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

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The product is fantastic."

"We chose Pure because we like their support model and we like their performance."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

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

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

More Everpure FlashBlade pros

"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."

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

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

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

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

"The good thing about NetApp is the features that are available on the cloud are also available on-premises."

"This solution has made everything easier to do."

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

"First and foremost, test the use cases where you need availability and performance as the key drivers for a solution; in those scenarios, NetApp is way ahead compared to what the competitors offer."

"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."

"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 support is its most valuable feature as they provide on-call support, respond to issues in a timely fashion, and also offer disaster recovery."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all; it's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person, and nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow."

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

"Its configuration should be easier."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

More Everpure FlashBlade cons

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"We do not feel as a company that the product can grow with us anymore, so we are not going to use it anymore."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"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."

"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."

"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."

"The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement."

"From what I've seen with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the delivered performance doesn't match the performance that I select; it's about half."

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing."

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

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

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

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"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."

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

More Everpure FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"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's pricing is reasonable."

"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 enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."

"They give us a good price for CVO licenses. It is one of the reasons that we went with the product."

"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."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

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

"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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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.

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Dell ObjectScale vs Everpure FlashBlade

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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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

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