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IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage 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 (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
VMware Software Defined Sto...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (15th)
 

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.
Mohammad Jundiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Qatar Datamation Systems
Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery.  Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I am sure that Everpure FlashArray is the best option on the market."
"Very efficient storage"
"I would highly recommend this solution; it has all the features we need and tests all the software solutions that are currently available and that will be available in the future."
"If you need faster storage and a good product, this is the one you should go ahead with."
"Compared to Unity, these arrays offer significant advantages, such as NVMe technology and higher IOPS."
"Now they are trying to add more and more applications because they're getting better performance and stability."
"We chose Pure Storage because it had the best performance of all the products that we tested."
"They can provide a lot of performance, so there is not a lot of difference, but efficiency is something customers value because the compression can be up to twice of the second competitor."
"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect; if you compare it to other storage solutions, it is much better."
"It is a scalable solution."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"It is incredibly scalable; you can add more storage to it, add more file sets, and add it to more servers, making it a robust product that should be able to expand with us."
"Spectrum Scale is one of the most important products in our environment now."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"The technical support is awesome."
"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."
"The product is user-friendly from an administrative standpoint and very easy to use."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."
"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."
"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."
"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."
"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."
 

Cons

"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"The integration capabilities could be improved."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"It would be good to have metrics of the box's performance so we can see what it delivers, but currently, I can't see what it's actually doing."
"Scalability is not an easy option for Pure Storage, so you have to be very careful when you are getting that product for you."
"I wish they could collaborate more with the other vendors internally, instead of us opening cases with Cisco, HPE, VMware, etc."
"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 biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."
"There is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and graphs to monitor performance."
"Initially, stability was a concern as we encountered numerous issues and errors."
"It's easy to scale and expand but the main catch is the cost. It's expensive."
"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."
"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."
"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."
"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"
"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."
"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"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."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."
"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."
"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."
"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 Business6
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

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 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 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...
What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
VMware SDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
Helse Nord, Sky
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.