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HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Scale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
HPE StoreVirtual
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (14th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Vebjorn Nergaard - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Engineer at Guard Automation AS
Reliable with helpful support and good replication
The setup is okay, however, it comes with a moderate amount of difficulty. If you are new to the product, it is difficult. You do get used to the process over time and it gets easier. A company just needs one person to maintain the solution as it just runs. You don't need any support staff. It's very, very hands-off except when you do updates. The product is living its own life.
Sachin Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has optimized performance using cluster deployment and distributed file access but needs better visibility into network dependencies
IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM. This is one of the features I appreciate most because if you have existing infrastructure at your site but don't want to reinvest in hardware, you can purchase IBM Spectrum Scale software and deploy it as software-defined storage. Users can comfortably access data from their host to the storage host without relying on new network setup when deploying GPFS as it uses the existing corporate network. However, high-speed ethernet network is required. By adding switches to the same network where client hosts reside and deploying GPFS storage array, any file system created on the storage cluster can grant export permissions determining which hosts can access specific file systems. These hosts can directly mount them as remote file systems. The process is simpler compared to defining IQN for providing access to client hosts. Creating a cluster for clients with virtual machines or physical Linux/Windows machines requires installing GPFS services on client nodes, which creates a client cluster. Access is defined on the storage cluster for the particular client cluster, allowing all hosts in that client cluster to mount file systems with granted permissions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance is great."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"The amount of throughput that we're getting is really nice."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"Pure Storage FlashArray provides immediate benefits to our customers with its easy setup process, allowing for instant use and rapid realization of advantages."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible."
"Business continuity and disaster recovery. The storage environment is spread between two geographical locations – bi-annually BCP/DR tests are conducted proving the validity of the architecture."
"It appears to be very stable and very robust."
"The solution is stable, and whatever implementation we've done, we've been very satisfied with the solution and haven't experienced any bugs or glitches."
"It is an excellent alternative to small hardware SANs if you already have the disk space on other servers and adequate network bandwidth for your level of disk activity."
"The solution is extremely stable, reliable, and has no bugs or glitches."
"Since it's free for the one terabyte, and it's a very stable solution, it's a good solution to try out."
"On several occasions, we’ve had a complete power failure at one of our two SAN locations, yet all of our VMs continued to function because the VMs that were running on the downed SAN simply moved to the other SAN without the need for operator intervention."
"A company can scale it easily."
"Spectrum Scale is one of the most important products in our environment now."
"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."
"We tested a complete site loss with the initial loss of the complete data center and the system was always up."
"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"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."
 

Cons

"The cost of the storage needs improvement."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"We aren’t sure of the scalability yet but are aiming to find out soon."
"I find it rather tedious to manage."
"HP needs to be more careful about the partners they select for implementation."
"We are experiencing some latency that we’re resolving with HP."
"You cannot easily mix SAS with SATA or SSD within a cluster."
"I don't think, however, it would be suitable for our actual production environments because we need something much more sophisticated and expandable."
"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."
"In our country, Qatar, most of the industry isn't using too much HP. StoreVirtual doesn't move fast. It's not a popular product."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"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."
"We do not feel as a company that the product can grow with us anymore, so we are not going to use it anymore."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"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 believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"The price-to-performance is good. I looked at Pure about three to four years back, but the price-to-performance wasn't right for us. Now, it's right."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"It costs less than $10,000 for one machine. If it costs more than 15% higher than this, then the customer may change to another solution."
"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."
"One of the key features about it is that when you buy either a VSA license or a StoreVirtual appliance, all your software's included."
"If you buy a five-year license, not only does the technical support expire after five years, but you also lose the ability to change and expand the VSA, and the systems won't go down."
"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."
"For our organization, I believe the cost is 16,000 Euros for a three-year license. It costs a bit more to do the maintenance on our servers as well. It's also on an HP ProLiant server and an organization will need to do the maintenance there also. I believe the price for that is around 2000 Euros a year."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?
IBM Spectrum Scale functions as software-based storage, allowing users to utilize any hardware supported or defined b...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?
The system relies heavily on ethernet networking, and when issues occur, we must consult with the network team to inv...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?
My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.