DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Scale comparison

DataCore and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. DataCore is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.4, while IBM is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.3. DataCore holds a 6.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and IBM Spectrum Scale are major players in storage solutions. DataCore has an edge in pricing and support, whereas IBM Spectrum Scale is preferred for comprehensive features and performance, particularly in large-scale environments.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony is known for its efficient data management with easy-to-manage disk pools and auto-tiering, ensuring high availability through its mirroring function. Seamless capacity expansion and fast implementation are key highlights. IBM Spectrum Scale is recognized for its superior parallel file management, scalability, and cross-platform integration, maintaining high performance with minimal latency.

Room for Improvement: DataCore SANsymphony users report pricing complexity and tech support issues, with desires for improved iSCSI connectivity and better integration with solutions like Veeam. A more intuitive interface is needed. IBM Spectrum Scale's challenges include complex licensing and difficult initial deployment, with calls for clearer instructions and GUI enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DataCore SANsymphony offers on-premises and hybrid cloud deployment options and is praised for its customer service and responsive technical support. IBM Spectrum Scale, primarily focused on on-premises deployment, is lauded for robust support but mentioned less frequently than DataCore.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony involves high costs due to its subscription model based on storage volume, yet is seen as cost-effective for redundancy and scalability. IBM Spectrum Scale has reasonable costs but a complex pricing model, offering high availability and strong ROI through effective resource utilization.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

May 2025

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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 6.9%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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OliverPalz

Senior Consultant at SJT SOLUTIONS GMBH

Provides efficient synchronous mirroring capability and dynamic data management functionality

The initial setup is relatively easy but requires a certified DataCore implementation engineer to deploy the solution in a production environment. The deployment following the qualified procedure, typically takes about a week, depending on the amount of storage and the specific environment. With my experience, I can set up the system within two to four hours; however, the qualification process, which includes detailed planning and testing, adds additional time. It involves gathering the customer's requirements, preparing comprehensive documentation for validation, and conducting tests in collaboration with the customer. This documentation includes a site planning checklist, a pre-installation checklist, and a functional test plan to ensure everything is in order before deployment. Overall, I rate the process an eight.

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Bernd Stroehle.

Enterprise Architect at kosakya

Deliver improved performance in data processing and foster extensive AI initiatives

I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system. It achieved the best results when integrated with IBM hardware. Even though it is complex, it provided significant performance advantages in large-scale data management. Its fault tolerance mechanisms and integration capabilities make it popular for extensive AI initiatives and data processing tasks for organizations like Daimler Benz and Bosch.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering."

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."

"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."

"Good security with this solution."

"It is a stable solution."

"Supporting of Automated-Storage-Tiering (AST) is a good feature that saves money."

"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."

"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."

"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."

"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."

"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."

"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

Cons

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future."

"Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards."

"The alert system could have more features."

"In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs."

"Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial."

"If it could integrate to a cloud gateway, then we could carry it directly to storage, instead of having middleware in between the storage and the cloud."

"I would like for it to improve into a more ergonomic management console and a translation into the French language. It should have some process for a shutdown of a VM properly in case of a problem."

"I still see room for improvement with DataCore SANsymphony in the area of alarm and task management."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"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."

"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."

"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."

"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."

"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"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."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The price is a little high."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The price could be cheaper."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."

"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model, and it seems reasonable. I am technical personnel ...

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What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like...

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What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs. However, this is not a frequent need becau...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale is very expensive with complex pricing models usually based on the amount of storage used or the n...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

There is room for improvement in the web interface. There could be more information available, such as charts and gra...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 12% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 8% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 28% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

June 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

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Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

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

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

May 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. IBM Spectrum Scale and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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