IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7, while Red Hat is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to Red Hat’s 18.9% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% 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 Virtualize compete in the efficient and scalable data management category. IBM Spectrum Virtualize often has the upper hand for its advanced data virtualization capabilities and comprehensive feature set.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides scalability, open-source flexibility, and unified storage for cloud environments. It supports seamless integration with OpenStack, delivers block and object storage, and offers a distributed architecture. IBM Spectrum Virtualize allows integration of diverse storage systems into a single platform, improving management and performance. It features a robust virtualization engine, flexible data migration, and unified management across multi-vendor storage.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage can benefit from easier configuration and better deployment processes. It may also improve its user interface to reduce complexity for tech teams. Enhancing customer support responsiveness would be beneficial. IBM Spectrum Virtualize could improve by offering solutions at a lower cost. Streamlining advanced features for simplicity and further optimizing virtualized environments could also enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage may present challenges with its complex open-source setup, potentially requiring experienced teams. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is often praised for its streamlined deployment process and strong customer service, offering a more straightforward experience thanks to its support network.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage is generally viewed as cost-effective, providing good ROI by leveraging open-source advantages and reducing external storage costs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, while more expensive, is justified by its feature-rich offering and long-term benefits of virtualization technologies. The choice centers around Red Hat's affordability versus IBM's higher upfront cost with possible greater long-term returns.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

August 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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ceph Storage is 18.9%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat Ceph Storage	18.9%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	1.5%
Other	75.4%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

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Rifat Rahman

Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited

Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

Read full review

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."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

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

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

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

"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."

"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."

"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."

"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."

"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"It's a very performance-intensive, brilliant storage system, and I always recommend it to customers based on its benefits, performance, and scalability."

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

"The setup is very easy, deserving a ten out of ten."

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

"Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing."

"What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug."

"Without any extra costs, I was able to provide a redundant environment."

"Ceph has simplified my storage integration. I no longer need two or three storage systems, as Ceph can support all my storage needs. I no longer need OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, I no longer need NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and most importantly, I no longer need LVM or DRBD for my virtual machines in OpenStack."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

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

"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."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"The speed could be improved."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"I have not seen ROI."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

"I would like to see them provide a unified platform that offers block, file, and object-based protocol access."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

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

"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."

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

"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"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."

"Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure."

"We have encountered slight integration issues."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

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

"The price is a little high."

"The price could be cheaper."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

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

"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."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"The price of this product isn't high."

"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."

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

"We never used the paid support."

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

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

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

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

See all answers

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

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. T...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware ...

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 ...

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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?

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 5% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 22% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

Atlantis USX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

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MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 39% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ceph Storage

August 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 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.

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Dell, DreamHost

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

August 2025

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

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