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IBM Spectrum Scale vs Zadara comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
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)
Zadara
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (32nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (17th), Compute Service (10th), Public Cloud Storage Services (16th), File and Object Storage (21st)
 

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.
NV
AI product lead at Sortis
AI sovereignty for GPU-based workloads has supported cost savings and secure local processing
Regarding Zadara's AI capabilities, I think it depends on the MSPs that they are performing collaborations with, and based on that, the MSPs are responsible for configuring the data governance or any kind of certifications that are placed on Zadara. Zadara normally has certain default governance things, and everything else depends on the local or region-specific governance rules. Regarding Zadara's AI capabilities, I feel they are quick. I was trying two models on the same GPU that they were providing, and they were allocating the resources with me. This experience was good, and I would rate it around 9 to 9.5. The first choice would be Zadara depending on the solution. However, I cannot really say Zadara would be the primary choice because it truly depends on the application or the objective that is being pursued. I would rate this review an 8 overall.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"Technical support is very good."
"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore."
"It has made working with storage as easy and simple as it should be."
"Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity."
"What I appreciate most about Everpure FlashArray is that it performs compression and deduplication fantastically."
"Do it. I have zero reservations about recommending Pure to anyone who is looking for some really good all-flash."
"We were actually able to do multiple upgrades, including head upgrades and moving between the platforms, M20 and M50, over the years. We have never once lost a ping and have never had an outage due to an OS upgrade or a complete head upgrade."
"Over the past five or ten years, IBM has developed this solution and it has improved a lot."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"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."
"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"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."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."
"Zadara was a key enabler for us to be able to enter the cloud business because if it wasn't for them, it would have taken us a lot longer."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"Zadara is a key underpinning of that because, without that common storage layer and the services running on top of that, we wouldn't have a business to run."
 

Cons

"The solution is not cheap."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."
"It would be beneficial to have a separate pricing point for environments with lower performance requirements or less workload."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"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."
"Integration with other vendors is not available. This feature would be very helpful."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"There is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and graphs to monitor performance."
"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."
"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"I wouldn't say that it's very stable. It can recover from outages, however, there's still room for improvement on the stability."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."
"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."
"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."
"We had a lot of issues with the Zadara recently regarding performance, reports, and offloads, the customers could not send backups to Zadara."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"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."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Large Enterprise7
 

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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 needs improvement with Zadara?
The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...
 

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
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,852 professionals have used our research since 2012.