IBM Spectrum Scale vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category. IBM is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.0, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Scale and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage 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. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

August 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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.

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Bernd Stroehle.

Enterprise Architect at kosakya

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.

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Punit Waghela

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.

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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

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations."

"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."

"It is a scalable solution."

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The stability has been really good."

"Lastly, the API and web services are fairly good. That is an important feature too. We write some code to do different things. We have code that runs to make sure that everything is being backed up as we say it is and we try to also detect places where we may have missed a backup."

"It's very easy to set up, and within 40 minutes, you can apply storage notes in Azure."

"The initial setup was straightforward. We started with a small pilot and we then moved to production with no downtime at all."

"The solution’s unified file and block-storage access across our infrastructure is invaluable. Without it, we can't do what we do."

"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."

"ONTAP has been very stable for us, specifically in the cloud environment. It allows us to have high availability as well as standalone systems if that's what we want within our specific workloads. Also, on-premise has been a very stable environment. We have very few outages and when we do, we work with support to get systems back online in a timely manner."

"The FlexClones make all the management easier for us."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"The solution is expensive."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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 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."

"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."

"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

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"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."

"There is room for improvement in tier one support, especially with potential language barriers and communication challenges."

"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."

"Some of the licensing is a little kludgy. We just created an HA environment in Azure and their licensing for SVMs per node is a little kludgy. They're working on it right now."

"In terms of improvement, I would like to see the Azure NetApp Files have the capability of doing SnapMirrors. Azure NetApp Files is, as we know, is an AFF system and it's not used in any of the Microsoft resources. It's basically NetApp hardware, so the best performance you can achieve, but the only reason we can't use that right now is because of the region that it's available in. The second was the SnapMirror capability that we didn't have that we heavily rely on right now."

"The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing. I would like to see communication around that or advice such as, "Hey, the world is moving towards this particular trend, and NetApp can help you do that." I do get promotional emails from NetApp, but customer-specific advice would be helpful, based on our use cases."

"It would be fantastic if NetApp could offer a solution that's as user-friendly as Google Drive for seamless cloud storage integration."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"The product is very expensive."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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

"Compared to other storage vendors, NetApp, is not always able to compete with their pricing. Yet, we acknowledge the ease of use ONTAP brings with the AWS integration."

"Cloud is cloud. It's still expensive. Any good solution comes with a price tag. That's where we are looking to see how well we can manage our data in the cloud by trying to optimize the costs."

"For NetApp it's about $20,000 for a single node and $30,000 for the HA."

"They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy."

"They allow a special price if you are working closely with them. Since we have a lot of NetApp systems, we got some kind of discount. That's something they do for other customers, not just for us. The price was fair. In addition to the licensing fees, you're paying Amazon for your usage..."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

"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."

"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	53

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?

My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.

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What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the licen...

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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 ...

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What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP does have a bit of initial complexity for users who are new to the system. Although it isn...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 22% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

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Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

August 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

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

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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