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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs QoreStor comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
QoreStor
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (48th), Data Replication (10th), Disk Based Backup Systems (6th), Storage Software (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (24th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (18th), Copy Data Management (6th), File and Object Storage (22nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Tomas Basus - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Professional at NIPOS
Optimized storage has supported high availability but performance and node limits still need work
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. I have found that performance is not as good as expected with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. It is risky because of quorum; it is better in three nodes, but my budget only allows for two nodes, so I need to use a witness, which is not an optimal configuration. I am not using the automatic rebalancing feature that much in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. I have not utilized nested resiliency in my operations. I am using the most standard features available in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.
MW
Works at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Backup storage has shrunk dramatically with deduplication but still needs stronger security options
The air gap feature is something I'd really like to see in QoreStor. There's no native air gap capability right now, and for security-conscious environments, that's a gap. The configuration export is also limited in QoreStor. If you want to document your setup or migrate configuration to a new instance, it requires more manual work than it should.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"I used to have to manually sync storage from server to server, for multiple clusters and database storage for disaster recovery but now, that's all automated."
"It releases those to new teams within minutes at a very small storage cost amount."
"We also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"The technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support."
"Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct definitely has its advantages, especially with robustness and scalability."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."
"Its technical support is excellent."
"We chose Microsoft due to its simplicity, affordability, reliability and performance."
"The performance is immediately noticeable by end users of all our on-premise applications."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
"The main positive impact that Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has had on my company over the years is increasing performance; our checks show it is three times faster than VMware, making us extremely happy and motivated to keep using it."
"If storage costs are a problem, whether on-premises or cloud, QoreStor is worth a serious look."
"It integrates with various backup software solutions, which makes it compatible with existing backup workflows and processes."
"Deduplication is the most valuable feature. It saves us a lot of space. When we back up 100 terabytes of data, after dedupe, it only uses maybe five to six terabytes for the disk space in QoreStor."
"This software solution can be installed on many different types of hardware, which makes it very flexible. We can run it on virtual machines or virtual servers, providing convenience for solutions of varying sizes, from small to large."
"Quest QoreStor definitely saved us money."
"Overall, it simplifies the management of backup and gives me a more secure feeling that my data is going to be available if I need to retrieve it."
"I would rate QoreStor a ten out of ten for what it offers for the price."
"QoreStor has helped us to reduce our backup storage requirements on-premises. We've been using the same devices for quite a while, and so it lets us keep using them as opposed to having to rip out all that hardware and create a new on-prem solution. The advantage here is even if we had to retire the hardware tomorrow, the QoreStor part doesn't change. We just have to have additional hardware and put the solution back on whatever hardware we pick and it'll do the same thing."
 

Cons

"I want to improve the overall service level of the solution."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"Technical support needs improvement. With respect to them being able to respond, they're more marketing people, less technical."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct a three, as there were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions."
"Microsoft closed the shared cluster support, which is important for the solution."
"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."
"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."
"The main reason that we have not implemented this solution or put it into production is because of the pricing."
"Microsoft's frontline support is not adequate if you rely on this for your business."
"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."
"They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved."
"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial. After everything is set up and configured, there should be a way to export the configuration. In case something happens to the QoreStor server, and we need to reinstall and configure everything, being able to import the configuration would be helpful. This feature does not currently exist."
"The air gap feature is something I'd really like to see in QoreStor."
"The setup of the software is definitely not the easiest thing. I worked a lot with Quest engineers, especially in the early days when we were first testing it and trying it out. I actually had some of the developers working with us at one point because they were going through these point releases, and I was having trouble getting it to work in this S3-compatible situation. We got it all working eventually, but setup is definitely not the easiest thing in the world."
"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial."
"They need to increase their maximum capacity. Other than that, they're doing a pretty good job."
"Support is one point of improvement for Quest QoreStor. Support is sometimes not adequate."
"The ransomware protection of QoreStor could use improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"It is cheaper than NetApp."
"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."
"The cost is per terabyte, and overall, the cost was reasonable when compared to some competitors."
"Its pricing model is very attractive. You have one price, and you get everything from QoreStor."
"The pricing is good. It is competitive for a managed services provider. I like the ability to pay by the terabyte, allowing for an incremental cost that we and our customers can afford, so the solution grows with the customer."
"Quest QoreStor's pricing is affordable. We evaluated Veeam, a well-known company for backup solutions, but found their pricing to be quite high. Veeam's price was almost double. For us, Quest QoreStor is very affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
Overall, I find the cost of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct to be affordable for the on-prem Windows pure solution, b...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and...
What else besides data replication does QoreStor offer?
Quest QoreStor can be used for multiple things besides data replication. For example, it can be trusted to make a bac...
How does Quest QoreStore protect your data?
One of our favorite features of Quest QoreStore for data protection isn't the backup, actually, though we're using it...
How does Quest QoreStore solve repetitive data replicas?
When I first found out about data replication and the many benefits it had, I couldn't help but wonder - what about t...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
MS Storage Spaces Direct
QoreStor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
American Airlines, at&t, Bank of America. Barclays, ebay, Ford
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs. QoreStor and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.