No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
DataCore SANsymphony
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (10th), Storage Performance (1st)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th)
 

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.
SC
Founder at EKIUM
Storage platform has improved data performance and has provided reliable support for my clients
It's difficult to know how DataCore SANsymphony can be improved. I think DataCore SANsymphony could be deployed on Linux environments, which could be a great thing for clients. I would like to see the stabilization of the Veeam implementation in the future, and perhaps the integration or officialization of compatibility with Proxmox and XCP-ng. With Proxmox, it wasn't easy while integrating it with third-party solutions. It's working, but it was a bit difficult to deploy.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the features that my customers are really interested in is immutable snapshots. There are immutable snapshots to which your applications can be reverted back if you are hit by some kind of ransomware threat or malicious attack. That's kind of a key deal, and it is one of the selling points I use to point out to my customers the value and the features that Pure Storage brings to the table."
"We actually originally went with a competitor's product, and after about eight months, a lot of wrangling, had them buy it back from us, and then we bought a similar Pure Storage product, and it's just been great."
"Do it. I have zero reservations about recommending Pure to anyone who is looking for some really good all-flash."
"I would highly recommend this solution; it has all the features we need and tests all the software solutions that are currently available and that will be available in the future."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"It's extremely stable and has good performance."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"Runs very stable and therefore very trustworthy, without that a storage solution would be unthinkable."
"The solution has 100% storage availability and we've had that for more than ten years."
"DataCore has been doing software-defined storage since back before SDS was even a buzzword, and it has provided a great deal of flexibility, performance, and efficiency for our Enterprise SAN."
"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."
"This flexibility and scalability have helped our organization in practice because it is important for us as it decouples the storage management software from the physical hardware, creating a software layer of intelligence."
"This product has a good ratio between quality and price; in many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."
"The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The versatility is the main benefit, since it virtualizes everything, they use it for so many different things."
"It is really a good product which can virtualize your whole data center."
"We have all the tools in one place."
"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."
"It enabled us to build an infrastructure and replace storage with no disruption to our hosts whatsoever."
"We have reduced a lot of power and cooling requirements in the data center."
"I think Spectrum Visualize is a very good product to address a lot of problems."
"One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those."
 

Cons

"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"We had one instance with an eight-hour outage in our primary data center because the upgrade to the controller failed, and the controller redundancy didn't work."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool."
"The so-called hyperconverged infrastructure edition, sometimes known as vSan, should be addressed."
"It's a very expensive solution, and the licensing costs should be lower."
"SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has. For example, vSAN has a special feature called continuous data protection. It provides the ability to go back in time to a given moment. You can see what was on your disk in the past up to two weeks. That's a great feature because ransomware attacks are increasingly common, and that provides you some kind of protection."
"The solution is constantly evolving."
"Pricing can be confounding with many options"
"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."
"The feature that's kind of missing is getting us up to the point where we can help the application owners see where their data is at, understand it, and potentially help us breakout."
"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."
"It even has a component, which I would say is a bit lacklustre."
"The training program could be improved."
"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."
"Because we're so big, they have a little bit of trouble tracking all the products and making sure we get connected with the reports, but, in general, they are very good."
"IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"The solution is cost effective."
"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."
"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."
"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."
"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
 

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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
I am saying that the pricing is reasonable. It's not that expensive, and the product is also pretty stable. It's a go...
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
It's difficult to know how DataCore SANsymphony can be improved. I think DataCore SANsymphony could be deployed on Li...
What is your primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony?
I usually recommend DataCore SANsymphony for companies in the domain of research, energy, governmental, and education.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
DataCore Virtual SAN
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.