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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (8th)
HPE StoreVirtual
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
21st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Spectrum Scale
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.7%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Vebjorn Nergaard - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Bernd Stroehle. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"The solution provides many controllers."
"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."
"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."
"A company can scale it easily."
"It's very stable and it's easy to use."
"The solution is very stable."
"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is hardware independent."
"The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with glitches or bugs."
"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."
"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."
"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."
"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."
"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."
"I rate this product ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."
"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."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"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."
"The speed could be improved."
"I have not seen ROI."
"I would like to have this solution easily integrate with VMware."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options."
"The management aspect of the solution needs to be improved in order to make the product stronger."
"One of the areas that need improvement is the consolidated management platform, to manage all of the nodes from one place and the licensing around that."
"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."
"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."
"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."
"We do have some issues where Spectrum Scale does not work as expected. We have seen our Spectrum Scale servers go down unexpectedly, but because we have a cluster, it does not take out the entire organization."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"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."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"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."
"Licensing is not exactly straightforward, but not the worst I have ever seen."
"The prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Educational Organization
8%
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...
Ask a question
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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...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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: May 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.