


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.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
While our systems will be out of life in a few years, I believe that in that time, the payback from Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct will save us money on virtualization and storage costs, making it extremely beneficial after six years of use.
I see some ROI in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, such as saving time and money, and I estimate these savings to be about 30%.
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
Their technical support has been perfect lately, so I would give it a 10.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
There were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions.
Microsoft focuses on Azure as a cloud service.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
There are between 5 and 10,000 people using it in our organization.
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has been extremely good, allowing for both vertical and horizontal expansion.
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is limited.
It has limitations; it's configured for eight servers per site but can be scaled to 16 servers.
It wouldn't help with outages either; the scaling is manual, and there are no processes we've used to automate that for unexpected scenarios.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has been incredibly stable as long as it is configured correctly; incorrect configurations lead to surprises, which is common with any product.
Storage Spaces Direct is stable enough, however, there can be some glitches.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Its configuration should be easier.
One way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade.
One year ago, I had a problem, and it was difficult to identify and solve due to a lack of tools.
The licensing for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct could be improved to be clearer, as calculating license requirements requires significant expertise; even Microsoft resources do not provide the full picture needed for licensing, leaving gaps that become evident once we move to deploy solutions.
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and there are problems regarding performance that need to be addressed.
My opinion is that support is generally very good. There are instances where they take longer to respond or resolve issues, especially when customers have urgent needs, but ultimately, resolution is achieved.
It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA technology for more low-latency connections.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making it good for us.
I find the Azure Local to be a bit expensive, especially due to hidden costs associated with additional tools needed for monitoring and alerting.
Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct.
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
For caching, I use disks with more total bits written, which protects the main storage because writes are combined.
The redundancy and fault tolerance features of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct have helped maintain data integrity and availability in my company by providing multiple copies through three-way mirroring, delivering hardware performance needed for our applications, which is crucial.
One of the best things about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is that it allows for optimized storage solutions and high availability, which is beneficial for managing workloads efficiently.
The granular ability to divide up the performance and the amount of storage you want is really fantastic.



| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 11 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 21 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 1 |
| Large Enterprise | 3 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 53 |
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.
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.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.
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