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Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.6
Everpure Storage FlashArray enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and simplifies management, offering better performance, space utilization, and long-term savings.
Sentiment score
5.3
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers cost savings by enabling self-management, reducing fees, and providing long-term financial benefits.
Sentiment score
3.2
VMware vSAN reduces hardware costs, increases efficiency, and boosts ROI despite high operational expenses and upfront costs.
In the long term, spanning three to five years, the total cost of ownership becomes cheaper, considering power consumption, data center footprint, and NVMe technology usage.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
Our current workload, particularly the SQL use case, would not be possible on mechanical storage, and the ease of use for the small team for the array is important for supporting that workload.
Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Pure Storage FlashArray integrates with APIs and other systems.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
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.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I see some ROI in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, such as saving time and money, and I estimate these savings to be about 30%.
IT Professional at NIPOS
Starting with a smaller infrastructure and scaling as required allows us to save costs initially.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment; it's satisfactory in the long run.
Deputy Manager at Mannai
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Everpure Storage FlashArray's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite occasional time zone and off-hours challenges.
Sentiment score
4.4
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct support varies; many prefer hardware brands' support over Microsoft's, finding frontline support sometimes inadequate.
Sentiment score
4.9
VMware vSAN support is knowledgeable but response times vary, with resources helping reduce direct contact needs for clients.
Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the technical support an 11 out of 10.
Cyber Security Consultant at Jonkoping Energi AB
The support from Pure Storage is excellent.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft focuses on Azure as a cloud service.
Solution architect at Netland
I would rate their support nine points.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I am not satisfied with VMware support, particularly with the reaction times, SLAs, and those kinds of issues.
private cloud team at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Sometimes the issue is that you don't get the best experience, whether it's the response time or first-level support quality.
Deputy Manager at Mannai
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Everpure Storage FlashArray offers scalable upgrades, seamless integration, and efficient performance, ideal for large-scale environments despite low-end model limitations.
Sentiment score
6.1
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers scalability and flexibility, though users report challenges with minimal node setups affecting stability.
Sentiment score
4.8
VMware vSAN offers seamless scalability, enabling efficient node addition and storage expansion to meet evolving business capacity demands.
A big banking client had around 300 petabytes of data on Pure Storage.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
The solution is highly scalable, particularly when there is a need to expand capacity.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
Theoretically, we can do controller upgrades and get into a larger chassis, but there was a limit to how far we could go without needing to do a full migration.
Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct has been extremely good, allowing for both vertical and horizontal expansion.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It has limitations; it's configured for eight servers per site but can be scaled to 16 servers.
Solution architect at Netland
The scalability of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is limited.
IT Professional at NIPOS
It supports up to 64 nodes in a cluster, allowing us to add nodes and expand the cluster as needed.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
If you have already bought it, you need specific servers, and it is easier with a SAN.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Everpure Storage FlashArray boasts high stability and consistent performance, with quick support for minor issues and seamless redundancy.
Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is stable with skilled management, but initial setup challenges require proper configuration and familiarity.
Sentiment score
5.9
VMware vSAN reliability improves with updates, strong support, and adherence to hardware compatibility lists, ensuring stable performance.
For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten.
Senior Storage Administrator at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We have continuous 99.9% uptime and do not experience any users reporting performance issues due to latency.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
The vision Pure Storage FlashArray offers through the GUI is clearer; we can discern the status, what is cabled, and how direct flash is enabled.
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
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.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Storage Spaces Direct is stable enough, however, there can be some glitches.
Solution architect at Netland
In terms of stability, I give VMware vSAN nine points.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
From my perspective, I would rate VMware vSAN's stability as extremely high, perhaps a nine.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pure Storage FlashArray requires improvements in offline tools, integrations, scalability, performance, analytics, cost, user control, and support.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct requires improved management, integration, performance clarity, and better tools for monitoring and issue resolution.
VMware vSAN requires better management tools, integration, and hardware support, with improved stability, scalability, and enhanced disaster recovery features.
Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
Storing cold data on expensive arrays doesn't make financial sense, and tiering to any of the big three cloud providers would be advantageous.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
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.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
One year ago, I had a problem, and it was difficult to identify and solve due to a lack of tools.
Owner at Micronet Systems
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 Professional at NIPOS
A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features.
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Discussing the pricing model is significant as Broadcom creates many discussions worldwide regarding pricing.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Everpure Storage FlashArray offers high upfront costs justified by performance, ease of use, and inclusive licensing for enterprises.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is cost-effective with Hyper-V integration, despite potential unexpected costs with Azure monitoring tools.
VMware vSAN offers long-term savings, but initial costs and licensing complexity concern small businesses, especially post-Broadcom acquisition.
They're expensive.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
While they say it's free, we actually pay for support upfront.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
Some smaller organizations may find it slightly expensive, but for enterprises, when considering performance, future hardware investments, and overall benefits, it is a very cost-effective solution for mid and enterprise organizations.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
I find the Azure Local to be a bit expensive, especially due to hidden costs associated with additional tools needed for monitoring and alerting.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is an advantage of Storage Spaces Direct.
Solution architect at Netland
This has resulted in a slight cost increase.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Everpure Storage FlashArray offers ease of use, speed, reliability, seamless upgrades, data reduction, and integration, enhancing performance and efficiency.
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct offers high performance, redundancy, and reliability with seamless integration into Windows Data Center and cost-effectiveness.
VMware vSAN provides high-performance, scalable storage with cost-effective integration, using existing hardware and offering advanced features.
FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Another noteworthy aspect is their platform, Pure One, a cloud-based analytics platform that automatically creates a case and sends out a part if a disk or controller fails.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
It handles internal data migration seamlessly in the background without going offline, achieving a hundred percent uptime.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
For caching, I use disks with more total bits written, which protects the main storage because writes are combined.
Owner at Micronet Systems
The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.
Solution architect at Netland
Hot add features are available by default in vSphere, allowing us to immediately increase memory, CPU, and hard drive without any downtime.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The performance is excellent, handling workloads better than direct-attached or legacy storage solutions.
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
The VMware vSAN feature that has had the greatest impact on operational efficiency is the basic software-defined storage functionality.
Deputy Manager at Mannai
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
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)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct5.8%
Red Hat Ceph Storage12.3%
DataCore SANsymphony5.9%
Other76.0%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN10.0%
VxRail12.4%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.4%
Other68.2%
HCI
 

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.
reviewer2588997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Solution delivers impressive speed and performance with room for better management tool integration
Microsoft should improve the management aspect of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, as we have raised multiple recommendations but they often refer us to use Microsoft Arc instead of Windows Admin Center. 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. Improving the Windows Admin Center to be more stable with alert notifications and management capabilities for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct would greatly benefit users, as we have not seen any recent product updates since the announcements last November.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise129
 

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?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
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 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...
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...
What do you like most about VMware vSAN?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
MS Storage Spaces Direct
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
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