HPE StoreVirtual vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #21, while Microsoft is ranked #9 with an average rating of 6.5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.3% mindshare in SDS, compared to Microsoft’s 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

HPE StoreVirtual and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct compete in the network storage domain, with HPE StoreVirtual having the edge in integrated platform capabilities and broad hypervisor support.

Features: HPE StoreVirtual offers high availability with its Network RAID feature, broad hypervisor support, and a single-point contact for issue resolution. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is notable for its performance via RDMA, feature integration within the Windows Server environment, and scalability for Microsoft ecosystem users.

Room for Improvement: HPE StoreVirtual needs better partner implementation strategies, a simplified licensing process, and improvements in latency and configuration. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct requires more comprehensive documentation, better API support, and improvements in network capabilities and management interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE StoreVirtual is acclaimed for easy on-premises deployment and has a reliable customer service team. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is valued for its integration within Windows systems and benefits from a broad support network.

Pricing and ROI: HPE StoreVirtual offers competitive licensing but can become costly without careful management, yet it typically provides excellent ROI. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, part of the Windows Server suite, offers cost efficiencies for Microsoft users with positive ROI, although initial costs can be high.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

April 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

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.3%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.8%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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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Vebjorn Nergaard

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.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"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."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The solution is very stable."

"Data is stored in two different places, leveraging more security and availability. Therefore, network problems are having less affect on iSCSI."

"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."

"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is hardware independent."

"It appears to be very stable and very robust."

"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."

"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."

"A very flexible solution."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

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

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

"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."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

Cons

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

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

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Product looks like it is in the end of development."

"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."

"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."

"In our country, Qatar, most of the industry isn't using too much HP. StoreVirtual doesn't move fast. It's not a popular product."

"f you're doing the 10Gb adapters, SFPs don't come with it, but it doesn't say that. It might say that somewhere else, but it's not clear."

"One of the areas that need improvement is the consolidated management platform, to manage all of the nodes from one place and the licensing around that."

"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."

"The management aspect of the solution needs to be improved in order to make the product stronger."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"Documentation management could be improved"

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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 Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"The price is a little high."

"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."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."

"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."

"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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.

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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...

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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...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution. At the moment, the new version does...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% 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 HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 53% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 47% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 64% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 13% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 6% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

May 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

May 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

MS Storage Spaces Direct

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

HPE StoreVirtual storage ensures that organisations can optimise the benefits of server virtualisation with cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery. The iSCSI-based, scale-out storage platform is easy to manage and change – meeting ongoing business demands without creating IT bottlenecks or application downtime. Overcoming the cost and management limitations of traditional storage area networks (SANs), HPE StoreVirtual nodes use storage clustering to form a single pool of resources that enable organisations to buy only what they need today, scaling non-disruptively to meet requirements in the future.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Sample Customers

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

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

April 2025

Free Report: HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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