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IBM Spectrum Scale vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (17th), File and Object Storage (6th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (6th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), File and Object Storage (4th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
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. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
Bernd Stroehle. - PeerSpot reviewer
Deliver improved performance in data processing and foster extensive AI initiatives
I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system. It achieved the best results when integrated with IBM hardware. Even though it is complex, it provided significant performance advantages in large-scale data management. Its fault tolerance mechanisms and integration capabilities make it popular for extensive AI initiatives and data processing tasks for organizations like Daimler Benz and Bosch.
Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."
"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."
"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."
"I rate this product ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."
"For somebody like me who grew up building what others call three-tier and I call traditional architecture, the valuable thing is that you can now buy it. You can have new deployments and infrastructure up and running with very little infrastructure behind it."
"The scalability, ease of use, and technical support are the most valuable features of Nutanix Unified Storage."
"Nutanix Unified Storage is a simple, user-friendly, and stable solution."
"They have well-documented best practices and the interface is good."
"It is unified. This is the best thing that Nutanix gave to the world. You can do everything from one point."
"I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page."
"From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that. From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage."
"The solution's most valuable features are its support and speed."
 

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."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"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."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"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."
"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"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."
"Integration with other vendors is not available."
"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 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."
"The GUI is easy to use, but it's complex to do tasks from the command line. That is one way they could simplify things for the engineers. People tend to use a graphical interface more than the command line interface. If anything goes wrong, we need to do troubleshooting from the CLI. It would be nice if there were more ways to fix issues within the GUI."
"The product needs to work a bit more on its ransomware detection capabilities."
"I would like to see the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. That could definitely be a major breakthrough in providing a unified, seamless experience for end-users. It could reduce costs as well as human effort."
"The dashboard can have more details and be more useful."
"According to the keynotes announced by Nutanix the previous day or this morning, the data storage for Kubernetes requires improvement as it has a few shortcomings in the area of operations."
"The interface could be improved."
"The only thing I would say is missing for us it is FTP protocol compatibility."
"Another aspect that needs improvement is continuous protection against security threats such as ransomware and potential data leakage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."
"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."
"The price could be cheaper."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"The price is a little high."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."
"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"We are Nutanix partners, so it is pretty good. With the free terabyte that comes with the Nutanix clusters, we have started to build proposals for the clients. The price adjustment with the new policy of Nutanix Unified Storages seems attractive. Let us see if it has results."
"It is not too high for what we are using."
"Nutanix is very competitive."
"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."
"The solution's pricing is better compared to other products."
"Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower."
"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."
"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
32%
Educational Organization
21%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?
IBM Spectrum Scale is very expensive with complex pricing models usually based on the amount of storage used or the n...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?
There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster. Additionally, it would be beneficial t...
What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Information Not Available
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.