DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

DataCore and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. DataCore is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.3, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. DataCore holds a 7.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the storage management software category. DataCore SANsymphony seems to have the upper hand due to its flexibility and rapid deployment, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is known for its robust disaster recovery and competitive pricing.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony is valued for its ability to integrate with different storage solutions and VMware environments. Key features include high availability with mirroring, seamless auto-tiering, and compatibility with commodity hardware to deliver fast, stable performance. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers a strong abstraction layer and ease of storage migration. Its important features include thin provisioning, compression, and seamless cloud tiering, making it effective for disaster recovery and multi-vendor storage management.

Room for Improvement: DataCore SANsymphony could benefit from less complex pricing and improved support quality. Users suggest better iSCSI connectivity, enhanced performance reporting, and improved integration with backup solutions like Veeam. IBM Spectrum Virtualize users would like a simplified management interface and improved support for cross-cluster migration. Enhancing data deduplication and scalability features are also recommended.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products offer on-premises solutions, with DataCore also supporting hybrid cloud deployments. DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its rapid deployment, often within a day, and for its responsive customer service. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is similarly regarded for its straightforward deployment process and excellent technical support, though the consistent updates and customer-centric support from DataCore are highlighted.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is perceived as high due to a shift to subscription models, despite its long-term cost-effectiveness from hardware flexibility and efficient storage use. IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides competitive pricing with bundled licensing options, offering a balance between enterprise features and affordability. Users see positive ROI with high availability and cost savings over time.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

August 2025

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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

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 7.1%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	7.1%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	1.5%
Other	87.2%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy

I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.

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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

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

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures."

"The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."

"For us, fault tolerance is the most important feature of DataCore."

"The DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on."

"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."

"The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress)."

"Supporting of Automated-Storage-Tiering (AST) is a good feature that saves money."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."

"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."

"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."

"The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

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

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."

"When I sometimes reboot for maintenance, the connectivity from the iSCSI initiator host could be improved."

"In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs."

"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."

"I'd like to see the company make the renewal of the software cheaper."

"I found it a little unnecessary to have to rename the configurations within the graphics console in order to have unique names."

"The solution is constantly evolving."

"I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

"IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution."

"The disk reliability is not that good."

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."

"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"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."

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

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

"The solution is cost effective."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."

"I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them."

"We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

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...

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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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Regarding the pricing of the solution, it's better than before. They have made some improvements regarding the pricin...

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What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like...

See all answers

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support. I cannot determine if certain features...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. T...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware ...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 8% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 22% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 18% of the time

Atlantis USX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

September 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

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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

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

IBM

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

August 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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