IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

The compared IBM and NVIDIA solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #14 in SDS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 1.6% mindshare in the category. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NVIDIA users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and SwiftStack [EOL] 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. SwiftStack [EOL] Report (Updated: September 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. SwiftStack [EOL]

September 2024

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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

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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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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reviewer1759539

System administrator at a library with 11-50 employees

A nicely-done product that provides a lot of graphs and reports to see what's happening in the background and makes configuration easier

It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st.

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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

"It's very easy-to-use."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"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."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades."

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

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."

"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

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

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

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"We acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage."

"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."

"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."

"The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually."

"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."

"The graphs are most valuable. They have a lot of graphs and reports that you can run to see what's happening in the background to configure OpenStack Swift."

"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."

"The performance is good. It is a secondary storage platform designed for archive and backup, so performance for the right use cases is very good. We have been pretty happy in that regard."

"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pros

Cons

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

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

"I have not seen ROI."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

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

"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."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

"The training program could be improved."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."

"The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap."

"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."

"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."

"[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key."

"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS."

"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."

"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."

"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."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The product is very expensive."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"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 rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"Dollar per gigabyte, it costs us more because we are storing more. However, if you look at it from a cost per gigabyte perspective, we have dropped our costs significantly."

"All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."

"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."

"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."

"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."

"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""

"The pricing model is great and makes sense. We have talked about how to get into more of a frequent billing cycle than once a year. That would be an interesting concept to add into the product, having the ability to have monthly billing instead of having to do a one-year licensing renewal. However, the way the license works by charging for storage consumed is definitely what makes them the most competitive."

More SwiftStack [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Performing Arts

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	21

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

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

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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...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 21% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 13% of the time

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Dell ObjectScale vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 59% of the time

Peaxy vs SwiftStack [EOL]

Compared 41% of the time

More SwiftStack [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

October 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

October 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

SwiftStack [EOL]

October 2025

Download SwiftStack [EOL] 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 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

SwiftStack [EOL] offers robust cloud integration, rapid deployment, and hardware-agnostic capabilities, making it a preferred choice for organizations needing scalable and flexible storage solutions. It supports a variety of storage needs from object storage to enterprise-grade backup systems.

SwiftStack [EOL] is recognized for its seamless cloud integration and platform independence, enabling rapid deployment and superior scalability. Its metadata search, proxyFS, and 1space feature enhance versatility and backup efficiency. SwiftStack Controller provides an enhanced management experience with easy system upgrades and performance monitoring. While the management UI and ProxyFS maturity have room for improvement, users seek more organized interfaces and better REST API support. Enhancements in erasure coding configurations and data archiving, along with improved client library integrations, are highlighted needs. The demand for NFS integration improvements and options for data movement between storage policies is noted.

What are the key features of SwiftStack?

Rapid Deployment: Fast and efficient system setup.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing storage needs.
Flexibility: Hardware-agnostic and platform independent.
Resiliency: Robust data protection mechanisms.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with cloud services.
Metadata Search: Facilitates efficient data retrieval.
ProxyFS Capability: Offers versatile storage solutions.
1space Feature: Enhances backup efficiency.

What benefits and ROI should be expected in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces deployment and operational costs.
Performance: Fast data ingestion and access speed.
Enhanced Management: Simplifies system management with advanced tools.
Versatility: Supports diverse storage needs from backups to cloud services.

SwiftStack [EOL] is implemented in industries as a backup platform for Commvault and Veeam, cloud storage similar to Amazon S3 or Azure Blob. It's essential for SaaS platforms, data sharing in research, preproduction object storage, data center operations, and archival management for OpenStack Swift servers in educational and research institutions.

NVIDIA

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. SwiftStack [EOL]

September 2024

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. SwiftStack [EOL]

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. SwiftStack [EOL] and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.

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