IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Janith Ranasinghe
ZvonimirFrlan
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms.""Allows us to share files across multiple environments.""It is a scalable solution.""Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for.""We can have multiple systems within the same file system.""GPFS monitoring is the best feature.""Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward.""We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."

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"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver.""The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously.""We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication.""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.""It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly.""The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays.""The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover.""Compared to other storage vendors, the solution is quite convenient to use."

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Cons
"Maybe it needs integration with HA.""The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage.""We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected. We have seen our Spectrum Scale servers go down unexpectedly, but because we have a cluster, it does not take out the entire organization.""The main issue that we have now is with the encryption. They want to use more metrics in encryption, which is not working very well.""Integration with other vendors is not available.""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.""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."

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"The Storwize port is not so stable.""NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap.""GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java.""t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups.""There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers.""Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement.""Level 1 technical support needs improvement.""For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
  • "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."
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  • "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 have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."
  • "We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
  • "This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
  • More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Compared to other storage vendors, the solution is quite convenient to use.
    Top Answer:The pricing is pretty good. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten. We have to pay for additional licenses.
    Top Answer:The solution could have a better built-in performance monitor. I use a different product for performance monitoring.
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    IBM
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    Overview
    IBM Spectrum Scale is a cluster file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN attached, network attached, a mixture of SAN attached and network attached, or in a shared nothing cluster configuration. This enables access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. IBM Spectrum Scale has many features beyond common data access including data replication, policy based storage management, and multi-site operations. You can create a cluster of AIX nodes, Linux nodes, Windows server nodes, or a mix of all three. IBM Spectrum Scale can run on virtualized instances providing common data access in environments, leverage logical partitioning, or other hypervisors. Multiple IBM Spectrum Scale clusters can share data within a location or across wide area network (WAN) connections.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm63%
    Computer Software Company25%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company19%
    University14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Retailer10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Government12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise67%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise62%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked 7th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 2 reviews while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked 15th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 2 reviews. IBM Spectrum Scale is rated 8.6, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Scale writes "Stable solution with an easy initial setup process". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Virtualize writes "A highly scalable product that is relatively easy to use and set up". IBM Spectrum Scale is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, Portworx Enterprise, VMware vSAN, DDN IME and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), whereas IBM Spectrum Virtualize is most compared with Dell VPLEX, VMware vSAN, VxRail, DataCore SANsymphony and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize report.

    See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors, best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors, and best Cloud Software Defined Storage vendors.

    We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.