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 9.3, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM Spectrum Scale holds a 4.7% 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

1,148 Views
842 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 37 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

398 Views
259 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

February 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

8.6

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 March 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.7%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.6%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Bernd Stroehle.

Enterprise Architect at kosakya

Deliver improved performance in data processing and foster extensive AI initiatives

I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system. It achieved the best results when integrated with IBM hardware. Even though it is complex, it provided significant performance advantages in large-scale data management. Its fault tolerance mechanisms and integration capabilities make it popular for extensive AI initiatives and data processing tasks for organizations like Daimler Benz and Bosch.

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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."

"We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations."

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

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

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

"It is a scalable solution."

"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."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The ease of management, the simplicity of the CLI, the speed of that interface, and the well-architected design of the product in general are valuable features."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"The main issue that we have now is with the encryption. They want to use more metrics in encryption, which is not working very well."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

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

"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

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

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

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

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

"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

"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 disk reliability is not that good."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

20%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

12%

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?

IBM Spectrum Scale is very expensive with complex pricing models usually based on the amount of storage used or the number of servers. Using Excelero for mirroring storage helped reduce Spectrum Sc...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have example configurations or applications that assist in setup and configura...

See all answers

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

As a customer of IBM, I can often secure discounts of seventy to ninety percent, depending on the purchase volume, while still receiving improved capabilities over other vendors.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I would like to see them provide a unified platform that offers block, file, and object-based protocol access. Presentations and blogs could be improved.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I use IBM Spectrum Virtualize as a storage device that provides storage to servers needing storage. I utilize it in my role for the US government.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 28% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 16% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

Veritas Access vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 29% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 21% 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

March 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

March 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

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