Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Microsoft and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #8 in SDS , with an average rating of 6.5, and holds a 8.6% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 15.6% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Red Hat, Nutanix and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS).

To learn more, read our detailed Software Defined Storage (SDS) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

March 2025

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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

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

HCI

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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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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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources

Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.

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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

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"It's very scalable. I like that. Adding a node is easy. Adding a disk group is easy."

"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."

"We have found the solution to be very scalable."

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

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."

"Since the storage space is local to the hosts, it reduces the overall response time and improves the performance."

"We've found the solution to be scalable."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"The solution is expensive."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"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."

"Its configuration should be easier."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"Documentation management could be improved"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"While I like the replication and compression features, there is a problem with them running too slowly."

"This is quite an expensive solution."

"When you upgrade the vSAN, there are some issues like lost data and problems with the log. The log disappears. When you upgrade the solution, you must have several logs, so if you have some problems, you can check the log server to find them."

"In a future release, they could add micro-segmentation or security level features integrated into vSAN."

"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."

"More focus has to be put on deduplication and compression with a hybrid architecture."

"There could be more features with the automatic backup."

"If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

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

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

"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."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"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."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The price is expensive."

"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"

"The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."

"My customers have found VMware vSAN to be a little expensive."

"Every product is licensed with full support for a certain number of years. The licensing could be cheaper."

"I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."

"Clients have to pay for VMware vSAN licensing based on the number of CPUs. The purchases would be lifetime or perpetual, but you need to have support, e.g. the support is negotiated from one, two, three, or four years."

"Perhaps a bundle, like Essentials, would allow more businesses to make the leap to the product."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

53%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

See all answers

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

Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct. Licenses can be on a monthly or yearly basis, depending on the addi...

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...

See all answers

How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 12% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 5% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 18% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

March 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

March 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

vSAN

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

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

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Software Defined Storage (SDS)

March 2025

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