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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
12
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.
EdwinVan Halm - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."
"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."
"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."
"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I rate this product ten out of ten."
"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."
"We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."
"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."
"IBM offers excellent customer service."
"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."
"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."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"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."
 

Cons

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."
"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."
"The speed could be improved."
"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."
"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 biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."
"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."
"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."
"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."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
"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."
"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 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."
"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"The price could be cheaper."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."
"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."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"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."
"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."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
20%
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 can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster. Additionally, it would be beneficial t...
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, wh...
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. Presen...
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 m...
 

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: February 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.