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Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Control comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

Dell VPLEX
Ranking in Storage Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Spectrum Control
Ranking in Storage Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of Dell VPLEX is 6.6%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 5.3%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell VPLEX6.6%
IBM Spectrum Control5.3%
Other88.1%
Storage Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sayed Zuber - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Storage And Backup Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
It's an excellent solution for data mobility and disaster recovery, but the CLI can be difficult for beginners
Dell VPLEX currently requires Flash Player to access the GUI. It would be better to have a web-based HTML management interface. The encryption could also be improved. When the host writes data, it goes from VPLEX back to the physical storage. The physical storage device will do encryption or use an algorithm called Data Address Encryption. If there are vulnerabilities between the host and the storage device, you can lose your data. I suggest encrypting the data before it is sent from the host to the storage. I would also recommend using the NVM protocol in VPLEX. It still has Flash Player and a local SATA disk built into the Flash Player. You need to Flash the disk to SAS and then SATA. The NVM protocol is better.
JY
System, Storage And Data Administrator at STET
Centralized capacity planning has improved insight into storage consumption for long term growth
Implementing IBM Spectrum Control is complex; we have had several calls to IBM to solve problems about DVM stack size, max memory size, and other issues such as buffer and cloud buffer size. Currently it is working, though we still have swap issues on our Linux Spectrum Protect server.We experience swap issues when we run a big retention set, and we have noticed that on the server we have memory available, but it seems that IBM Spectrum Control is using swap because the DBM max memory size is two gigabytes. This causes IBM Spectrum Control to use swap size instead of using memory, which is an issue we have opened a call to IBM about.We hope to ask why we have no report on the clone because on our storage we have an internal clone, but it is not reported. We will see with the support why it is not reported.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract."
"Its mirroring capabilities allow for data to be mirrored across two different data centers, so if one center were to crash or fail, the other center could take over and keep everything running smoothly."
"Mobility enables us to carry out an internal migration of data."
"For a new application setup, it worked like a charm."
"Technical support from Dell is quite good."
"We have see performance improvement in our databases."
"Due to the large number of models and different brands it is a very good solution to virtualize volumes."
"The support is good, and you don't have to wait long before things get done."
"The benefits would be mostly the ability to diagnose a problem."
"I would recommend the product, because as a cloud-based tool, you do not have to do any maintenance; everything, including updates, is done, you just log in and it is there, it is easy to configure, as it took me five minutes to set up, and you get a lot of value as far as the data and the performance information."
"Spectrum Control's scalability is fine - we can extend it for the backup requirement."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use. The ability to get into a storage device and look at whatever you are trying to look at as far as performance, then obtain the reports that you need to do your analytical work."
"It has turned out to be just as good, if not better, than what we were paying thousands of dollars for."
"The product keeps historical data for a very long time."
"We compared other vendors also, but Spectrum Control's price is lower than most."
"In my opinion, it's the best monitoring and report creation tool for IBM storage devices. You can do a lot of performance stats and reports with very nice tools for IBM storage devices."
 

Cons

"VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption needs a huge effort that is not acceptable during disaster recovery."
"I would like to have site-to-site replication capability for applications."
"The initial setup is complex."
"It needs to improve the thin reclaim on certain arrays."
"The licensing model for enterprise storage (EMC VMAX) and integrating the solution into the actual storage frames instead of a separate product."
"Based on our requirements, we bought this product for doing online data migrations without data disruption, but we realized that there is a limit to backend storage that can be encapsulate to it."
"There can be delays in getting performance reports."
"Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure."
"The database could be improved so that the complexity of installation could be easier. We would also like to have more granularity in the profiles and products for users. We would like to link the users to the tool to managers or auditors."
"The initial setup for IBM Spectrum Control is a bit complicated. They should also make it easier to integrate and use the Cosmos Analytics tool, which is very complicated."
"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly."
"The solution must support multi-vendor storage."
"I would like to see is more information regarding the copy groups (the replication)."
"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly. IBM also needs to provide proper training to handle Spectrum Control because it's a complicated solution."
"Implementing IBM Spectrum Control is complex; we have had several calls to IBM to solve problems about DVM stack size, max memory size, and other issues such as buffer and cloud buffer size."
"The initial setup is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion."
"We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"It is pay for the amount of storage that you are monitoring. The more that we use the tool and like the tool, we may want to extend it to other storage platforms. This is just a matter of cost."
"We were already licensing Spectrum Control. This was one reasons why we went to Control rather than using the other product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell VPLEX?
Some of the products are very easy to implement, while others are more difficult, and our team seeks support help when required. Regarding the integration part, the delivery team handles all integr...
What is your primary use case for Dell VPLEX?
We are implementing Cohesity, Hitachi, Dell, and Nutanix, VMware, vSAN; multiple products. We have recently started working with Cohesity because there was not much presence in India for Cohesity, ...
What advice do you have for others considering Dell VPLEX?
Hitachi Systems Microclinic has been renamed to Hitachi Systems India Private Limited. The email address has been changed to shailendra.chaudhry.hd at hitachi-systems.com from shailendra_singh.chau...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Control?
Implementing IBM Spectrum Control is complex; we have had several calls to IBM to solve problems about DVM stack size, max memory size, and other issues such as buffer and cloud buffer size. Curren...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Control?
IBM Spectrum Control has been in use for more than ten years. It was installed for capacity planning because our manager wants to have insight into the capacity planning of the storage area. We ins...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Spectrum Control?
We are working with IBM products. IBM Spectrum Control is also installed now and we are using it.Currently, we are trying to implement a private cloud, specifically an Amazon S3 compatible cloud.We...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Spectrum Control
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kindred Healthcare, Regis Aged Care, WeBank SpA, Panduit, Munson Healthcare
Nuance
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VPLEX vs. IBM Spectrum Control and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.