IBM Spectrum Scale vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Cloud Software Defined Storage category. IBM is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.3, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Scale and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

May 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Bernd Stroehle.

Enterprise Architect at kosakya

Deliver improved performance in data processing and foster extensive AI initiatives

I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system. It achieved the best results when integrated with IBM hardware. Even though it is complex, it provided significant performance advantages in large-scale data management. Its fault tolerance mechanisms and integration capabilities make it popular for extensive AI initiatives and data processing tasks for organizations like Daimler Benz and Bosch.

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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution

The tool's most valuable features are the SnapLock and SnapMirror features. If something goes wrong with the data, we can restore it. This isn't a mirror; we store data in different locations. If there's an issue on the primary site, we can retrieve data from the secondary site. Multiprotocol support in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is beneficial because it allows customers to manage SAN and NAS data within a single storage solution. This feature eliminates the need to purchase different types of storage.

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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

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

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

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

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

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The stability has been really good."

"It makes sure we have control of the data and that we know what it's being used for. The main thing for us is that we need to know what applications are consuming it and responsible for it. The solution helps us do that."

"The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same."

"Its functionality and technical support are adequate to help prevent failure due to errors."

"I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships."

"They have very good support team who is very helpful. They will help you with every aspect of getting the deployment done."

"This solution has made everything easier to do."

"ONTAP has been very stable for us, specifically in the cloud environment. It allows us to have high availability as well as standalone systems if that's what we want within our specific workloads. Also, on-premise has been a very stable environment. We have very few outages and when we do, we work with support to get systems back online in a timely manner."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pros

Cons

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

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

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"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."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."

"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"It would be helpful if there was a graphical user interface that could walk you through the deployment process. The instructions surrounding setup aren't the best. They need to be more step-by-step."

"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."

"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."

"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The dashboard is a little bit clunky. I like to see it a little bit more on the simplistic side. I would like to be able to create my own widgets and customize what I want to see a little bit more versus what is currently there. That would be helpful so that when I log in, I go straight to my widget or my board without going to multiple places to get to what I need to find or build."

"If they could include clustering together multiple physical Cloud Volumes ONTAP devices as an option, that could be helpful."

"We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy."

"It definitely needs improvement with respect to clustering and with respect to more collaborative integrations with Azure. Right now, we have very limited functionalities with Azure, except for storage. If CVO could be integrated with Azure that would help. When there is any sort of maintenance happening in the cloud, it disrupts the service in Cloud Volumes ONTAP."

"The key feature, that we'd like to see in that is the ability to sync between regions within the AWS and Azure regions. We could use the cloud sync service, but we'd really like that native functionality within the cloud volume service."

"The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."

"I rate the scalability a five out of ten."

"I would like this solution to be brought to all the three major players. Right now it's supported only on AWS and Azure. They should bring it to Google as well, because we would like to have flexibility in choosing the underlying cloud storage provider."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."

"The price could be cheaper."

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

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The product is very expensive."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good, but it was a test system, not a real purchase."

"Some flexibility around the licensing model would help. The product is licensed based on capacity. Basically, the largest capacity license that you can buy is 368 terabytes. At this point, NetApp is addressing some people's concerns around this."

"We purchased the product directly from NetApp."

"Cost is a big factor, because a lot of companies can't afford enterprise grade equipment all the time. They skimp where they can. I would recommend that they improve the cost."

"The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."

"We find the pricing to be favorable due to the educational sector we belong to."

"For enterprise customers, it's a very cost effective. But in the SMB segment, yeah, pricing is a little bit challenge for your time."

"Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Educational Organization

28%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale is very expensive with complex pricing models usually based on the amount of storage used or the n...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

There is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and gra...

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What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

So a lot of these licenses are at the rate that is required for capacity. So they're they're able to reduce the licen...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

The solution's pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP?

NetApp's support could improve.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 27% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cloud Object Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon S3 vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 9% of the time

N-able Cove Data Protection vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Compared 2% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

June 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP product report

Also Known As

No data available

ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO

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 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

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is an efficient storage management solution for managing and storing data in the cloud. It offers seamless integration with cloud providers, advanced data replication capabilities, and high data protection. With reliable performance, it is ideal for industries like healthcare and finance.

NetApp

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

1. Accenture 2. Acer 3. Adidas 4. Aetna 5. AIG 6. Apple 7. Bank of America 8. Barclays 9. Bayer 10. Berkshire Hathaway 11. BNP Paribas 12. Cisco 13. Coca-Cola 14. Comcast 15.ConocoPhillips 16. CVS Health 17. Dell 18. Deutsche Bank 19. eBay 20. Eli Lilly 21. FedEx 22. Ford 23. Freescale Semiconductor 24. General Electric 25. Google 26. Honeywell 27. IBM 28. Intel 29. Intuit 30. JPMorgan Chase 31. Kellogg's 32. KeyCorp 33. Liberty Mutual 34. L'Oréal 35. Mastercard

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

May 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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