IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale comparison

IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Scale are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM Spectrum Accelerate is ranked #23, while IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.5. IBM Spectrum Accelerate holds a 2.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM Spectrum Scale’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM Spectrum Accelerate users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM Spectrum Scale users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Scale compete in the storage solutions category. IBM Spectrum Scale often has the upper hand due to its extensive features and scalability that outperform the affordability of IBM Spectrum Accelerate.

Features: IBM Spectrum Accelerate offers consistent high performance, flexible scaling in all-flash, and hybrid-cloud environments. IBM Spectrum Scale provides enterprise-grade data management, seamless synchronization, and broad scalability, crucial for complex storage scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Accelerate has user-friendly setup procedures for streamlined deployment. Spectrum Scale, requiring more technical expertise, presents a complex deployment model with numerous configuration options. It provides comprehensive customer service to support its intricate deployment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Accelerate is seen as cost-effective with lower setup costs and rapid benefits, suitable for budget-constrained environments. IBM Spectrum Scale, while demanding a higher initial investment, offers significant ROI through advanced capabilities for handling large-scale data management and processing.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Accelerate is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 3.7%, down from 4.5% 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	3.3%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.7%
IBM Spectrum Accelerate	2.2%
Other	90.8%

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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reviewer1154616

IS Auditor at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

A robust solution with good performance and support

This is a solution that scales well, although I think that we have stabilized in terms of use. With respect to scalability, we have an open question as to whether we will be able to grow into a cloud-based deployment. We don't know in what ways this solution will assist us with the migration, or whether we can still use it for DR. We don't know about the type of backup, be it full, incremental, or otherwise. We are also looking for a cost-savings if we migrate. These are things that we will find out over time. We have about two petabytes of data.

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Sachin Prakash

Assistant Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Has optimized performance using cluster deployment and distributed file access but needs better visibility into network dependencies

IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM. This is one of the features I appreciate most because if you have existing infrastructure at your site but don't want to reinvest in hardware, you can purchase IBM Spectrum Scale software and deploy it as software-defined storage. Users can comfortably access data from their host to the storage host without relying on new network setup when deploying GPFS as it uses the existing corporate network. However, high-speed ethernet network is required. By adding switches to the same network where client hosts reside and deploying GPFS storage array, any file system created on the storage cluster can grant export permissions determining which hosts can access specific file systems. These hosts can directly mount them as remote file systems. The process is simpler compared to defining IQN for providing access to client hosts. Creating a cluster for clients with virtual machines or physical Linux/Windows machines requires installing GPFS services on client nodes, which creates a client cluster. Access is defined on the storage cluster for the particular client cluster, allowing all hosts in that client cluster to mount file systems with granted permissions.

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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

"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."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

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

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

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

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the robustness, which is typical of IBM because their software generally just works."

"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."

"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."

"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."

"We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations."

"IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

Cons

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"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 speed could be improved."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The reporting mechanisms need improvement."

"he interface is not user-friendly so the ease of use could be improved."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."

"Initially, stability was a concern as we encountered numerous issues and errors."

"Making it a little easier to add bad file sets would help. There is a transition to how you add storage and how you add a file set, so making that a little smoother would probably be my recommendation."

"Initially, stability was a concern as we encountered numerous issues and errors."

"This is probably the biggest challenge, getting everything upgraded, because it just takes time. We wish it was a faster solution to be able to do everything at once, but you have do each node individually. The more nodes, the longer it takes."

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The price is a little high."

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

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

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"For a database, on a yearly basis, we pay approximately $3,500 for licensing fees. The solution is sold as a subscription on a yearly basis so there are no other ancillary costs."

"If you are cost-sensitive then this solution is not for you."

"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	8

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 Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale functions as software-based storage, allowing users to utilize any hardware supported or defined b...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

The system relies heavily on ethernet networking, and when issues occur, we must consult with the network team to inv...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?

My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.

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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 9% 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

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StorMagic SvSAN vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 27% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 17% of the time

Veritas Access Appliance vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 11% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Accelerate Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 10% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2026

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

December 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Accelerate product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

January 2026

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM XIV

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

IBM Spectrum Accelerate is a software-defined block storage solution designed for rapid deployment across heterogeneous infrastructure for hybrid cloud and delivering consistent service levels to a dynamic workload mix. It is based on proven grid-architecture, enterprise-scale IBM XIV technology. IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed, including as hyper-converged infrastructure, on any x86 server, on pre-installed third-party appliances or on public cloud infrastructure, and is available as a service on IBM Cloud infrastructure.

IBM

IBM Spectrum Scale is a cluster file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN attached, network attached, a mixture of SAN attached and network attached, or in a shared nothing cluster configuration. This enables access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. IBM Spectrum Scale has many features beyond common data access including data replication, policy based storage management, and multi-site operations. You can create a cluster of AIX nodes, Linux nodes, Windows server nodes, or a mix of all three. IBM Spectrum Scale can run on virtualized instances providing common data access in environments, leverage logical partitioning, or other hypervisors. Multiple IBM Spectrum Scale clusters can share data within a location or across wide area network (WAN) connections.

IBM

Sample Customers

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

Silverpop

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

January 2026

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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