Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN comparison

The compared Microsoft and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #9 in SDS , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 7.4% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #2 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 14.4% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

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.

Read full review

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…

Read full review

Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features

While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

"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."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"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."

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

"Its technical support is excellent."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

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

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct pros

"The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too."

"The product's initial setup phase was very straightforward."

"The product’s most valuable features are performance and expandability."

"vSAN Health is a feature designed to monitor the health and performance of the vSAN environment. It's crucial for us and our customers to frequently check on this to ensure everything is operating smoothly."

"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."

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

"I have found the solution to be scalable."

"To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

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

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Documentation management could be improved"

"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 optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is a lot of room for improvement. I would like to have more tools to monitor the function and problems."

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cons

"Improvements are also needed as per the customer's requirements."

"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."

"It should be easier to use."

"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes. The maximum number of nodes is okay, but our use cases could probably do with more nodes, probably up to 64. In terms of new features, it should probably have the basic support for high-speed networking spaces."

"What I would like to see, for the really small customers, is the ability to have two nodes."

"There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations."

"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."

"They should provide Deduplication and Compression over the hybrid drives."

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

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

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price could be cheaper."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."

"The solution is expensive."

"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."

"VMware vSAN is a little bit expensive and we pay annually. We have an educational institute where we receive discount prices from VMware. We do receive a reasonable discount but it's still expensive."

"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."

"The first 1-2 years of purchasing vSAN will be expensive. Thereafter, the longer you are running it, the more cost savings you will have."

"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."

"The price is expensive."

"There is a license required for this solution, it is a one-time payment. However, if they want support for the solution, it can be paid annually or for three years."

"With vSAN, we didn't find the market that competitive."

"It is cheap. It is $0.02 a gig."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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...

See all answers

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

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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 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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Microsoft should improve the management aspect of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, as we have raised multiple recomme...

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 16% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 7% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 6% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% 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 19% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% 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

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

August 2025

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

June 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

Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Red Hat, Nutanix and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: August 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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.