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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs VxRail comparison

 

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

IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
VxRail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
HCI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Spectrum Virtualize and VxRail aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is designed for Software Defined Storage (SDS) and holds a mindshare of 1.6%, down 2.2% compared to last year.
VxRail, on the other hand, focuses on HCI, holds 19.7% mindshare, down 21.4% since last year.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

EdwinVan Halm - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Rami Jadallah - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline management and integration with seamless upgrades
The primary reasons customers choose VxRail include ease of management, ease of upgrades, and integration with VMware. The hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies software and hardware upgrades. Customers prefer the single pane of glass management and integration with VMware, which makes it easier for them to proceed with decisions involving VMware products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."
"The ease of management, the simplicity of the CLI, the speed of that interface, and the well-architected design of the product in general are valuable features."
"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."
"When we have a resource contention, we can easily increase the capacity."
"For me, the most valuable feature is in relation to the software updates."
"It improved from an operations standpoint as we have reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly."
"It's a simple product, fast, and reliable."
"The most valuable feature is its high performance."
"Cost-effective and easy to install."
"We have seen ROI using this solution. It has simplified the work of the staff that we have which allows us to do more work with the same number of people, without having to incrementally grow the staff. The reliability of the product has been exceptional."
"The most valuable feature of VxRail is the VxRail Manager, which centralizes resources like storage built with vSAN."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."
"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."
"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."
"I would like to see them provide a unified platform that offers block, file, and object-based protocol access."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
"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."
"I would like to see more solutions for satellite capabilities where we can put it into smaller locations and still have the redundancy that we have with a larger cluster."
"It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad. They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively."
"The fact that is based on vSAN is the main issue of this solution."
"When we have a vulnerability or we need to upgrade VxRail, it takes a long time. It takes eight hours each time we upgrade."
"There is an area for improvement with VxRail, specifically the upgrade process. Upgrading the is quite complex and almost exclusively requires Dell support. You can't do it alone, so you need to have support contracts running, which could be streamlined to improve the solution."
"Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out."
"I would like to see Dell take a crack at simplifying the process of moving from a node to a cluster and assembling everything into the appliance. It would be great if Dell could provide a pathway where a customer could actually install it without the certifications. Of course, I can't say how you would dumb down something so complex."
"Troubleshooting can be a little more difficult than legacy systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"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."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"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."
"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."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"VxRail is an expensive solution."
"VxRail is expensive because it's based on VMware and V-SAN. The price is not the cheapest. The technical support is expensive, but it is a good service."
"It varies. It could be $100,000 at the smaller end and millions and millions of dollars at the higher end."
"We pay for annual support from VxRail."
"I live in Brazil, and my customers are from Brazil. It is quite an expensive solution. It is more expensive than the traditional environment."
"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."
"We made a one-time purchase of the solution and the price is expensive."
"The price is a little bit on the higher side but the system and management are so quick and easy that it's worth it for the customer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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.
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.
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.
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, zero rule. That means I need three copies of my data on two different types of me...
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 engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
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 being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VCE VxRail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox
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