IBM Spectrum Scale vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

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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

Everpure FlashBlade

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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Sachin Prakash

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.

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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

"It has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage."

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

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

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

"I love this solution."

More Everpure FlashBlade pros

"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."

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

"Spectrum Scale is one of the most important products in our environment now."

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

"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

"It is incredibly scalable; you can add more storage to it, add more file sets, and add it to more servers, making it a robust product that should be able to expand with us."

"We tested a complete site loss with the initial loss of the complete data center and the system was always up."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"Unified Manager, System Manager, and Cloud Manager are all GUI-based. It's easy for somebody who has not been exposed to this for years to pick it up and work with it."

"For us, the value comes from the solution's flexibility, speed, and hopefully cost savings in the long term."

"The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well."

"Even with that size of infrastructure, it's being supported by three people, and it's not like we're working 24/7; it gives us the ability to do a lot, to do more with less."

"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."

"The solution provides us unified storage, no matter what kind of data we have."

"For the price, the quality of the hardware, the quality of the support, the features it offers, I'm thrilled with NetApp."

"We're using snapshots as well and it's a pretty useful feature. That is one of the main NetApp benefits. Knowing how to use snapshots in the on-prem environment, using snapshots on the cloud solution was natural for us."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"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."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

More Everpure FlashBlade cons

"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."

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

"Initially, stability was a concern as we encountered numerous issues and errors."

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

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

"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 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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"One area for improvement is monitoring. Since we are using turn-on and turn-off, based on a schedule, it becomes a little bit difficult to monitor the instance and the replications, etc."

"We are getting a warning alert about not being able to connect to Cloud Manager when we log into it. The support has provided links, but this particular issue is not fixed yet."

"When it comes to a critical or a read-write-intensive application, it doesn't provide the performance that some applications require, especially for SAP; the SAP HANA database has a write-latency of less than 2 milliseconds and the CVO solution does not fit there."

"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."

"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."

"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."

"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."

"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"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."

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

More Everpure 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."

"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

"Once we deploy the pay as you go model, we cannot convert this product as a BYOL model. This is a concern that we have."

"The AWS consumer-based pricing model makes it easy for developers to use their credit cards to spin up virtual servers immediately."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."

"The deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."

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

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
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...

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

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Everpure FlashBlade

Comparisons

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MinIO vs Everpure FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Everpure FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon FSx vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Zerto Software vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Everpure FlashBlade

Download Everpure FlashBlade product report

IBM Spectrum Scale

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

March 2026

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashBlade

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Overview

Everpure Storage FlashBlade offers reliable and high-performance data management with ease of use, speed, and scalability. Its seamless integration ensures efficient data handling and management, addressing diverse industry needs.

Everpure Storage FlashBlade is designed to cater to demanding operational requirements, delivering high performance and low latency. Its simplicity in management, along with effective data replication, enhances usability. Predictive performance analytics, inline deduplication, and disaster recovery capabilities further enrich user experience. Despite its strengths, improvements are needed in public cloud integration, UI complexity, and documentation. Users suggest enhanced deduplication and hybrid solutions, better configurations, dashboard metrics, and S3 integration. Feedback also highlights the need for features like snapshots, expanded file storage, and performance upgrades.

What are the most important features of Everpure Storage FlashBlade?

Ease of Use: Simplifies data management with intuitive controls.
High Performance: Delivers exceptional speed for data-intensive tasks.
Scalability: Expands effortlessly to meet growing data demands.
Seamless Integration: Works well with existing systems for efficient operation.
Predictive Analytics: Provides insights to optimize performance proactively.
Inline Deduplication: Reduces storage footprint without compromising speed.
Disaster Recovery: Ensures data availability during disruptions.

What are the potential benefits or ROI in choosing Everpure Storage FlashBlade?

Cost-effectiveness: Provides exceptional performance at a competitive price point.
Minimal Maintenance: Reduces operational overhead with simple management.
Clear Dashboards: Enhances decision-making with accessible performance metrics.
Reliable Performance: Offers consistent output, critical for data-intensive industries.

In data center consolidation, media management, and PACS archiving, Everpure Storage FlashBlade meets specific industry needs. Companies in banking and healthcare leverage cost-effective performance and scalability for efficient data access, supporting AI training, big data analytics, and enterprise workloads with high IOPS requirements. Media and entertainment entities use it for video editing and storage management, benefiting from seamless NAS, file, and object storage.

Everpure (formerly 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

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP