Compare IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware vSAN

IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked 2nd in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 4 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in Hyper-Converged (HCI) with 55 reviews. IBM Spectrum Scale is rated 8.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Scale writes "As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". IBM Spectrum Scale is most compared with Red Hat Gluster Storage, Red Hat Ceph Storage and VMware vSAN, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with Nutanix, VxRail and HPE SimpliVity.

IBM Spectrum Scale

VMware vSAN

IBM Spectrum Scale

Read 4 IBM Spectrum Scale reviews.

3,111 views|2,204 comparisons

VMware vSAN

Read 55 VMware vSAN reviews.

89,009 views|72,552 comparisons

Most Helpful Review

Anonymous User

Client Server Engineer at a financial services firm

Can operate multiple systems within the same file system

We use it primarily in our SAP organization. It allows us to have a centralized location where we can put our files and distribute them among... Read more »

Patrick Lamarche

User

A cost-effective storage solution with great support, but updating Cisco drivers could be smoother

The newer versions of this solution are much more stable and easier to manage. We had a near meltdown with 5.5, upgrading firmware and vSphere... Read more »

Quotes From Members

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

Pros
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. Read more »	We can also create test cases. We can even throttle down performance or release more performance. So, we can run more precise test scenarios.When we do to do more scaled load testing, we can run more dense workloads and still have the same results across all specific nodesThe newer versions of this solution are much more stable and easier to manage.As a function of our core business, it's a sought after tool that helps us provide analytical support across a wide spectrum of client needs. It's allowed us to test out in our connected restaurant - "TheWorks" - a fully-functional restaurant experience center that allows our clients to discover the value of our connected solutions firsthand. We deploy vSAN in this customer-like environment within a hyperconvergent infrastruction (HCI) to give our clients a better understanding and help optimize data and the end-users' experience.The most valuable feature is the ability to continue our business needs and have higher visibility. It has definitely increased our business productivity levels.To me, VMware is a leader of the visualizations. I think everyone just follow VMware.I have used VMware for 15 years and I never had any problems with stability.vSAN provides default HA configurations, where if any host goes down, the VM moves around within the host. Even though the disks are local, the VMs moves around with the vSAN disk and vSAN provides a high availability on its own. Read more »
Cons
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. Read more »	When we talk about improvements for vSAN, there is some way to go from a at least stability perspective. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level that most of the features you need in production are there.Upgradability could be a bit easier sometimes. We are now where vSAN can be updated without ESXi, but there is still enough dependency. So that would be good if that actually would uncoupled even more.This solution would benefit from better collaboration with Cisco for driver updates.I would like to see the availability of more template based VMware systems. Combined with the ability to check and measure multiple and converging data segments. Another issue I've seen is that the tool seems to be slow when first starting up.I would love for this product to be cheaper and easier to configure.It is an expensive solution.The vSan product uses a software system called Vsphere to monitor the system. It is sometimes difficult to manage the PCs within the systems.There is a room for improvement on the latest version of compatibility with the VMware product, especially for vSAN and with other vendors on their motherboards and driver configurations. Read more »

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information Not Available

ROI from an administrative perspective is clearly much better because I only have to deal with one user interface.I'd love for this product to be cheaper.The only problem I have with VMware is the price. It is a good product, but it is expensive.With vSAN, we didn't find the market that competitive.The vSAN is somewhat expensive to license.The vSAN licensing is not an inexpensive product. It does cost more than hypervisor.We did consider other hyperconverged solutions. It usually came down to price. vSan was the most cost effective thing.What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing.

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Ranking
2nd out of 4 in Cloud Software Defined Storage Views 3,111 Comparisons 2,204 Reviews 4 Average Words per Review 416 Avg. Rating 8.5	2nd out of 38 in Hyper-Converged (HCI) Views 89,009 Comparisons 72,552 Reviews 54 Average Words per Review 433 Avg. Rating 8.5
Top Comparisons
Red Hat Gluster Storage vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Compared 28% of the time. Red Hat Ceph Storage vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Compared 27% of the time. VMware vSAN vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Compared 13% of the time. See more IBM Spectrum Scale competitors » + Add more products to compare	Nutanix vs. VMware vSAN Compared 35% of the time. VxRail vs. VMware vSAN Compared 15% of the time. HPE SimpliVity vs. VMware vSAN Compared 9% of the time. See more VMware vSAN competitors » + Add more products to compare
Also Known As
	vSAN
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IBM	VMware
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.	VMware vSAN is the industry-leading software powering Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solutions. What vSAN Does Enables you to evolve without risk. Seamlessly extend virtualization to storage with an integrated hyper-converged solution that simply works with your overall VMware environment and reduces the risk in digital transformation by using existing tools, skillsets and solutions. Lowers total cost of ownership by 50% or more with capital and operational savings. Reduce storage CapEx, decrease operational costs, manage the day-to-day operations of compute and storage infrastructure, and accelerate responsiveness to traditionally time-consuming tasks. vSAN helps customers scale to tomorrow. Prepare for tomorrow's dynamic business in the multi-cloud era with a solution designed to utilize the latest storage and server technologies and ready to support a wide range of applications, from current business critical applications to next-gen applications using containers.
Offer
Learn more about IBM Spectrum Scale Learn More	Learn more about VMware vSAN Learn More
Sample Customers
Information Not Available	Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Top Industries
No Data Available	REVIEWERS Healthcare Company17% Retailer14% University9% Manufacturing Company8% VISITORS READING REVIEWS Software R&D Company20% Comms Service Provider14% Manufacturing Company11% Financial Services Firm11%
Company Size
No Data Available	REVIEWERS Small Business28% Midsize Enterprise19% Large Enterprise53% VISITORS READING REVIEWS Small Business14% Midsize Enterprise28% Large Enterprise57%

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