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IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

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.
Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources
Stability can be improved. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level where most of the features you need in production are there. The stability is not from a day-to-day operations perspective, but more from a supportability perspective, because currently some of the support scenarios require you to completely evacuate hosts or the complete cluster. That sometimes can be a stretch. This would clearly be an improvement if the support teams were given additional tools to make that easier. Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would be uncoupled even more. Dashboards are there, and we use vROps as well. So, we have all the beauty of capacity planning and everything over there. That's not really something where we need a lot of other things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"The initial setup is pretty quick."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."
"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."
"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."
"I rate this product ten out of ten."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"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."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"I like the scalability and the fact that it reduces your total cost for storage over several years."
"It scales well. We have plenty of room to grow."
"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
"Very good VCG notification feature."
"The main advantage is that it's all in the box, with VMware vCenter Server product."
"It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN."
"All the features are working great."
"It is easy to work with, easy to handle, and easy to manage."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"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."
"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."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"The speed could be improved."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"Maybe it needs integration with HA."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"This solution would benefit from better collaboration with Cisco for driver updates."
"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"
"I would like to see replication as part of it. I would also like to see direct file access, being able to run SIF shares and NFS and the like. I think that would be critical to continuing the use of it going forward."
"Dedupe in non flash drives can be improved."
"Troubleshooting tools could be improved."
"Its installation should be easier, and its price should be cheaper. It would be good for the product if they can include the data locality feature."
"We would like to see even more storage capacity."
"It doesn't seem like it gives the performance that an actual SAN would give for heavy IOPS, read/writes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"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 of this solution could be made more affordable."
"The product is very expensive."
"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"The price could be cheaper."
"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 have increased our user productivity."
"The product's price is not high. The tool is available at a normal price."
"The price of vSAN could be lower."
"With vSAN, we didn't find the market that competitive."
"The licensing cost is high and should be taken into account."
"It is fairly cost-effective for entry to mid-level performance based on the underlying hardware components."
"Due to recent changes in VMware's licensing approach by Broadcom, the cost has increased significantly, making it less attractive from a cost perspective."
"VMware is not a cost effective solution, especially if you have a Microsoft shop. In this case, you would have to purchase the VMware license when there are already Hyper-V solutions that could do it for much cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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 is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and gra...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.