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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

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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
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
 

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.
AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Unified storage solution supports cross-vendor replication and diverse industries
One of the most valuable features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is its virtualization capability. It allows for the creation of stretched clusters, which are crucial for running Linux-based workloads that need mirroring for boot disks. The solution also provides asynchronous and synchronous replication, supporting operations across different data centers. Its deployment options across public, private, and hybrid clouds add to its versatility.
Tomas Basus - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Professional at NIPOS
Optimized storage has supported high availability but performance and node limits still need work
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and there are problems regarding performance that need to be addressed. I have found that performance is not as good as expected with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. It is risky because of quorum; it is better in three nodes, but my budget only allows for two nodes, so I need to use a witness, which is not an optimal configuration. I am not using the automatic rebalancing feature that much in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. I have not utilized nested resiliency in my operations. I am using the most standard features available in Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to use."
"Pure is simple to set up and manage on a day-to-day basis."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"The initial setup was straightforward in the way that it was a database vacuum storage."
"The Direct FlashArray stands out as one of the best features in the market. The Pure1 storage management lets us see the details about utilization and everything else for all 40 storage boxes in one place."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"We have perfect run through times and latency."
"This is an absolutely outstanding product and anyone can use it with ease."
"We look for reliability of the product itself."
"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."
"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."
"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."
"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."
"The versatility is the main benefit, since it virtualizes everything, they use it for so many different things."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"In terms of reliability, scalability, performance, security and so forth, it is definitely very good."
"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."
"The price performance is the best advantage of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct."
"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."
"Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct definitely has its advantages, especially with robustness and scalability."
"For an on-prem campus, it has been fine."
"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"The cost of the storage needs improvement."
"The price could be better."
"The scalability of the solution is extremely costly."
"I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"Maybe sometimes we don't get responses back as fast as we would like, but they have always been very professional and they follow through."
"We've had some issues with the production rate behind SVC."
"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."
"The training program could be improved."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
"I had a couple isolated problems with reliability, mostly related to replication, but I have been able to work through them."
"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
"Microsoft's frontline support is not adequate if you rely on this for your business."
"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."
"Documentation management could be improved"
"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."
"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct a three, as there were issues that the Microsoft team could not pinpoint, leading to delays in finding solutions."
"There is a lot of room for improvement. I would like to have more tools to monitor the function and problems."
"The main reason that we have not implemented this solution or put it into production is because of the pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"The solution is expensive."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."
"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."
"The solution is expensive."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?
IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?
IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. T...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?
I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is bes...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
Overall, I find the cost of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct to be affordable for the on-prem Windows pure solution, b...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
The performance of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is challenging when trying to support both NVMe and SATA SSDs, and...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
MS Storage Spaces Direct
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.