IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Gluster Storage comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Red Hat is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Red Hat’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Scale and Red Hat Gluster Storage are both prominent in the enterprise storage market, focusing on scalable solutions for distributed file systems. IBM Spectrum Scale has a slight advantage due to its advanced features and scalability.

Features: IBM Spectrum Scale offers advanced data management capabilities, extensive data protocol support, and scalability for complex environments. Red Hat Gluster Storage provides flexibility, easy integration with Red Hat products, and strong community support.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Scale can improve its ease of deployment and reduce initial setup complexity. Its pricing structure could also become more competitive. Red Hat Gluster Storage can enhance its feature set and scalability for handling larger enterprise environments, and offer more comprehensive customer support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Scale's deployment may be complex but is backed by detailed documentation and dedicated support. Red Hat Gluster Storage is easier to deploy with seamless integration into existing Red Hat environments, making it user-friendly and quick to implement.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Scale generally has higher upfront costs but offers high ROI for large-scale deployments. Red Hat Gluster Storage, with its lower setup cost, provides a compelling ROI for small to medium enterprises, balancing cost and functionality effectively.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage

September 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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 3.9%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Gluster Storage is 2.8%, up from 2.6% 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	4.1%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.9%
Red Hat Gluster Storage	2.8%
Other	89.2%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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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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GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Flexible and scalable file system for growing storage needs

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is also applied in personal environments. Some specific use cases mentioned include scaling a three-terabyte file system into a 12-terabyte file system with minimal downtime Gluster…

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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

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

"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."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"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."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

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

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

"It is a scalable solution."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The technical support team is excellent."

"The price tag is good compared to the amount of data and high availability provided."

"Notable features of Gluster FS include flexibility, scalability, stability, and ease of use."

"It's very easy to upgrade storage."

Cons

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"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."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

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

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"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."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The performance of the solution must be improved."

"The user interface could be simplified."

"There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source version."

"The system should be more intuitive and easier to manage."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"If you need cheap storage, but still need high availability, it's a good product to look at."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

No data available

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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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 is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?

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

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Gluster Storage?

The technical support team is excellent.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Gluster Storage?

There is a feature in Red Hat’s commercial version that could be beneficial if integrated into the open-source versio...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Red Hat Gluster Storage?

Gluster FS is used for various purposes, including virtualization, collaboration, and data center environments. It is...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 20% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Software Defined Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

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LizardFS vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 22% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 13% of the time

Veritas Access vs Red Hat Gluster Storage

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat Gluster Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2025

Download Red Hat Gluster Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

Red Hat Gluster, Red Hat Storage Server

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

Red Hat Gluster Storage (formerly known as Red Hat Storage Server) is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform designed to handle the requirements of traditional file storage—high-capacity tasks like backup and archival as well as high-performance tasks of analytics and virtualization. But unlike traditional storage systems, Red Hat Gluster Storage isn’t rigid and expensive. It easily scales across bare metal, virtual, container, and cloud deployments.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

NTT Plala, McMaster University, University of Basque Country, Goodtech ASA, Cox Automotive, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), SaskTel, Glashart Media, Casio

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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