IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs VxRail comparison

The compared IBM and Dell Technologies solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #13 in SDS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 2.1% mindshare in the category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 in HCI , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 13.8% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

December 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

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	2.1%
Red Hat Ceph Storage	14.3%
DataCore SANsymphony	6.3%
Other	77.3%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VxRail	13.8%
VMware vSAN	11.4%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)	8.8%
Other	66.0%

HCI

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

Read full review

AhmedSorour

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.

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Saleh Khalid

computer scientist at Imam University

Experience improved integration and cost-efficiency while facing support challenges

The best features of VxRail are its compatibility with VMware, its hyper-converged solution capabilities, and its single line of support. These are the most beneficial aspects of VxRail. I switched from the previous HP solution to Dell solution because it was a good decision. With HP servers, we dealt with a vendor for the compute servers, another vendor for the storage servers, and another vendor for the networking, which required us to manage multiple vendors. Now, we have a single team who can handle VxRail and a single line of support. We don't need anything other than that, and these are the differences we noticed after we switched.

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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

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"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 most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

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

"Pure Storage FlashBlade's scalability is one of the most valuable features, and importantly, it always works, allowing for seamless upgrades."

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

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance. You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize."

"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."

"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."

"VxRail has high performance and has great efficiency. There is a single place for us to manage all of our virtual machines. The ability to right-size instead of overcommit VMs is a large benefit."

"The stability is very good. We haven't had any issues at all. There aren't bugs or glitches. There aren't system crashes or anything of that nature."

"Compared with other products, the IT administrator or IT integrator doesn't take much time to get the tool up and running."

"The assurance that my systems would not suffer a performance drop no matter where they are is valuable. I do not need any extra hardware."

"The solution has simplified our operations."

"The storage virtualization feature of VxRail has been the most vital part of our company's improvement in operations."

"Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks."

More VxRail pros

Cons

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"The speed could be improved."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"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."

"I would like to see better integration."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"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

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."

"The disk reliability is not that good."

"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out."

"From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there is a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution."

"VxRail should try to improve the pricing."

"The version upgrade process should be simplified."

"A disadvantage is that the initial first deployment can be complicated."

"I would like an easier migration. This way, if a node fails like it did, the data would have been migrated and I would not have had to get up at three in the morning."

"The product has high pricing. This particular area needs improvement."

"I would love to see license migration from one host to another."

More VxRail cons

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."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"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."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"It is reasonable. Compared to the legacy hardware that we had so far, we are not paying way more, but we have very good performance. Its price is good."

"VxRail is still more expensive than its competitor solutions."

"There is a license required for this solution."

"Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher."

"It's a highly expensive solution"

"The solution can be pricey depending on the project."

"I do not believe that the price should be lower, as I feel it to be reasonable."

"The license is a bundle with the hardware. It comes with the license and five-year support."

More VxRail pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	42
Midsize Enterprise	43
Large Enterprise	56

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

See all answers

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-...

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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...

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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 ...

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How does HPE Nimble Storage compare to VxRail?

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI Vs. VxRail One of the best things about the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the three, two, one, z...

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

See all answers

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?

VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not bein...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 11% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

VMware vSAN vs VxRail

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VxRail

Compared 21% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VxRail

Compared 18% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VxRail

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Hyper Converged vs VxRail

Compared 5% of the time

More VxRail Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

January 2026

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

January 2026

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

VxRail

January 2026

Download VxRail product report

Also Known As

No data available

VCE VxRail

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 Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

IBM

VxRail is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance co-engineered by Dell Technologies and VMware, designed to optimize VMware environments by simplifying compute, storage, virtualization, and management.

Built on VMware vSAN software, VxRail ensures high performance, reliability, and flexibility. It supports a broad array of workloads, from business-critical applications to next-generation use cases. VxRail simplifies infrastructure management with powerful integration and seamless scalability, offering centralized management and user-friendly interfaces. Streamlined updates, robust lifecycle management, and one-click upgrades facilitate a user-centric experience that minimizes deployment complexity and staffing needs. However, its performance with disk deduplication, integration with public clouds, and processor support can be enhanced, along with pricing and licensing improvements.

What features define VxRail?

High Performance: Optimized for superior efficiency in VMware environments.
Seamless Scalability: Scales effortlessly to accommodate growing demands.
Centralized Management: Simplifies control through unified interfaces.
Effortless Integration: Easily integrates with VMware tools and services.
Automated Updates: Ensures ongoing system availability through streamlined updates.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Resource Efficiency: Reduces staffing requirements and optimizes resource use.
Flexibility: Supports a variety of use cases and workloads.
Reliable Support: Provides robust support to ensure operational continuity.
Reduced Complexity: Facilitates ease of deployment and minimized setup times.

Organizations across sectors such as finance, telecommunications, education, and manufacturing utilize VxRail for its scalability, ease of deployment, and infrastructure management capabilities. It aids in server and application hosting, storage, and virtualization management, often employing VMware integration. The platform is valued for its ability to consolidate IT components, support VDI solutions, and enhance cloud readiness and resource allocation.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

World Wide Technology Inc, Renault Sport Formula One Team, 8x8 Inc, Brownes, Canadian Pacific, Canopy, Denton, EDF, Unilin, Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

December 2025

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