HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #22, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

HPE StoreVirtual and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the storage virtualization market. IBM Spectrum Virtualize has the upper hand with its advanced features and flexibility in licensing, catering to both entry-level and high-end configurations effectively.

Features: HPE StoreVirtual provides seamless storage management, high availability, and comprehensive integration with existing hardware. It simplifies the configuration process and ensures storage redundancy, making it a fit for straightforward deployments. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, on the other hand, offers powerful data migration capabilities, flexible operational management, and a unified view across different storage systems, enhancing appeal with its versatility and advanced disaster recovery features.

Room for Improvement: HPE StoreVirtual could improve in reducing latency issues and simplifying management, especially during firmware updates. The solution also requires better SSD integration. IBM Spectrum Virtualize could benefit from enhanced scalability and management intricacies, with improved reporting and cloud integration for advanced utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both systems offer robust on-premises capabilities. HPE StoreVirtual is noted for its easy deployment and generally effective technical support, though experiences with support vary. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is recognized for its technical competence and helpful support team, ensuring a smooth deployment process.

Pricing and ROI: HPE StoreVirtual is valued for its affordable high availability, with pricing that includes all features but is often critiqued for its complex licensing. It is particularly attractive to SMBs due to its cost-effectiveness. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers cost-efficient bundled licensing and broad scalability, being competitive in high-end configurations. It offers significant ROI potential through its flexible and comprehensive suite, being economically favorable in certain scenarios.

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

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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 HPE StoreVirtual is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, down from 1.6% 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.

Read full review

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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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"It's very stable and it's easy to use."

"A very flexible solution."

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

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

"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is hardware independent."

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

"The seamlessness behind the scenes of block management."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."

"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."

"We acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"I like all the features, but the most impressive recently has been the introduction of IBM's Flash Core Modules. They are a form of a flash drive, but they have many more features."

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

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

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"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 documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The initial setup could be simplified to make it easier for new users."

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

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

"It is a costly solution."

"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."

"User interface could be improved."

"Product looks like it is in the end of development."

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

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."

"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

"IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution."

"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

"The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time."

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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."

"The price is a little high."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them."

"We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."

"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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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

21%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Government

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. T...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware ...

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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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VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 52% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 48% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

June 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Also Known As

No data available

HPE StoreVirtual, HPE VSA

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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

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 Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

IBM

Sample Customers

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

NBrIX, WIND Telecom, Netrics

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

May 2025

Free Report: HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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

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