IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

IBM and VMware are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3, while VMware is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM holds a 4.7% mindshare in SDS, compared to VMware’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Scale

Read 12 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews

1,148 Views
842 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Software Defined Sto...

Read 7 VMware Software Defined Storage reviews

261 Views
151 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Scale

VMware Software Defined Sto...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Scale and VMware Software Defined Storage are competing products in data storage solutions. VMware Software Defined Storage appears to have an edge due to its comprehensive features and perceived worth, despite IBM Spectrum Scale's advantages in pricing and support.

Features: IBM Spectrum Scale features scalability with scalable file systems, management automation, and its ability to handle heavy loads efficiently. VMware Software Defined Storage offers integration, flexibility, and virtualization, with additional benefits of redundancy and data agility.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Scale can improve its initial configuration process, ease of use, and expand its feature set for broader appeal. VMware Software Defined Storage could enhance its cost efficiency, reduce setup complexity, and streamline the user interface to support diverse IT environments more effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Software Defined Storage provides streamlined deployment with strong virtualization support and flexible configurations, making it more straightforward than IBM Spectrum Scale, which requires more initial setup but offers reliable performance once configured. VMware's customer service is noted for being adaptive, while IBM offers stability after setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Scale is competitively priced, promising a solid return on investment through performance reliability. VMware Software Defined Storage may involve higher setup costs but justifies these with significant ROI through features and system efficiency, balancing IBM's cost advantage.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

March 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 Software Defined Storage (SDS)

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd)

VMware Software Defined Sto...

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.7%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Software Defined Storage is 0.9%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

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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RashidAnwar

Senior Project Lead at Tetra Pak

A stable solution that can be used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations

VMware Software Defined Storage is used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption. Redundancy and scalability are the other valuable features of the solution. You can scale it on the go,…

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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

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

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

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"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."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

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."

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

"The solution is very expensive."

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

No data available

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.

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 number of servers. Using Excelero for mirroring storage helped reduce Spectrum Sc...

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 to have example configurations or applications that assist in setup and configura...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Software Defined Storage?

VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for improvement in simplifying and reducing the licensing cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansible or other automation tools, would be very helpful. Simplifying the licensing mo...

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 28% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% 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 Ceph Storage vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 52% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 48% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

March 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage

February 2025

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware SDS

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.

IBM

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

VMware

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Helse Nord, Sky

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

March 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

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