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 #6 with an average rating of 9.5, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked #20. IBM Spectrum Scale holds a 5.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM Spectrum Virtualize’s 1.8% 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 10 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

1,342 Views
1,041 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 35 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

460 Views
317 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

20th

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 5.0%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Janith Ranasinghe

Senior Manager - IT at LankaClear

A stable solution with valuable profile-sharing features

The profile share is a valuable feature. We only use the parallel file system at my company I rate this solution a nine out of ten. I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it. We have been using this solution since 2014, and it is deployed on-premises. It is stable…

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Nicolae Chirea

System and Solutions Architect at Seidor

Robust, stable, with good performance, and easy to implement

The primary use case with IBM Spectrum Virtualize for us is in relationship to databases I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers. I enjoy the performance, replication, and compression. I value all of the features. I would like to see three-side support. When we do…

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

"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 is incredibly scalable and stable."

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

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

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

"It is a scalable solution."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"We acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

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

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

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

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

"The disk reliability is not that good."

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

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

"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 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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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%

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

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.

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

The solution is costly but reliable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

The solution's pricing could be better.

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Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 29% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

Veritas Access vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 32% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 30% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

November 2024

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

November 2024

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

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IBM

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

November 2024

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: November 2024.

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