HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Scale comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #20, while IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.3% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise 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

HPE StoreVirtual and IBM Spectrum Scale are major contenders in the storage solutions category. The comparative analysis indicates that while HPE offers a streamlined, all-in-one package, IBM provides superior performance and flexibility suited for heavy workloads.

Features: HPE StoreVirtual delivers a unified approach by integrating compute, storage, and networking with high availability through network RAID. Its seamless integration with VMware and HP Proliant hardware is particularly advantageous. Users appreciate its ease of storage management and adaptability. IBM Spectrum Scale, however, stands out with high performance and a robust parallel file system, making it suitable for intensive workloads. It boasts seamless integration across diverse platforms, offering exceptional scalability and flexibility.

Room for Improvement: HPE StoreVirtual is criticized for latency issues, complex initial setup, and limited expansion capabilities. Users call for better firmware communication and documentation alongside enhanced clustering for diverse disk nodes. Conversely, IBM Spectrum Scale faces challenges with its complex licensing and setup, limited block storage, and integration issues with other vendor systems. Users seek a simpler interface and more efficient deployment processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both HPE StoreVirtual and IBM Spectrum Scale are deployed on-premises. HPE receives mixed reviews regarding support, with some customers commending the specialized support staff and others experiencing delays. Support quality fluctuates based on regional availability and engineer expertise. IBM Spectrum Scale is recognized for excellent customer service, with seasoned technical staff adept at resolving complex problems efficiently. Both companies provide comprehensive documentation, but consistent support is pivotal for user satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: HPE StoreVirtual is noted for competitive pricing with all-inclusive licensing, covering features like site-to-site replication at no extra cost, making it attractive for SMBs. However, costs can rise with additional redundancy. Its ROI is favorable if system stability is maintained. IBM Spectrum Scale's complex licensing model correlates to processing cores and storage, yet it is often viewed as reasonable given its performance and reliability. Enterprise agreements usually yield positive ROI, though complexity in pricing models can be a deterrent.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

April 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 May 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 HPE StoreVirtual is 1.3%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.5%, down from 5.7% 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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Vebjorn Nergaard

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.

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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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Data is stored in two different places, leveraging more security and availability. Therefore, network problems are having less affect on iSCSI."

"The network RAID feature gives us maximum availability, since we cannot afford any downtime, even for a second."

"StoreVirtual is that it is our software-defined solution and it's everywhere."

"The initial setup is straightforward, not a complex procedure."

"Thin provisioning lets us get the most value from the hard drives."

"I guess on the top of the list is certainly ease of use."

"It appears to be very stable and very robust."

"It allows compute and storage to operate separately, and has the ability to take SAN nodes out of production for maintenance with little effort and zero downtime."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."

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

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

"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

Cons

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"The speed could be improved."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"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."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"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."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."

"it would nice to have deduplication or compression, things that you have in some of the higher end products."

"The GUI is a bit old-fashioned. It should be updated."

"f you're doing the 10Gb adapters, SFPs don't come with it, but it doesn't say that. It might say that somewhere else, but it's not clear."

"The management aspect of the solution needs to be improved in order to make the product stronger."

"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."

"Hardware and disk failures are happening frequently."

"The product is coming to end-of-life in the next three years."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"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."

"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."

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

"It would be helpful if there was a graphical user interface that could walk you through the deployment process. The instructions surrounding setup aren't the best. They need to be more step-by-step."

"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."

"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."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The price is a little high."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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 prices are OK, so we don't have much difficulty selling HPE in Brazil."

"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."

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

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...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

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

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What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% 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

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 53% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 47% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 27% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

April 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

No data available

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

HPE StoreVirtual storage ensures that organisations can optimise the benefits of server virtualisation with cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery. The iSCSI-based, scale-out storage platform is easy to manage and change – meeting ongoing business demands without creating IT bottlenecks or application downtime. Overcoming the cost and management limitations of traditional storage area networks (SANs), HPE StoreVirtual nodes use storage clustering to form a single pool of resources that enable organisations to buy only what they need today, scaling non-disruptively to meet requirements in the future.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

April 2025

Free Report: HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Scale and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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