HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #19, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.7. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 2.4% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise 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

HPE StoreVirtual and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the storage virtualization market. IBM Spectrum Virtualize has the upper hand with its advanced features and flexibility in licensing, catering to both entry-level and high-end configurations effectively.

Features: HPE StoreVirtual provides seamless storage management, high availability, and comprehensive integration with existing hardware. It simplifies the configuration process and ensures storage redundancy, making it a fit for straightforward deployments. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, on the other hand, offers powerful data migration capabilities, flexible operational management, and a unified view across different storage systems, enhancing appeal with its versatility and advanced disaster recovery features.

Room for Improvement: HPE StoreVirtual could improve in reducing latency issues and simplifying management, especially during firmware updates. The solution also requires better SSD integration. IBM Spectrum Virtualize could benefit from enhanced scalability and management intricacies, with improved reporting and cloud integration for advanced utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both systems offer robust on-premises capabilities. HPE StoreVirtual is noted for its easy deployment and generally effective technical support, though experiences with support vary. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is recognized for its technical competence and helpful support team, ensuring a smooth deployment process.

Pricing and ROI: HPE StoreVirtual is valued for its affordable high availability, with pricing that includes all features but is often critiqued for its complex licensing. It is particularly attractive to SMBs due to its cost-effectiveness. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers cost-efficient bundled licensing and broad scalability, being competitive in high-end configurations. It offers significant ROI potential through its flexible and comprehensive suite, being economically favorable in certain scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2026

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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 February 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 2.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.4%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	2.2%
HPE StoreVirtual	2.4%
Other	92.0%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

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.

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Vebjorn Nergaard

Senior IT Engineer at Guard Automation AS

Reliable with helpful support and good replication

The setup is okay, however, it comes with a moderate amount of difficulty. If you are new to the product, it is difficult. You do get used to the process over time and it gets easier. A company just needs one person to maintain the solution as it just runs. You don't need any support staff. It's very, very hands-off except when you do updates. The product is living its own life.

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AhmedSorour

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.

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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

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It's very stable and it's easy to use."

"It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime."

"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."

"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."

"HPE StoreVirtual is very easy to use from the management console."

"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."

"The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second."

"A company can scale it easily."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

"I like all the features, but the most impressive recently has been the introduction of IBM's Flash Core Modules. They are a form of a flash drive, but they have many more features."

"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

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

"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."

"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."

"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"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."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."

"The management aspect of the solution needs to be improved in order to make the product stronger."

"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."

"it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products."

"The product is coming to end-of-life in the next three years."

"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."

"One of the areas that need improvement is the consolidated management platform, to manage all of the nodes from one place and the licensing around that."

"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"The disk reliability is not that good."

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

"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."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

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

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

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

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"It costs less than $10,000 for one machine. If it costs more than 15% higher than this, then the customer may change to another solution."

"If you buy a five-year license, not only does the technical support expire after five years, but you also lose the ability to change and expand the VSA, and the systems won't go down."

"For our organization, I believe the cost is 16,000 Euros for a three-year license. It costs a bit more to do the maintenance on our servers as well. It's also on an HP ProLiant server and an organization will need to do the maintenance there also. I believe the price for that is around 2000 Euros a year."

"One of the key features about it is that when you buy either a VSA license or a StoreVirtual appliance, all your software's included."

"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."

"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Marketing Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Media Company

Performing Arts

15%

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	19

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

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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...

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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-...

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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 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 13% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 12% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 7% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 9% of the time

Atlantis USX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2026

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

January 2026

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2026

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

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

HPE StoreVirtual storage ensures that organisations can optimise the benefits of server virtualisation with cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery. The iSCSI-based, scale-out storage platform is easy to manage and change – meeting ongoing business demands without creating IT bottlenecks or application downtime. Overcoming the cost and management limitations of traditional storage area networks (SANs), HPE StoreVirtual nodes use storage clustering to form a single pool of resources that enable organisations to buy only what they need today, scaling non-disruptively to meet requirements in the future.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2026

Free Report: HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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