Prism Central, we can go to the console files and do what we have to do."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"Documentation management could be improved"

"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."

"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."

"Its interface is very simplistic. It is a good thing for people because of the ease of use, but at times, I find it too simplistic. It is hard to find advanced options. They should eventually expand it and provide additional drop-down lists or menus with advanced feature sets."

"I would like Nutanix to provide a solution for virtual disks. This is the main problem for which we want a solution."

"It could be more user-friendly."

"The graphical user interface could provide more detail. It would be nice if we could click on the service and get some expanded definitions of them. When hiring new people, it's difficult to teach them how everything works, but if they can access everything, they can teach themselves."

"The graphical user interfaces could benefit from more attention to detail."

"Managing other storage infrastructure on Nutanix Files Storage is an area for improvement. In particular, I want to add other forms of storage from different vendors not currently in Nutanix Files Storage, to the file server, for better management."

"Perhaps Unified Storage could be improved by including artificial intelligence to make searches more effective. Also, if someone has access who shouldn't, it could automatically update, so I do not need to physically remove permission. The platform could do it automatically. AI could make it more self-service."

"We have had to deal with some infrastructure and general cluster issues but these issues don't impact storage."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The licensing model the tool has is cheaper than an HCI storage solution."

"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, making it a solution offering a price range that is in the middle."

"It is very good. It is much more competitive than a dedicated storage platform."

"For clients running Nutanix, the licensing cost for Files is a small add-on cost."

"Nutanix is very competitive."

"It's not the cheapest solution. It's in line with other solutions, but it offers features that the competitors don't have at any price point, especially with regard to analytics and ransomware prevention. No one else has any sort of object-based storage available. Nutanix Unified Storage is a lot more feature-rich. This is a situation where you get what you pay for."

"The price can always be improved. As a customer, you always seek reasonable solutions within your budget, and they give us little to do a lot. My IT team always has to justify that we are choosing an optimal solution, so the price could be a little lower Maybe the prices could be a little bit lower."

"My company is in Brazil, and making the payments in dollars is tough for our organization."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

30%

Computer Software Company

30%

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

The solution is expensive.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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

Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

The dashboard could be more customizable

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 66% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 9% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 5% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

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

Compared 22% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 7% of the time

Qumulo vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 5% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

August 2024

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

August 2024

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

MS Storage Spaces Direct

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

Learn More

Microsoft

Video not available

Nutanix

Overview

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.

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is a software-defined storage solution that consolidates seamless access and management of siloed block, file, and object storage into a single platform. Leveraging the Nutanix Cloud Platform, NUS is built for scale, performance, and integrated data security requirements of modern applications deployed on core, cloud, or edge.

Sample Customers

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

Buyer's Guide

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

September 2024

Free Report: Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.

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801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.