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Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Control 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

Dell VPLEX
Ranking in Storage Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Spectrum Control
Ranking in Storage Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of Dell VPLEX is 6.6%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 5.6%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell VPLEX6.6%
IBM Spectrum Control5.6%
Other87.8%
Storage Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shailendra Choudhary - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Has supported enterprise projects consistently but pricing remains a challenge for broader adoption
We are system integrators and resell the HCI solution. We have worked with Dell VPLEX for approximately two to three years. We have been in several RFCs, and Dell VPLEX is implemented in the enterprise segment only. The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it. We typically recommend Dell VPLEX for customers who already work with other Dell products.
JY
System, Storage And Data Administrator at STET
Centralized capacity planning has improved insight into storage consumption for long term growth
Implementing IBM Spectrum Control is complex; we have had several calls to IBM to solve problems about DVM stack size, max memory size, and other issues such as buffer and cloud buffer size. Currently it is working, though we still have swap issues on our Linux Spectrum Protect server.We experience swap issues when we run a big retention set, and we have noticed that on the server we have memory available, but it seems that IBM Spectrum Control is using swap because the DBM max memory size is two gigabytes. This causes IBM Spectrum Control to use swap size instead of using memory, which is an issue we have opened a call to IBM about.We hope to ask why we have no report on the clone because on our storage we have an internal clone, but it is not reported. We will see with the support why it is not reported.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best part of the solution is the virtualization layer due to the fact that, for all our pain points during migration, we use the virtualization with VPLEX."
"Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract."
"The capacity to migrate machines onto VPLEX is great — it's very clean. We can migrate machines and add arrays easily."
"Its mirroring capabilities allow for data to be mirrored across two different data centers, so if one center were to crash or fail, the other center could take over and keep everything running smoothly."
"Due to the large number of models and different brands it is a very good solution to virtualize volumes."
"With the help of EMC VPLEX we simplified the architecture and improved the response time."
"The business continuity is sorted, as the data is in two data centers, i.e., readable and writable, and if one side goes down, there is no downtime and the other side continues non-disruptively."
"Technical support from Dell is quite good."
"Spectrum Control is highly secure and competitively priced."
"I would recommend the product, because as a cloud-based tool, you do not have to do any maintenance; everything, including updates, is done, you just log in and it is there, it is easy to configure, as it took me five minutes to set up, and you get a lot of value as far as the data and the performance information."
"The granularity of this solution has been most useful, as customers can click on a single item and get the information only for the single item they choose."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use. The ability to get into a storage device and look at whatever you are trying to look at as far as performance, then obtain the reports that you need to do your analytical work."
"We compared other vendors also, but Spectrum Control's price is lower than most."
"It has turned out to be just as good, if not better, than what we were paying thousands of dollars for."
"The product keeps historical data for a very long time."
"Spectrum Control's scalability is fine - we can extend it for the backup requirement."
 

Cons

"VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery."
"Due to the bug with Broadcom, we have had a massive crisis on VPLEX. This little bug has caused roughly one thousand machines to go down."
"These are all pretty trivial for larger customers but VNXe as a main production storage array running a workload important enough to give it a multi-site stretched vSphere cluster is something I think is unlikely to be present in those customers."
"The licensing model for enterprise storage (EMC VMAX) and integrating the solution into the actual storage frames instead of a separate product."
"Maybe setup a one-to-many cluster, instead of just a 1-to-1."
"We experienced increases in latency in accesses to disks and some bugs on engines."
"The solution is expensive and requires more budget, so people in the SMB segment do not prefer it."
"The administration is difficult, so we want to add hyper-converged infrastructure."
"The pain points were, and may still continue to be, the fact that there are multiple components of the product which are installed, you might say, somewhat individually."
"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly. IBM also needs to provide proper training to handle Spectrum Control because it's a complicated solution."
"It's very complicated and difficult for me, and it's easier with all these installations on one server."
"I would like to see is more information regarding the copy groups (the replication)."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The database could be improved so that the complexity of installation could be easier. We would also like to have more granularity in the profiles and products for users. We would like to link the users to the tool to managers or auditors."
"If we were to add VM level performance being able to monitor VMs on a VM level, then that would be good."
"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive."
"VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"We were already licensing Spectrum Control. This was one reasons why we went to Control rather than using the other product."
"It is pay for the amount of storage that you are monitoring. The more that we use the tool and like the tool, we may want to extend it to other storage platforms. This is just a matter of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell VPLEX?
Some of the products are very easy to implement, while others are more difficult, and our team seeks support help when required. Regarding the integration part, the delivery team handles all integr...
What is your primary use case for Dell VPLEX?
We are implementing Cohesity, Hitachi, Dell, and Nutanix, VMware, vSAN; multiple products. We have recently started working with Cohesity because there was not much presence in India for Cohesity, ...
What advice do you have for others considering Dell VPLEX?
Hitachi Systems Microclinic has been renamed to Hitachi Systems India Private Limited. The email address has been changed to shailendra.chaudhry.hd at hitachi-systems.com from shailendra_singh.chau...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Control?
Implementing IBM Spectrum Control is complex; we have had several calls to IBM to solve problems about DVM stack size, max memory size, and other issues such as buffer and cloud buffer size. Curren...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Control?
IBM Spectrum Control has been in use for more than ten years. It was installed for capacity planning because our manager wants to have insight into the capacity planning of the storage area. We ins...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Spectrum Control?
We are working with IBM products. IBM Spectrum Control is also installed now and we are using it.Currently, we are trying to implement a private cloud, specifically an Amazon S3 compatible cloud.We...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Spectrum Control
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kindred Healthcare, Regis Aged Care, WeBank SpA, Panduit, Munson Healthcare
Nuance
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VPLEX vs. IBM Spectrum Control and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.