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IBM Spectrum Scale vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (10th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Storage (7th), Cloud Backup (29th), Public Cloud Storage Services (12th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Sachin Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has optimized performance using cluster deployment and distributed file access but needs better visibility into network dependencies
IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM. This is one of the features I appreciate most because if you have existing infrastructure at your site but don't want to reinvest in hardware, you can purchase IBM Spectrum Scale software and deploy it as software-defined storage. Users can comfortably access data from their host to the storage host without relying on new network setup when deploying GPFS as it uses the existing corporate network. However, high-speed ethernet network is required. By adding switches to the same network where client hosts reside and deploying GPFS storage array, any file system created on the storage cluster can grant export permissions determining which hosts can access specific file systems. These hosts can directly mount them as remote file systems. The process is simpler compared to defining IQN for providing access to client hosts. Creating a cluster for clients with virtual machines or physical Linux/Windows machines requires installing GPFS services on client nodes, which creates a client cluster. Access is defined on the storage cluster for the particular client cluster, allowing all hosts in that client cluster to mount file systems with granted permissions.
Punit Waghela - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
Offers advanced features with notable emphasis on innovation
The best features of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP include deduplication, compaction, and autonomous ransomware technology that native cloud storage solutions in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud do not support. Moreover, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP allows the use of multiple protocols including NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI, whereas native options may only support NFS and iSCSI. Customers already using on-premises NetApp storage such as FAS, AFF, or ASA can experience the same functionality on the cloud with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, which adds significant value. For data protection, customers can take advantage of the Snapshot technology available with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. This technology facilitates data recovery by allowing snapshots to be stored either on the same storage or on a disaster recovery (DR) storage. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP helps us to take snapshots and store them on the same storage, with options for migration or replication of those snapshots to different storage, including on-premises DR storage or other cloud storage, providing excellent disaster recovery capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit we saw, from our very first benchmarks, was that our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other changes."
"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity."
"It releases those to new teams within minutes at a very small storage cost amount."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"Its array houses our entire production environment."
"Reliability and performance are its most valuable feature."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"We tested a complete site loss with the initial loss of the complete data center and the system was always up."
"IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM."
"We use it for our data over multiple systems, and at the same time it is a shared file system that works pretty well for the most part."
"Spectrum Scale is one of the most important products in our environment now."
"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."
"There is nothing else that even compares to Spectrum Scale."
"Technical support has been very helpful, and they provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."
"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."
"I highly recommend that customers using native cloud storage from hyperscalers transition to NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP as it offers numerous features and functionalities such as inline deduplication, compression, compaction, autonomous ransomware protection, snapshot technology, and flex cache that are unavailable with other hyperscalers."
"With NetApp, you can integrate malware scanning or malware protection. This is something valuable that is not offered in SaaS solutions typically."
"Even compared to just standard Azure or other solutions available, this solution has allowed for probably 50 percent, or in some cases, higher storage savings."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is easy to use and gets the job done, and the granular ability to divide up the performance and the amount of storage you want is really fantastic."
"This solution has made everything easier to do."
"Replication to the cloud is the most valuable feature. Deduplication and compression are also very important to us. We are in the process of adopting to the cloud. We are going to AWS and we are trying to do a safety technician call out with integration to the cloud. NetApp allows us to move some of the volume to the cloud, at the same time that we continue providing the cloud services that we have on premises."
"The biggest advantage is that it works as expected, there's less maintenance so you don't need too many people to support it, and you save money in the long run."
 

Cons

"The price should be lower."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease the total cost of ownership, and I believe our total cost has probably gone up, but that's balanced by our increased amount of data and number of use cases."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions."
"The solution needs an integrated NAS platform, file platform."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"During heavy load situations with 100K IOPS on one specific port, it requires more granularity level for distribution."
"We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"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."
"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."
"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."
"We do not feel as a company that the product can grow with us anymore, so we are not going to use it anymore."
"I would like some more performance matrices to know what it is doing. It has some matrices inherent to the Cloud Volumes ONTAP. But inside Cloud Manager, it would also be nice to see. You can have a little Snapshot, then drill down if you go a little deeper."
"It definitely needs improvement with respect to clustering and with respect to more collaborative integrations with Azure."
"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."
"The solution is not stable when using single nodes. This is a problem. NetApp should work on this solution to make it more stable with HA nodes and resolve this issue."
"In the next release, I would like to see more options on the dashboard."
"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."
"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."
"The integration wizard requires a bit of streamlining. There are small things that misconfigure or repeat the deployment that will create errors, specifically in Azure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"Our costs are around $100,000."
"The pricing is an issue. However, being all-flash, it will always be sort of expensive."
"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"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."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."
"The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."
"The cost is quite high."
"If a customer is only using, say, less than 10 terabytes, I don't think CVO would be a good option. A customer using at least 100 or 200 terabytes should get a reasonable price from NetApp."
"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."
"For enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."
"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
"For NetApp it's about $20,000 for a single node and $30,000 for the HA."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?
IBM Spectrum Scale functions as software-based storage, allowing users to utilize any hardware supported or defined b...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?
The system relies heavily on ethernet networking, and when issues occur, we must consult with the network team to inv...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?
My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is actually quite reasonable in price compared to other native cloud storage options. For ...
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
It would be nice to see technology supporting the Elastic Fabric Adapter on Amazon AWS, therefore getting RDMA techno...
What is your primary use case for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?
I use NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP mostly in customer companies.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,277 professionals have used our research since 2012.