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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs IBM SoftLayer comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (2nd)
IBM SoftLayer
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is designed for Cloud Storage and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, down 2.8% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 2.0% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
Cloud Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)1.9%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise6.5%
Box - Intelligent Content Management4.8%
Other86.8%
Cloud Storage
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SoftLayer2.0%
Amazon S314.0%
Amazon S3 Glacier11.3%
Other72.7%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Principal Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If an instance is terminated abruptly or accidentally, I can reattach the volume to a different instance."
"The tool's most valuable feature is reliability."
"As far as stability, availability, and durability, and all of that, it's basically just about perfect."
"One of the features I find most valuable is that EBS can be independent. You can attach and detach it from your server."
"The main advantage is the ability to scale up and scale down easily without any downtime."
"With Amazon EBS, if you want to add an additional disk to an EC2 instance, you can simply attach an EBS volume by clicking through a few options, and it's done."
"Overall, I would rate Amazon EBS ten out of ten."
"The most important feature is the volume types in those hundred EDS. For example, if you need a volume with high IOPS, you should choose an io2 or io2 Block Express volume type. The default volume type for EBS is GP3, which is a good balance of performance and price for most workloads."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The ability to extract from your current location, load into your future location with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"It is hard to access EBS volumes in different Availability Zones (AZs) because most EBS volumes are created in a single AZ."
"AWS services could improve by including services in the FreeTier, like Route 53 domains or SSL certificates."
"I think performance can be improved."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"Amazon EBS performs well but it could improve."
"It would be good if the solution added a button to increase the size and make the EC2 machine recognize the increased capacity of the EBS."
"Having more flexibility in resizing, especially scaling down, would be beneficial."
"There is a lack of awareness and knowledge about Amazon EBS among potential users, which results in underutilization."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost can vary greatly depending on the use case, ranging from one dollar to over $1200 dollars per month."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high, I rate the price a seven."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"On a scale of one to ten, if one point is a cheap solution and ten points is very expensive, I rate the product price an eight."
"The product is low-priced than other solutions."
"I find the price reasonable for our I environment."
"You need to pay additional costs for support."
"The pricing models may be for general purposes, such as Amazon EBS Provisioned IOPS Volume or Amazon EBS Cold HDD Volumes."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
What needs improvement with Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
EBS is solid — I won't pretend otherwise. But there are a few things that genuinely frustrate me as someone who works with it regularly. The **snapshot restore latency** is probably my biggest gri...
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Also Known As

No data available
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CTERA and others in Cloud Storage. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.