IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.0, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM Spectrum Scale holds a 4.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM Spectrum Virtualize’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM Spectrum Scale users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM Spectrum Virtualize users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Scale

Read 12 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

1,174 Views
883 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 37 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

393 Views
269 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Virtualize and IBM Spectrum Scale compete in the data management category. IBM Spectrum Scale seems to have the upper hand due to its wide-ranging features, making it valuable for data-intensive environments.

Features: IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides advanced storage virtualization with a unified view of storage resources and enhances data efficiency through compression and de-duplication. It simplifies storage management across heterogeneous systems. IBM Spectrum Scale offers scalable, high-performance data management with parallel file systems for fast access, a benefit for big data and analytics, and supports numerous data protocols.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Virtualize could improve in supporting newer storage technologies faster and enhance its performance analytics tools. It may also benefit from more cloud integration features. IBM Spectrum Scale's complexity in deployment can be reduced, and its user interface could be more intuitive. It might also expand support for emerging data protocols.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides an easy deployment process and excellent customer service support, integrating seamlessly into existing infrastructures. IBM Spectrum Scale requires a more detailed deployment approach due to its architecture, but is backed by comprehensive documentation and a responsive customer support team.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Virtualize generally has lower initial costs, providing immediate ROI with storage efficiency. IBM Spectrum Scale may have higher upfront costs but offers significant long-term ROI through performance and scalability in handling data-intensive tasks.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

February 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 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

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.6%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

JanithRanasinghe

Depute CIO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Parallel file access efficiency and good file management with good scalability

We are using GPFS Scale for parallel file access. It's primarily for file management We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations. It's the only feature we are using since we have not explored other options. I wish there were some…

Read full review

EdwinVan Halm

Virtualization Architect at Halm-IT

Enterprise product that delivers high performance features

The primary use case is high availability and disaster recovery. They use it as an active-active cluster located in two physical locations for quick recovery using immutable snapshots The quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features. The product is…

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

"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."

"It makes our file system sharing a lot easier, even across different continents. We have had file systems shared across different continents with no performance degradation."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"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."

"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."

"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."

"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."

"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"I like all the features, but the most impressive recently has been the introduction of IBM's Flash Core Modules. They are a form of a flash drive, but they have many more features."

"There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance. You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected. We have seen our Spectrum Scale servers go down unexpectedly, but because we have a cluster, it does not take out the entire organization."

"Making it a little easier to add bad file sets would help. There is a transition to how you add storage and how you add a file set, so making that a little smoother would probably be my recommendation."

"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."

"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."

"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."

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

"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

"The disk reliability is not that good."

"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."

"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize 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

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

See all answers

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

I don't think it's a high price compared to alternatives.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring.

See all answers

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

I have no idea of the pricing as I am not part of the sales team. However, the product is a little bit more expensive due to the high-end enterprise features it offers.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

The training program could be improved. It would be beneficial to have a lab environment to train myself before implementing it at a customer's location.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

The primary use case is high availability and disaster recovery. They use it as an active-active cluster located in two physical locations for quick recovery using immutable snapshots.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 30% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 16% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 33% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 22% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 18% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

February 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

February 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Overview

IBM Spectrum Scale is a cluster file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN attached, network attached, a mixture of SAN attached and network attached, or in a shared nothing cluster configuration. This enables access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. IBM Spectrum Scale has many features beyond common data access including data replication, policy based storage management, and multi-site operations. You can create a cluster of AIX nodes, Linux nodes, Windows server nodes, or a mix of all three. IBM Spectrum Scale can run on virtualized instances providing common data access in environments, leverage logical partitioning, or other hypervisors. Multiple IBM Spectrum Scale clusters can share data within a location or across wide area network (WAN) connections.

IBM

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

Information Not Available

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

February 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize report.

See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors, best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors, and best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.

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.