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 #3 with an average rating of 9.5, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. IBM holds a 28.3% mindshare in CSDS, compared to NetApp’s 32.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Scale

Read 10 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

511 Views
400 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 61 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

654 Views
402 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Cloud Software Defined Storage

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (6th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Software Defined Storage

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 28.3%, down from 31.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 32.0%, up from 30.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Software Defined Storage

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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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

Apr 10, 2024

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The solution helps to keep production data The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data…

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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

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

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

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

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

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"It is a scalable solution."

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."

"There is unified storage, which provides flexibility. It is set up perfectly for performance and provisioning. We are able to monitor everything using a separate application. It provides error and critical warnings that allow us to take immediate action through ONTAP. We are able to manage everything, log a case, and follow up with the support team, who can fix it. That is how it is unified."

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

"In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team."

"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."

"The ability for our users to restore data from the Snapshots is very valuable."

"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."

"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"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 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."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"I would like to have more management tools. They are difficult to work with, so I would like them to be a bit more user-friendly."

"The automated deployment was a bit complex using the public APIs. When we had to deploy Cloud Volumes ONTAP on a regular basis using automation, It could be a bit of a challenge."

"We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side... But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers."

"Not a perfect ten because it's not very efficient with upgrades and management."

"I would like to see better integration with Active IQ."

"We would like to have support for high availability in multi-regions."

"The only issue we had lately was that outside our VPC we could not reach the virtual IP, the floating IP. I heard that they have fixed that..."

"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

"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 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."

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

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, there are fees for Azure, the VMs themselves and for data transfer."

"Our licensing costs are folded into the hardware purchases and I have never differentiated between the two."

"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Government

Educational Organization

52%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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

The solution is costly but reliable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

The solution's pricing could be better.

See all answers

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 license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 30% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 13% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 10% of the time

Box vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

October 2024

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

October 2024

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Learn More

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IBM

NetApp

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.

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.

Sample Customers

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

October 2024

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: October 2024.

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