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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs VxRail 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize2.3%
Red Hat Ceph Storage11.5%
DataCore SANsymphony6.0%
Other80.2%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VxRail11.3%
VMware vSAN9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.1%
Other70.3%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Unified storage solution supports cross-vendor replication and diverse industries
One of the most valuable features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is its virtualization capability. It allows for the creation of stretched clusters, which are crucial for running Linux-based workloads that need mirroring for boot disks. The solution also provides asynchronous and synchronous replication, supporting operations across different data centers. Its deployment options across public, private, and hybrid clouds add to its versatility.
Saleh Khalid - PeerSpot reviewer
computer scientist at Imam University
Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges
The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"While all these products have their own uses, Pure Storage FlashArray is in a market of its own."
"If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"If you're interested in using this solution, I recommend that you do the same — see if you like it."
"The tool has reduced our power consumption."
"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."
"So when I say our storage services to our client were provided continuously - non-stop - for 12 months, it means that all customer servers had 100% uninterrupted, online SAN access to their data 24x7x365 (minus the power down)."
"The most valuable feature is its reliability."
"I would recommend it, for sure, because it offers supportability, reliability, and some scalability, and the vendor is there as a partner."
"IBM offers excellent customer service."
"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."
"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."
"The most valuable feature for sure is the abstraction of the storage."
"Scalability is probably one of the biggest reasons people choose VxRail."
"The technical support from Dell was very good."
"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
"It is truly a hyper-converged infrastructure, so everything is there together."
"The update capability of VxRail is crucial for us."
"The most valuable feature in the VxRail solution is the software that binds the management portal and its ease of use of managing the environment. The guys don't have to worry about getting multiple solutions specialist. You can have one person looking at and managing the whole environment."
"After deploying we have been getting some good benefits, even the local businesses are happy with this solution, so we are now deploying VxRail to more manufacturing sites."
"This is a good solution for medium-sized installations especially when it will be coupled with VMware."
 

Cons

"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"We've had some issues with the production rate behind SVC."
"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."
"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."
"I have encountered stability issues in situations when the customer-provided AC power has defects."
"Technical support can be improved in terms of the knowledge base for the first level of support. We have to reach the second level to receive good support."
"Technical support is sometimes good and sometimes okay."
"Cheaper pricing and GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."
"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."
"I would like an easier migration. This way, if a node fails like it did, the data would have been migrated and I would not have had to get up at three in the morning."
"If they continue developing their product regarding VMware, it will be one of the best products in the HCI space. In terms of additional features, there is nothing missing because, for data protection, they also have the CDP option for VM. They can protect the VM at any point in time."
"We are experiencing some issues with Dell's live-chat support as the support is different based on the support included with the hardware."
"I would like to see VxRail add duplication features to its hybrid solution."
"It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration."
"The technical support team must improve the quality of responses."
"Its price could be better."
"The licensing needs to be improved upon."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process."
"The current VxRail pricing structure is quite opaque for me, especially considering the recent changes."
"Price is a bit of a challenge, particularly if you want extra features or higher performance."
"While one could argue, from a strictly corporate standpoint, that the cost of VxRail has been in the higher range, the true evaluation lies in the return on investment."
"VxRail has a subscription model usually tagged with the appliance box only."
"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."
"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."
"The licensing costs can vary depending on the number of processors and specific requirements, which may result in considerable expenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise149
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
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-...
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...
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 ...
How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?
HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, z...
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...
What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not bein...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Nutanix, Red Hat and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: April 2026.
891,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.