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 9.0, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 27.3% mindshare in CSDS, compared to NetApp’s 28.7% 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 12 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

484 Views
359 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

591 Views
349 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

February 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

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

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Cloud Software Defined Storage

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Ranking in Cloud Software Defined Storage

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

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 February 2025, in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 27.3%, down from 32.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 28.7%, down from 29.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Software Defined Storage

Featured Reviews

JanithRanasinghe

Depute CIO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Parallel file access efficiency and good file management with good scalability

We are using GPFS Scale for parallel file access. It's primarily for file management We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations. It's the only feature we are using since we have not explored other options. I wish there were some…

Read full review

Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

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

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 from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

Read full review

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."

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

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

"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."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"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."

"The Cloud Manager application that's on the NetApp cloud site is easy to use. You can set up and schedule replications from there, so you don't have to go into the ONTAP system. Another feature we've recently started using is the scheduled power off. We started with one client and have been slowly implementing it with others. We can cut costs by not having the VM run all the time. It's only on when it's doing replication, but it powers off after."

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

"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."

"The ease of use in terms of how the product works is valuable. We are able to work with it and deploy the storage that we need."

"They have very good support team who is very helpful. They will help you with every aspect of getting the deployment done."

"This solution has helped us because it is easy to use."

"NetApp's Cloud Manager automation capabilities are very good because it's REST-API-driven, so we can completely automate everything. It has a good overview if you want to just have a look into your environment as well."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"The solution's pricing could be better."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

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

"I think the challenge now is more in terms of keeping an air gap. The notion that it is in the cloud, easy to break, etc. The challenge now is mostly about the air gap and how we can protect that in the cloud."

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

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"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. It could be used for other databases, where the requirements are not so demanding, especially when it comes to write-latency."

"They definitely need to stay more on top of security vulnerabilities. Our security team is constantly finding Java vulnerabilities and SQL vulnerabilities. Our security team always wants the latest security update, and it takes a while for NetApp to stay up to speed with that. That would be my biggest complaint."

"NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP should improve its support."

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

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."

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

"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."

"Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."

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

"Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."

"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."

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

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

56%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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?

I don't think it's a high price compared to alternatives.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

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

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's support could improve.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 30% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 16% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

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

Compared 11% of the time

Wasabi vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 2% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

February 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

February 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

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.

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

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

February 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: February 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP report.

See our list of best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors and best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors.

We monitor all Cloud Software Defined Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.