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Portworx Enterprise vs SwiftStack [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Portworx Enterprise
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd), Data Storage for Kubernetes (1st)
SwiftStack [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Vishwanath Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer 3 at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Data management has become simpler and now supports flexible copies and retention decisions
The best feature is that we have integrated it with Kubernetes. When we have some servers that are going for patching or there is a hardware issue, I can replicate the data into other nodes very easily. I can use some pxctl commands and get the data replicated into other nodes which are healthy. That is the best feature. Managing the data after the initial setup is very easy in Portworx Enterprise. It is also easy to integrate with Kubernetes. We did utilize that functionality. In a disaster recovery scenario, Portworx Enterprise data recovery has been very effective. The only reason why we are moving from Portworx Enterprise to OpenEBS now is because of cost optimizations. I would classify this into two parts: my requirements and my operational efficiencies. My requirements are definitely met by Portworx Enterprise. Once my requirements were met, when I am doing any operational activity, any patching, purging, or any underlying node activities, it is easy for the operational team to manage Portworx Enterprise. They can simply give certain commands, get the underlying data transferred to other nodes, get the data cordoned, and they can take care of the underlying nodes. Portworx Enterprise has been very effective.
it_user1759539 - PeerSpot reviewer
System administrator at a library with 11-50 employees
A nicely-done product that provides a lot of graphs and reports to see what's happening in the background and makes configuration easier
It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is user-friendly."
"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."
"We are offering two kinds of environments: one for customers working with modern data and modern application development, and they are finding that it is easier for them to migrate workloads from on-premises to cloud or the other way around."
"Portworx is a great solution for managing container environments."
"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."
"If I containerize a database server, I know that not only is Portworx providing a persistent and resilient storage backend, but it also meets the database's IOPS requirements, in a containerized environment."
"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."
"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."
"The impact on our business was that we launched a new product which has allowed us to generate additional revenue for our business with it."
"The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs."
"SwiftStack is also quite flexible when it comes to hardware. It depends, of course, on the use case and the kind of hardware you want to buy. But you have quite a bit of choice in hardware. The SwiftStack software itself does not impose anything on you."
"It is a very well-done solution; I have no issues with it, it is well-explained, and configuration is easy with it."
"In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware."
"The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually."
"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product."
"The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved."
 

Cons

"The integration has room for improvement."
"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."
"Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there are customers finding the pricing a little too high for the service they receive."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"As far as I know, Portworx Enterprise was a bit expensive when compared to OpenEBS."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
"The documentation could be better."
"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."
"Don't use it because it will go off the market in three months. It won't be available."
"It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."
"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc."
"We find the pricing rather steep."
"On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface."
"They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together."
"At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like."
"Management UI can be improved and have more functionalities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."
"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."
"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."
"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."
"One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
"We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."
"It's pricey for us because we're a nonprofit. I'm not privy to any amount or cost, but I have been told that it is pricey. There are no costs in addition to the licensing fees, and it seems to come with the support."
"We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."
"Dollar per gigabyte, it costs us more because we are storing more. However, if you look at it from a cost per gigabyte perspective, we have dropped our costs significantly."
"We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
"The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."
"The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?
Pricing is good as the functionalities of Portworx Enterprise are explainable. Pricing is bearable, but licensing is a little more complex.
What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?
The only reason why we are moving from Portworx Enterprise to OpenEBS now is because of cost optimizations.
What advice do you have for others considering Portworx Enterprise?
I have so much experience in Dynatrace and also I have experience in Grafana and in Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the last one that I have experience with. It has helped greatly. It is very beneficial....
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