IBM Spectrum Scale vs Portworx Enterprise comparison

IBM and Pure Storage are both solutions in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category. IBM is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3, while Pure Storage is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Scale and Portworx Enterprise 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. Portworx Enterprise Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Portworx Enterprise

April 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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.

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Bernd Stroehle.

Enterprise Architect at kosakya

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.

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Paulo Jose Bosco Otto

Consultant at PBOservicos-Informatica

A solution backed by strong customer support, that is stable and scalable

As a company managed in a Kubernetes environment, being trusted by a Kubernetes vendor, Red Hat creates barriers against using other certified solutions that work. Because IBM is a competitor of Pure Storage, things seem to be getting worse. I don't have plans to use Portworx Enterprise in the future because, at the moment, I am working with Ondat, and I have to follow NetApp's direction on that. When evaluating Portworx, one should make sure their company has already chosen Pure Storage. Still, if they are evaluating the solution on Ondat or Dell or other platforms, they should get a roadmap statement from Pure Storage, that they will continue to develop storage hardware diagnostics. I rate Portworx a nine out of ten.

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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 tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"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."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"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."

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

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

"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

"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."

"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."

"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."

"The solution is user-friendly."

"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."

"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."

Cons

"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."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

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

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"I have not seen ROI."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"The solution is expensive."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade 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."

"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."

"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 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."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The documentation could be better."

"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."

"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."

"The integration has room for improvement."

"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."

"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."

"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."

"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."

"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

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?

IBM Spectrum Scale is very expensive with complex pricing models usually based on the amount of storage used or the n...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Portworx Enterprise?

A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, provid...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?

The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?

It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchas...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 28% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 42% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 19% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Portworx Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Software Defined Storage

March 2025

Download Portworx Enterprise product report

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

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

Portworx is the solution for running stateful containers in production, designed with DevOps in mind. With Portworx, users can manage any database or stateful service on any infrastructure using any container scheduler, including Kubernetes, Mesosphere DC/OS, and Docker Swarm. Portworx solves the five most common problems DevOps teams encounter when running stateful services in production: persistence, high availability, data automation, security, and support for multiple data stores and infrastructure.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Information Not Available

NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Portworx Enterprise

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Portworx Enterprise

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Portworx Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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