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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage 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

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
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 8.2%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 20.2%, up from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration
Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"
"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."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud."
"The community support is very good."
"We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment."
"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."
"The high availability of the solution is important to us."
"Data redundancy is a key feature, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures."
"High reliability with commodity hardware."
"The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good."
 

Cons

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Geo-replication needs improvement. It is a new feature, and not well supported yet."
"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."
"If you use for any other solution like other Kubernetes solutions, it's not very suitable."
"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."
"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."
"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
 

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."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"There is no cost for software."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"We never used the paid support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

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...
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved. There are instances where we needed to consult additional online forums and communities for solutions to particular issues.
 

Also Known As

MS Storage Spaces Direct
Ceph
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.