


Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct compete in the hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud solutions category. Nutanix holds an edge due to its comprehensive cloud integration and simplified management.
Features: Nutanix offers integrated data protection, storage auto-tiering, and high availability, allowing for flexible scalability. Its one-click upgrades and automation capabilities enhance operational efficiency. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct provides robust storage with distributed file systems and data deduplication but lacks comprehensive cloud integration.
Room for Improvement: Nutanix could enhance support for more hypervisors and improve networking features, along with expanding its third-party software integration ecosystem. Microsoft needs improvements in ease of configuration and a better management interface, as well as comprehensive RDMA support.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix is praised for its deployment flexibility and strong technical support. It easily fits both on-premises and hybrid cloud environments. Microsoft faces deployment challenges in multi-environment scenarios due to hardware certification requirements and less responsive support.
Pricing and ROI: Nutanix is considered premium-priced but provides considerable ROI through reduced maintenance and operational efficiencies. Microsoft S2D is lauded for cost-effectiveness, particularly beneficial for organizations heavily invested in Microsoft ecosystems due to Windows Server license integration.
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%.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
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.
There were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions.
Microsoft focuses on Azure as a cloud service.
When we send an email, an engineer is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes, and we get on a call to resolve the issue.
The second one was a licensing issue because when I switched from the SMB package to another package, I had to change the way of licensing, and that was horrendous.
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.
It has limitations; it's configured for eight servers per site but can be scaled to 16 servers.
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is limited.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
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.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
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.
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.
One year ago, I had a problem, and it was difficult to identify and solve due to a lack of tools.
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.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
They should add AI features in the future.
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 pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
At first, it is cheaper than cloud services, so the cost is a major benefit.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
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.
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.
For caching, I use disks with more total bits written, which protects the main storage because writes are combined.
The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
The performance was really better for applications and access times to the data.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) | 5.7% |
| Pure Storage FlashBlade | 3.3% |
| Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct | 6.1% |
| Other | 84.9% |


| 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 | 92 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 77 |
| Large Enterprise | 82 |
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.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers high performance and scalability with central management and one-click upgrades. It enhances data protection and reduces deployment complexities, perfect for businesses seeking efficient virtualization.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers a comprehensive platform integrating compute, storage, and network for optimal infrastructure management. It supports multiple hypervisors, offering flexibility, efficiency, and ease of use. With features like Prism for centralized management, organizations can manage resources effectively while benefiting from data protection enhancements such as deduplication and compression. Hyper-convergence enables seamless integration, reducing operational costs and increasing scalability. Though the pricing is high, and setup and administration can be complex, the ability to support hybrid cloud implementations and critical infrastructures like VDI and databases provides notable advantages.
What are the key features of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure?Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure finds adoption across industries for virtualization, cloud services, and infrastructure consolidation. Organizations utilize it for hybrid clouds and virtual server hosting, supporting applications like databases and virtual desktop infrastructures. They report enhanced data protection, disaster recovery capabilities, and improved performance, facilitating effective resource management.
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.