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 90% of IBM Spectrum Virtualize users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Scale

Read 11 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

1,229 Views
947 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 36 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

417 Views
282 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 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

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

7th

Average Rating

8.4

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 January 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.9%, down from 7.6% 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…

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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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."

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

"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those."

"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."

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

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

"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."

"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."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"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."

"It would be helpful if there was a graphical user interface that could walk you through the deployment process. The instructions surrounding setup aren't the best. They need to be more step-by-step."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

"This is probably the biggest challenge, getting everything upgraded, because it just takes time. We wish it was a faster solution to be able to do everything at once, but you have do each node individually. The more nodes, the longer it takes."

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

"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."

"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

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 31% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 17% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 30% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 21% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

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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 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.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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