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 31.6% 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 11 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

488 Views
368 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

609 Views
359 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

January 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

IBM Spectrum Scale

Ranking in Cloud Software Defined Storage

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

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 January 2025, in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 27.3%, down from 32.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is 31.6%, up from 30.0% 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…

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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.

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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

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"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."

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

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

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

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it makes our data readily available and we don't have to go through a lot of trouble to access it."

"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 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."

"CVO gives us the ability to access data as quickly as possible, which is critical because of the mission set we handle. Some things cannot wait. For example, we tried having the data in the cloud itself, but it took too long for us to retrieve it from cold or deep storage. If we have it ONTAP or on-prem, it's so much easier to pull it within minutes."

"With NetApp, you can integrate malware scanning or malware protection. This is something valuable that is not offered in SaaS solutions typically."

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

"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."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

"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."

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

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

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

"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."

"How it handles erasure coding. I feel it the improvement should be there. Basically, it should be seamless. You don't want to have an underlying hardware issue or something, then suddenly there's no reads or writes. Luckily, it's at a replication site, so our main production site is still working and writing to it. But, the replication site has stopped right now while we try to bring that node back. Since we implemented in bare-metal, not in appliance, we had to go back to the original vendor. They didn't send it in time, and we had a hardware memory issue. Then, we had a hard disk issue, which brought the node down physically."

"The product is more restricted with underlying cloud."

"We have used technical support. As long as they don't call me at four o'clock in the morning to tell me that a drive failed and they are sending me another one, I like it. They have a tendency to do that."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The standard pricing is online. Pricing depends. If you're using the PayGo model, then it's just the normal costs on the Microsoft page. If you're using Bring Your Own License, which is what we're doing, then you get with your sales contact at NetApp and start figuring out what price is the best, in the end, for your company."

"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."

"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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.

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

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

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

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

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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 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 31% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 17% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% 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

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 11% of the time

Nasuni vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

January 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

January 2025

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

January 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: January 2025.

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