IBM Spectrum Scale vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

IBM and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3, while StarWind is ranked #9 with an average rating of 10.0. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and IBM Spectrum Scale are key contenders in the hyper-converged infrastructure space. StarWind holds an advantage with its simplified management and affordability, particularly benefiting small and mid-sized businesses, supported by their efficient deployment and superior customer service.

Features: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is noted for its high availability, concise server footprint, and comprehensive support. Users benefit from its easy management and live migration capabilities. IBM Spectrum Scale highlights its high-performance file sharing and scalability features with robust cluster management, although it targets large-scale data environments.

Room for Improvement: StarWind could improve by offering subscription plans for hardware updates and refining its GUI for easier interface management. Transitioning from a Windows environment can also add complexity. IBM Spectrum Scale could benefit from a more simplified pricing model and easier setup. The absence of block storage provision is a noted limitation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind is recognized for its straightforward deployment process and excellent customer service, featuring proactive monitoring and responsive support that meets user expectations. IBM Spectrum Scale, while offering reliable customer service, entails complex deployment due to configuration demands, making it a robust solution for enterprise requirements.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind is known for its competitive pricing and high ROI, appreciated by SMBs for affordability and all-inclusive offers, often surpassing similar solutions like Nutanix with straightforward pricing. IBM Spectrum Scale's pricing is costly with a complex licensing structure, yielding strong ROI primarily for extensive deployments where its enterprise features are fully utilized.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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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Russ Le Puill

IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School

Proactive support with improved speed and resilience

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

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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

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"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."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

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

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"We opted for 24-hour monitoring and support, which has already paid for itself."

"We also opted for 24-hour support monitoring for any issues. They are extremely quick to respond on issues we even cause ourselves such as bumping a network cable."

"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."

"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."

"Having this all backed up by pro-active support gives us good peace of mind."

"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."

"With StarWind's Proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health."

"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"I would like to see more deduplication."

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

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

"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."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

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

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"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."

"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."

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The only issue we have had was the issue of performance, however, that is only due to the fact that we purchased a mix of SSD and regular spindle drives, and restoring databases was slow as it was trying to restore the database using the spindle drives."

"It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well."

"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."

"Not much can be improved, to be honest."

"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."

"I'd like a better UI and some limitations on "breaking it.""

"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."

"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The price could be cheaper."

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

"The price is a little high."

"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."

More Pure Storage 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."

"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."

"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."

"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."

"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."

"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."

"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."

"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."

"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

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...

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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...

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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...

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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

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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

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 27% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% 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

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Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 33% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 19% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 10% of the time

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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

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

March 2025

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Sears Home and Franchise Business

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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

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