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IBM Spectrum Scale vs Portworx Enterprise comparison

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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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (10th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
Portworx Enterprise
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd), Data Storage for Kubernetes (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Sachin Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
David Ivorra - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Lynx View
Modern data platform has simplified Kubernetes backups and disaster recovery across environments
Portworx Enterprise is a leader in the market according to consultancies and consultant agencies, but one area for improvement could be the visibility about how applications are working on a low level, especially regarding how they are messaging between all those microservices. Cybersecurity in those kinds of environments needs to be rock solid and really secured. With all those AIs working now to infect and attack environments, this is something that Portworx Enterprise should put more focus on even more than they do now. There are security solutions already implemented in Portworx Enterprise, including anti-ransomware, but as the environment grows, the possibilities of having cybersecurity issues increase, so they should focus even more on that part.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The support from Pure Storage Flash Array is amazing."
"What I like most about this solution, is the speed, resiliency and scalability."
"With this program, all of our applications are able to perform faster and this enables us to provide faster platforms and services to our customers and employees."
"I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"We have seen a good reduction in the amount of total storage space that we're using because of the deduplication."
"It is simple, powerful, and a beautiful solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."
"We tested a complete site loss with the initial loss of the complete data center and the system was always up."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"There is nothing else that even compares to Spectrum Scale."
"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect; if you compare it to other storage solutions, it is much better."
"Portworx is a great solution for managing container environments."
"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."
"We are offering two kinds of environments: one for customers working with modern data and modern application development, and they are finding that it is easier for them to migrate workloads from on-premises to cloud or the other way around."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."
"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."
"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."
"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."
 

Cons

"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"They could improve the price."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it."
"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"As long as they always improve on IOPS speed, that's all we're really looking for. The faster the storage can be the more we can do speed of application and speed of use."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected. We have seen our Spectrum Scale servers go down unexpectedly, but because we have a cluster, it does not take out the entire organization."
"The main issue that we have now is with the encryption. They want to use more metrics in encryption, which is not working very well."
"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 wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"The documentation could be better."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"The integration has room for improvement."
"Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there are customers finding the pricing a little too high for the service they receive."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."
"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."
"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."
"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."
"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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...
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...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?
My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?
Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there ...
What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?
Portworx Enterprise is a leader in the market according to consultancies and consultant agencies, but one area for im...
What advice do you have for others considering Portworx Enterprise?
Regarding granular data management policies, my profile is not just sales but also technical, and I did not touch all...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Portworx Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.