IBM Spectrum Scale vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

8th

Average Rating

7.2

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 Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 7.8%, up from 7.5% 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

Nov 14, 2022

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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Grzegorz Kedziora

General Manager and CTO at SIIT

Apr 29, 2024

The initial setup is straightforward, but the solution has strict compatibility methods

I use this solution to make a few-to-one storage from the internal disk to the servers The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses. There are strict compatibility methods.…

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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."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

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

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

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."

"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."

"Its technical support is excellent."

"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"

"The initial setup is straightforward."

Cons

"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."

"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"Documentation management could be improved"

"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

"The management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."

"The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses."

"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."

"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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

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

"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."

"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."

"The solution is expensive."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

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814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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.

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

The solution is costly but reliable.

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

The solution's pricing could be better.

How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

What do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

The solution is expensive.

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 66% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 9% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 9% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Spectrum Scale

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Storage Spaces Direct

Learn More

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IBM

Microsoft

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.

Storage Spaces Direct uses industry-standard servers with local-attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable software-defined storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional SAN or NAS arrays. Its converged or hyper-converged architecture radically simplifies procurement and deployment, while features like caching, storage tiers, and erasure coding, together with the latest hardware innovation like RDMA networking and NVMe drives, deliver unrivaled efficiency and performance.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct