We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and VMware vSAN 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."We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."
"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."
"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."
"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."
"One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those."
"It is easier to deploy than the traditional SAN."
"We don't have to order a storage system, we can just use whatever we have on hand and roll it into our virtualization system."
"It is very well known in the industry, and there are a lot of technical resources around it. This is a big thing for me because, at the end of the day, when you implement it, you need to support it."
"The flexibility is most valuable. Being able to manage things quickly if something goes wrong is also valuable. Very recently, we had one node that went down due to a power problem, but there was really no major impact on the systems running on top of it."
"The solution is quite stable."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"The solution fits well with my requirements."
"vSAN Health is a feature designed to monitor the health and performance of the vSAN environment. It's crucial for us and our customers to frequently check on this to ensure everything is operating smoothly."
"The Storwize port is not so stable."
"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."
"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."
"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."
"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."
"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."
"The quality of the customer service and support depends on the vSAN case. For example, if I open ten cases, maybe two or three get resolved quickly. But the other cases have a slow response."
"I am looking for more of a software-defined storage platform that uses different protocols, such as iSCSI, NFS, and CIS, and maybe also has an object as part of that. They should 100% make it more of a storage-based product where it is not linked just to VMware, and it also has NFS and iSCSI built-in at a scalable level. They should turn it more into a dedicated storage-as-a-service platform instead of just being built into the VMware kernel. Their level one and level two support is not at all good, and it should be improved."
"Virtual machines disk size cannot cap more than a single node. For a VDI user, it may not save enough to hold a file server or exchange server on a single node storage space."
"I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."
"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."
"Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support."
"I would like to be able to limit IOPS."
"Hackers are able to manage to leak information or data from the product using some corrupt files, making it an area of major concern where improvements are required."
IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked 15th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 36 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 226 reviews. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is rated 8.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Virtualize writes "A highly scalable product that is relatively easy to use and set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". IBM Spectrum Virtualize is most compared with Dell VPLEX, VxRail, IBM Spectrum Scale, DataCore SANsymphony and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. VMware vSAN report.
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