We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Scale and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cloud Software Defined Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."
"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."
"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."
"It makes our file system sharing a lot easier, even across different continents. We have had file systems shared across different continents with no performance degradation."
"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"SnapMirror helps mirror metadata and data volumes between endpoints in a data fabric."
"The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful."
"It gives a solution for storage one place to go across everything. So, the customer is very familiar with NetApp on-prem. It allows them to gain access to the file piece. It helps them with the training aspect of it, so they don't have to relearn something new. They already know this product. They just have to learn some widgets or what it's like in the cloud to operate and deploy it in different ways."
"One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important."
"Its features help us to have a backup of our volumes using the native technology of NetApp ONTAP. That way, we don't have to invest in other solutions for our backup requirement. Also, it helps us to replicate the data to another geographic location so that helps us to save on the costs of backup products."
"We are definitely in the process of reducing our footprint on our secondary data center and all those snapshots technically reduce tape backup. That's from the protection perspective, but as far as files, it's much easier to use and manage and it's faster, too."
"The main benefit we get from this product is the ability to deploy it anywhere we want, whether that's on-prem, a remote physical location, or in the cloud. It doesn't matter from an operational perspective where it is. The command line and operating system are the same."
"The solution’s Snapshot copies and thin clones in terms of operational recovery are good. Snapshot copies are pretty much the write-in time data backups. Obviously, critical data is snapshotted a lot more frequently, and even clients and end users find it easier to restore whatever they need if it's file-based, statical, etc."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"Making it a little easier to add bad file sets would help. There is a transition to how you add storage and how you add a file set, so making that a little smoother would probably be my recommendation."
"Maybe it needs integration with HA."
"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"Integration with other vendors is not available."
"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."
"One difficulty is that it has no SAP HANA certification. The asset performance restrictions create challenges with the infrastructure underneath: The disks and stuff like that often have lower latencies than SAP HANA itself has to have."
"I would like to see them improve the perspective of start and search in the panels. This would allow for better visualization of the contents that are captured in the tool."
"I would like to see more aggressive management of the aggregate space. On the Cloud Volumes ONTAP that we use for offsite backup copies, most of the data sits in S3. There are also the EBS volumes on the Cloud Volumes ONTAP itself. Sometimes what happens is that the aggregate size just stays the same. If it allocates 8 terabytes initially, it just stays at 8 terabytes for a long time, even though we're only using 20 percent of that 8 terabytes. NetApp could undersize that more aggressively."
"The data tiering needs improvement. E.g., moving hard data to faster disks."
"Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive."
"The DR has room for improvement. For example, we now have NetApp in Western Europe and we would like to back up the information to another region. It's impossible. We need to bring up an additional NetApp in that other region and create a Cloud Manager automation to copy the data... I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution like it was in the NetApp solution about a year ago. I would like to see something like AltaVault but in the cloud."
"When it comes to support provided by NetApp, they have room for improvement. Every time we go through their support, we end up answering the same routine questions."
"NetApp CVO needs to have more exposure and mature further before it will have greater acceptance."
IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked 3rd in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 10 reviews while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 60 reviews. IBM Spectrum Scale is rated 8.4, while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Scale writes "A stable solution with valuable profile-sharing features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "Its data tiering helps keep storage costs under control". IBM Spectrum Scale is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, Portworx Enterprise, DDN IME, VMware vSAN and IBM Cloud Object Storage, whereas NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), Google Cloud Storage and Veeam Backup & Replication. See our IBM Spectrum Scale vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP report.
See our list of best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors and best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors.
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