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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
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

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.
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

"One feature that's particularly valuable for our finance customers is Pure Storage's safe mode. It protects against ransomware attacks by taking snapshots. Our customers were very impressed with this capability. The data reduction is also impressive compared to other providers."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"The support team is available all the time and they seem to know what they are doing."
"Support has been helpful."
"VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"Pure is simple to set up and manage on a day-to-day basis."
"We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless."
"The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good."
"I can compare Red Hat Ceph Storage with products from other vendors; I explored quite a few, but I still find that Red Hat Ceph Storage is making the most disruption."
"The setup is very easy, deserving a ten out of ten."
"It opens doors for completely open-source cloud."
"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."
"I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components."
"Ceph has simplified my storage integration, as I no longer need two or three storage systems since Ceph can support all my storage needs, replacing OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and LVM or DRBD for virtual machines in OpenStack."
"radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity."
"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 impact on our business was that we launched a new product which has allowed us to generate additional revenue for our business with it."
"We have had three years of 100 percent uptime on the system."
"The biggest thing about SwiftStack is freedom; it's freedom from vendor lock-in, freedom from one cloud provider, and freedom to scale when you want, how you want, and when you want."
"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 quality is really good, the stability is fantastic, and it requires very little manpower."
"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."
"Their support staff is second to none; they're the best support staff I've ever worked with, with any vendor of any caliber, in the past 20 years."
 

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 connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine. It has limited ability to do so."
"A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage. The FlashArray does not natively support object storage like S3 or Swift, which pushes customers needing these features towards the more expensive FlashBlade."
"The file functionality could be better."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"An area for improvement would be that it's pretty difficult to manage synchronous replication over multiple regions."
"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."
"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."
"I would like to see better performance and stability when Ceph is in recovery."
"Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow."
"Routing around slow hardware."
"I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster."
"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."
"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library."
"The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution."
"Management UI can be improved and have more functionalities."
"[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."
"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."
"We find the pricing rather steep."
"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"We never used the paid support."
"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.​"
"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.""
"COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"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 have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
"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."
"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."
"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
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

Pure Storage FlashArray
Ceph
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Dell, DreamHost
Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Dell Technologies, Nutanix and others in File and Object Storage. Updated: April 2026.
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