DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

DataCore and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. DataCore is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.4, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. DataCore holds a 7.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the storage management software category. DataCore SANsymphony seems to have the upper hand due to its flexibility and rapid deployment, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is known for its robust disaster recovery and competitive pricing.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony is valued for its ability to integrate with different storage solutions and VMware environments. Key features include high availability with mirroring, seamless auto-tiering, and compatibility with commodity hardware to deliver fast, stable performance. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers a strong abstraction layer and ease of storage migration. Its important features include thin provisioning, compression, and seamless cloud tiering, making it effective for disaster recovery and multi-vendor storage management.

Room for Improvement: DataCore SANsymphony could benefit from less complex pricing and improved support quality. Users suggest better iSCSI connectivity, enhanced performance reporting, and improved integration with backup solutions like Veeam. IBM Spectrum Virtualize users would like a simplified management interface and improved support for cross-cluster migration. Enhancing data deduplication and scalability features are also recommended.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products offer on-premises solutions, with DataCore also supporting hybrid cloud deployments. DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its rapid deployment, often within a day, and for its responsive customer service. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is similarly regarded for its straightforward deployment process and excellent technical support, though the consistent updates and customer-centric support from DataCore are highlighted.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is perceived as high due to a shift to subscription models, despite its long-term cost-effectiveness from hardware flexibility and efficient storage use. IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides competitive pricing with bundled licensing options, offering a balance between enterprise features and affordability. Users see positive ROI with high availability and cost savings over time.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

September 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 7.2%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	7.2%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	1.6%
Other	87.1%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy

I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution provides many controllers."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"DataCore SANsymphony brings stability to the infrastructures, and the infrastructures are healthy after, along with the redundancy."

"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."

"The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are many counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress)."

"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."

"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."

"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."

"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."

More DataCore SANsymphony 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."

"There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance. You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize."

"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."

"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."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"IBM offers excellent customer service."

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"The solution is expensive."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The speed could be improved."

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

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"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."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards."

"The solution could be better packaged and marketed."

"Unified storage (all block, objects, and files) should be in a single storage pool with unified storage concepts, hence providing the user with whatever they want."

"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that in many cases it is expensive, but we can find a solution every time to have a discount for selling it."

"Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial."

"For customers or technicians who don't speak and understand English, it would be great to have other language support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."

"The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support."

"I think the performance reporting can be improved by adding historical statistics into a database for the purpose of comparing."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"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."

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

"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."

"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

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

"The disk reliability is not that good."

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

"The solution is cost effective."

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize 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

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

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

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 DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Regarding the pricing of the solution, it's better than before. They have made some improvements regarding the pricin...

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What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like...

See all answers

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support. I cannot determine if certain features...

See all answers

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-...

See all answers

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...

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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 20% 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 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 8% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 7% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 21% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 17% of the time

Atlantis USX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 17% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

September 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

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

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

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

Sample Customers

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

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

September 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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