IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 36 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

417 Views
282 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Read 62 NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP reviews

609 Views
359 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

January 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 Virtualize

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Storage (1st), Cloud Backup (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (5th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)

Featured Reviews

EdwinVan Halm

Virtualization Architect at Halm-IT

Enterprise product that delivers high performance features

The primary use case is high availability and disaster recovery. They use it as an active-active cluster located in two physical locations for quick recovery using immutable snapshots The quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features. The product is…

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at Evolent Health

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

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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

"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."

"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."

"The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously."

"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."

"When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"The most valuable features of this solution are SnapShot, FlexClone, and deduplication."

"This solution has helped us because it is easy to use."

"If you have a fair amount of experience with NetApp, you can work on it very easily."

"If you have a larger amount of data than normal in cloud, it is easy to provision and maintain. Waiting for the delivery of the controller, the configuration of enclosures, etc., all this stuff is eliminated compared to using on-premise."

"They have very good support team who is very helpful. They will help you with every aspect of getting the deployment done."

"The initial setup was straightforward. We started with a small pilot and we then moved to production with no downtime at all."

"The fast recovery time objective with the ability to bring the environment back to production in case something happens."

"ONTAP has been very stable for us, specifically in the cloud environment. It allows us to have high availability as well as standalone systems if that's what we want within our specific workloads. Also, on-premise has been a very stable environment. We have very few outages and when we do, we work with support to get systems back online in a timely manner."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."

"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."

"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."

"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."

"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."

"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."

"The disk reliability is not that good."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Only AWS and Azure public clouds are currently available from China, and I would like to see support for Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud)."

"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."

"The navigation on some of the configuration parameters is a bit cumbersome, making the learning curve on functions somewhat steep."

"The support is good in general but the initial, front-line support could be improved. Because I have already been using the product for so long, when I call support I would rather talk to somebody who is a little bit more advanced or senior, rather than talking to the first-level support. Usually, it takes some time to reach out to their senior support."

"We have used technical support. As long as they don't call me at four o'clock in the morning to tell me that a drive failed and they are sending me another one, I like it. They have a tendency to do that."

"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."

"It definitely needs improvement with respect to clustering and with respect to more collaborative integrations with Azure. Right now, we have very limited functionalities with Azure, except for storage. If CVO could be integrated with Azure that would help. When there is any sort of maintenance happening in the cloud, it disrupts the service in Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"I think the challenge now is more in terms of keeping an air gap. The notion that it is in the cloud, easy to break, etc. The challenge now is mostly about the air gap and how we can protect that in the cloud."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them."

"We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."

"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."

"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you still end up saving money versus straight Azure native for storage. It's definitely worth it."

"I know the licensing is a bit on the high-end. That's when we had to downsize our MetroCluster disks and just migrate to disks that were half used. We migrated into those just to reduce maintenance costs."

"They have a very good price which keeps our customers happy."

"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."

"It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

"The deal with the seller was acceptable; the pricing is reasonable."

"It is not a cheap solution because we need to pay for the license and pay for Azure resources as well."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I have no idea of the pricing as I am not part of the sales team. However, the product is a little bit more expensive due to the high-end enterprise features it offers.

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

The training program could be improved. It would be beneficial to have a lab environment to train myself before implementing it at a customer's location.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

The primary use case is high availability and disaster recovery. They use it as an active-active cluster located in two physical locations for quick recovery using immutable snapshots.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the license consumption and also the consumption of the underlying cloud storage.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

See all answers

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

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Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 11% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

December 2024

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

Learn More

IBM

NetApp

Overview

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

Sample Customers

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

January 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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