IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3, while Red Hat is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and IBM Spectrum Scale are leading products in the realm of large-scale data storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale tends to have an edge due to its advanced features and data management capabilities.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage features a distributed and self-healing architecture, integration with a variety of storage solutions, and high availability. IBM Spectrum Scale offers high-speed data access, seamless file sharing across platforms, and advanced monitoring capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could enhance its analytics capabilities, improve its user interface, and expand support for hybrid cloud environments. IBM Spectrum Scale might benefit from simplifying its deployment process, reducing initial costs, and enhancing its integration with external systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides straightforward deployment and extensive customer support, making it a suitable choice for diverse infrastructures. IBM Spectrum Scale, while more complex in setup, requires detailed planning but supports intricate storage requirements.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage is cost-effective, appealing to those seeking a low initial investment with satisfactory ROI in scalability and open-source integrations. IBM Spectrum Scale has a higher setup cost but offers superior performance and long-term returns, especially in data-intensive environments where its advanced management features are fully leveraged.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

February 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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ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI

IT Private Cloud & Infrastructure Leader at Sicredi

Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration

Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

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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."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"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."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"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."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."

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

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

"It is a scalable solution."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product."

"We use the solution for cloud storage."

"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."

"I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components."

"Red Hat Ceph Storage is a reliable solution, it works well."

"High reliability with commodity hardware."

"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."

"We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to 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."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"The solution is expensive."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."

"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."

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

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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."

"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."

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

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."

"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."

"If troubleshooting is needed, the response should be faster."

"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."

"If you use for any other solution like other Kubernetes solutions, it's not very suitable."

"It needs a better UI for easier installation and management."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

"I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."

"We never used the paid support."

"There is no cost for software."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

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...

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

How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

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Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 42% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

March 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

March 2025

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

Ceph

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

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Dell, DreamHost

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

February 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

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