IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

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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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RashidAnwar

Senior Project Lead at Tetra Pak

A stable solution that can be used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations

VMware Software Defined Storage is used for database applications and virtualization for multiple locations VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption. Redundancy and scalability are the other valuable features of the solution. You can scale it on the go,…

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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

"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 are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

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

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"It is a scalable solution."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

Cons

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"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."

"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."

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

"I would like to see better integration."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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 main issue that we have now is with the encryption. They want to use more metrics in encryption, which is not working very well."

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

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"The product is very expensive."

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 solution is costly but reliable."

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

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

"The solution is very expensive."

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

No data available

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...

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...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

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

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

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...

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster. Additionally, it would be beneficial t...

What do you like most about VMware Software Defined Storage?

VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

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VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% 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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 28% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 50% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 50% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

IBM Spectrum Scale

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

VMware Software Defined Storage

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware SDS

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

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Helse Nord, Sky

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage