IBM Spectrum Scale vs Scality RING comparison

IBM and Scality are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Scality is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Scality’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Scality users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Scality RING and IBM Spectrum Scale are key players in the enterprise storage market, both providing scalable storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale holds an advantage due to its comprehensive feature set, while Scality RING is attractive for its competitive pricing.

Features: Scality RING provides a cloud-native architecture, data protection, and scalable object and file storage. IBM Spectrum Scale offers high-performance data management, advanced analytics, and seamless integration with multiple platforms.

Room for Improvement: Scality RING could enhance advanced analytics support, integration capabilities, and ease of use. IBM Spectrum Scale might improve in cost-effectiveness, user interface, and deployment complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Scality RING is favored for its flexible deployment and comprehensive support, offering an easier onboarding experience. IBM Spectrum Scale has a steeper learning curve but provides robust support services once implemented.

Pricing and ROI: Scality RING stands out for its cost-effective solution, providing a strong ROI for businesses seeking low initial investments. IBM Spectrum Scale, though costly, offers significant long-term value with its extensive capabilities and high functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Scality RING Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Scality RING

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 Scality RING is 3.9%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Scality RING	3.9%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.9%
Other	88.1%

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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Sebastien Foucou

Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management

I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.

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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."

"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."

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

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"It is a scalable solution."

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

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

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

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"Scality RING is more stable and performs better than before; we don't experience issues from mechanical failures, only from human intervention."

"The best functionality of Scality RING is its ease of administration; it is out of the box and was set up for us in collaboration with Scality and HP."

"The best features of Scality RING are its object storage solution, scalability, and durability."

"Scality RING's capacity and performance scaling across sites and clouds have positively affected our operational efficiency."

"Scality RING has had a positive impact on our business in that we can store backups more securely than before even though this has nothing directly to do with Scality RING but also with an S3."

"I think it's the economic factor. This solution has the lowest cost for storage systems."

"The best functionality in Scality RING is the ability to handle three interfaces over a single infrastructure: S3, NFS, and SMB."

"The best features of Scality RING include multiple aspects, but a few that we specifically appreciate are the scalability platform, which allows us to scale our growth; second is metadata indexing and S3 API capabilities that allow us to access the data from one source."

More Scality RING pros

Cons

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"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."

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"When considering the initial setup of Scality RING in 2015, it was, at first, very complicated. Installation and documentation were still being finalized."

"Scality RING has contributed to overall company costs in that it has not reduced costs but rather increased them because we are now using this product as an additional protection mechanism for the backup."

"There are too many changes because it's software-defined storage and host-based. They should reduce the number of patches and enhance product reliability and stability. When releasing new versions, they should perform thorough quality checks instead of flooding us with patches."

"While Scality claims to be 100% compatible with Amazon S3, it seems this isn't entirely true; there are instances where specific backup tools require S3 to create checksums over written backups, which Scality does not support, unlike Amazon S3."

"They should prioritize quality over timeliness to minimize customer disruptions and not force customers into a cycle of fixes that interfere with daily work."

"Encryption today is not up to date. Encryption and data security need improvement. We don't have a solution for customers who need confidentiality."

"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product."

"What we are currently missing and will be demanding in the new tender is an additional external backup of all data, ideally on a simple system, to safeguard against any severe local incidents so that we still have the data protected elsewhere."

More Scality RING cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"The product is very expensive."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The cost of Scality RING8 could be less expensive. It is difficult for smaller businesses to afford it."

"The initial cost (CAPEX) to set up the infrastructure is expensive due to the specific hardware required."

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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

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

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.

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What do you like most about Scality RING8?

Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Scality RING8?

There are areas that may have room for improvement, and the Scality team is aware of it. You can obtain information d...

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What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?

Scality RING serves multiple use cases for storage, for GenAI and analytics, unstructured and structured data, backup...

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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

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

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

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

MinIO vs Scality RING

Compared 14% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Scality RING

Compared 14% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Scality RING

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Scality RING

Compared 13% of the time

VAST Data vs Scality RING

Compared 3% of the time

More Scality RING 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

Scality RING

September 2025

Download Scality RING product report

Also Known As

No data available

Scality RING, RING8

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

Scality RING is the scalable and resilient object storage solution designed for modern workloads, providing seamless data protection against evolving cyber threats.

Scality RING leverages S3 object storage to meet unpredictable demands with a patented MultiScale Architecture that offers limitless scalability across capacity, performance, and more. It delivers end-to-end cyber resilience with CORE5 for ransomware protection, while its cloud-style economics and intuitive management empower enterprises to accelerate AI initiatives and optimize cloud deployments. Its flexibility is ideal for service providers managing extensive data needs.

What are the key features of Scality RING?

S3 and CDMI Support: Ensures compatibility for application needs.
Erasure Coding: Provides cost-efficient, durable storage.
Unified Tiered Infrastructure: Aids billing per IOPS.
Lifecycle Management: Optimizes storage utilization.
Unlimited Scalability: Ideal for large enterprise demands.
Data/Metadata Ring Deployment: Ensures robust performance and tailored SLAs.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Economic Value: Offers cost-effective storage solutions.
Effective Support: Enhances collaboration through responsive assistance.
Improved Flexibility: Adaptable deployment models for complex needs.

Scality RING is extensively implemented in backup solutions across industries, supporting platforms like Veeam and CommVault. It aids in storage expansion and management of large data volumes alongside multi-site architectures. While not leading in AI spaces due to performance constraints, there's potential with faster disk support. It's also used in archives, binary lakes, multimedia services, and AI data lakes.

Scality

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Scality RING

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Scality RING

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