Compare IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked 8th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 5 reviews while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked 7th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 6 reviews. IBM Spectrum Scale is rated 8.4, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Scale writes "Storage system with good performance that has GPFS monitoring and NFS support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Virtualize writes "Seamlessly moves hardware in and out as we refresh technology". IBM Spectrum Scale is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat Gluster Storage and VMware vSAN, whereas IBM Spectrum Virtualize is most compared with VMware vSAN, EMC ViPR and EMC VPLEX . See our IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize report.
Most Helpful Review | |||||
|
| ||||
 Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: January 2020. 390,810 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
GPFS monitoring is the best feature. 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. It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads. We can have multiple systems within the same file system. Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward. Allows us to share files across multiple environments. It is incredibly scalable and stable. Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for. | It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology. It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features. The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it. It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it. The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class. When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization. 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 acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage. |
Cons | |
The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage. Maybe it needs integration with HA. They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be. 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. 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. This is probably the biggest challenge, getting everything upgraded, because it just takes time. We wish it was a faster solution to be able to do everything at once, but you have do each node individually. The more nodes, the longer it takes. 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. | Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases. The Storwize port is not so stable. The disk reliability is not that good. 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. NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap. Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice. In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case. Level 1 technical support needs improvement. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
The licensing is based on the number of terabytes. | It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price. Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it. We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us. 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. |
 Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs. 390,810 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |
Ranking  | |
Views 3,693 Comparisons 2,628 Reviews 5 Average Words per Review 501 Avg. Rating 8.4 | Views 2,276 Comparisons 1,223 Reviews 6 Average Words per Review 537 Avg. Rating 9.2 |
Top Comparisons | |
 Compared 31% of the time. Compared 26% of the time.  Compared 14% of the time. | Compared 30% of the time.  Compared 13% of the time. Compared 10% of the time. |
Learn | |
| IBM | IBM |
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. |
Offer | |
Learn more about IBM Spectrum Scale | Learn more about IBM Spectrum Virtualize |
Sample Customers | |
Information Not Available | Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services |
Top Industries | |
Software R&D Company57% Media Company7% Comms Service Provider4% Financial Services Firm4% | Healthcare Company20% Manufacturing Company13% University13% Financial Services Firm13% Software R&D Company28% Logistics Company11% Marketing Services Firm9% Government9% |
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: January 2020.
390,810 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also IBM Spectrum Scale Reviews, IBM Spectrum Virtualize Reviews, and our list of Best Software Defined Storage (SDS) Companies.
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.