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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th), File and Object Storage (6th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Bernd Stroehle. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MD.Faisal Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."
"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"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."
"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"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."
"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."
"When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization."
"IBM offers excellent customer service."
"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 lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."
"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."
 

Cons

"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."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"I would like to see better integration."
"The speed could be improved."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"I have not seen ROI."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."
"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."
"Integration with other vendors is not available."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"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."
"The Storwize port is not so stable."
"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
"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."
"The training program could be improved."
"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."
"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."
"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"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 feel that the price could always be lowered."
"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."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"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."
"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."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"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."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
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 n...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?
There is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and gra...
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-...
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...
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 ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Information Not Available
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.