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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs SwiftStack [EOL] 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th), File and Object Storage (8th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (1st)
SwiftStack [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer1759539 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"The initial setup is pretty quick."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"It has helped to save money and scale the storage without limits."
"The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us."
"The community support is very good."
"Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage."
"Replicated and erasure coded pools have allowed for multiple copies to be kept, easy scale-out of additional nodes, and easy replacement of failed hard drives. The solution continues working even when there are errors."
"The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations."
"Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing."
"We have not encountered any stability issues for the product."
"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."
"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 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."
"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 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."
"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."
"It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."
"The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes."
 

Cons

"Its configuration should be easier."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"I have not seen ROI."
"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."
"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."
"Geo-replication needs improvement. It is a new feature, and not well supported yet."
"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."
"It took me a long time to get the storage drivers for the communication with Kubernetes up and running. The documentation could improve it is lacking information. I'm not sure if this is a Ceph problem or if Ceph should address this, but it was something I ran into. Additionally, there is a performance issue I am having that I am looking into, but overall I am satisfied with the performance."
"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."
"This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing."
"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."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."
"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."
"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."
"[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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"The price could be cheaper."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"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."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"The price of this product isn't high."
"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."
"There is no cost for software."
"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."
"We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."
"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
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 ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
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...
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Also Known As

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Ceph
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Dell, DreamHost
Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
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