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IBM Spectrum Control vs SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor 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

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
SolarWinds Storage Resource...
Ranking in Storage Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 5.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor is 6.7%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Spectrum Control5.5%
SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor6.7%
Other87.8%
Storage Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
AbdulKader Mohandes - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at Al Jazeera Media Network
Custom alerts and rich performance metrics have improved server monitoring and storage planning
We use customizable alerts extensively with different services, because the exchange services are different from Active Directory or DNS or anything else. We have customizable alerts for each service. I do not use the historical data trends that predict future storage needs. Perhaps some of my colleagues use it, but I do not. I would like to see a focus on broadcast services in the future to make it better. Broadcast services, specifically TV broadcast services, would be valuable to us because we come from a broadcast technology background and would appreciate having some features related to that. I would rate this review as an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product keeps historical data for a very long time."
"Technical support is quite responsive and helpful."
"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."
"It has turned out to be just as good, if not better, than what we were paying thousands of dollars for."
"The benefits would be mostly the ability to diagnose a problem."
"The installation was very easy. You just install an agent on a server, and you give that agent access to your storage device, then it just collects the data. It took five minutes to set up."
"Spectrum Control is highly secure and competitively priced."
"The granularity of this solution has been most useful. Customers can click on a single item and get the information only for the single item they choose."
"The performance metrics, especially for CPU and memory, and for the overall performance of the servers have been found most valuable."
"DO IT!!! You will not regret it."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
 

Cons

"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly. IBM also needs to provide proper training to handle Spectrum Control because it's a complicated solution."
"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."
"If we were to add VM level performance being able to monitor VMs on a VM level, then that would be good."
"The initial setup for IBM Spectrum Control is a bit complicated. They should also make it easier to integrate and use the Cosmos Analytics tool, which is very complicated."
"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly."
"If we were to add VM level performance being able to monitor VMs on a VM level, then that would be good."
"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."
"The solution must support multi-vendor storage."
"Scalability is my sore spot."
"The number of similar alerts is the main area for improvement."
"The solution could always be more easily scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We were already licensing Spectrum Control. This was one reasons why we went to Control rather than using the other product."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
Information not available
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Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor?
The number of similar alerts is the main area for improvement. Alert noise would be great to reduce.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor?
We are still working with SolarWinds and use the NPM product along with SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor.
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor?
We use customizable alerts extensively with different services, because the exchange services are different from Active Directory or DNS or anything else. We have customizable alerts for each servi...
 

Also Known As

Spectrum Control
SolarWinds SRM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuance
NetSuite, Youngs Seafood, APS Bank, Sven Meinks
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Control vs. SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.