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 #21, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 1.7% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize

November 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 874,056 peers since 2012

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 November 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.8%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE StoreVirtual is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.8%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	1.6%
HPE StoreVirtual	1.7%
Other	92.9%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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.

Read full review

AhmedSorour

IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM

Unified storage solution supports cross-vendor replication and diverse industries

One of the most valuable features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is its virtualization capability. It allows for the creation of stretched clusters, which are crucial for running Linux-based workloads that need mirroring for boot disks. The solution also provides asynchronous and synchronous replication, supporting operations across different data centers. Its deployment options across public, private, and hybrid clouds add to its versatility.

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."

"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."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

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

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

"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

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

"The solution is very stable."

"A company can scale it easily."

"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."

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

"Simplicity of not having to buy FC or FCoE SAN. Instead, we buy servers with their own storage."

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

"The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with glitches or bugs."

More HPE StoreVirtual pros

"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."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

"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."

"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."

"The ease of management, the simplicity of the CLI, the speed of that interface, and the well-architected design of the product in general are valuable features."

"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"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."

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

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The solution needs to ensure it is on par with the industry in terms of availability of features and various other options."

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

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

"The penalty for the availability is performance. So, you have to balance or choose between the availability and the performance."

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

"Hardware and disk failures are happening frequently."

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

"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."

More HPE StoreVirtual cons

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."

"I would like to see them provide a unified platform that offers block, file, and object-based protocol access."

"There are things that occur when you get to this size and capacity. We're very large, i.e., petabytes. When you get to that sheer volume of the numbers of things, it is too big for people to keep track of."

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

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

"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."

"The disk reliability is not that good."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"The price is a little high."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

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

"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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

874,056 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Performing Arts

14%

Transportation Company

Performing Arts

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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-...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 27% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 22% of the time

VMware vSAN vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 18% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs HPE StoreVirtual

Compared 16% of the time

More HPE StoreVirtual Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 11% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

November 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE StoreVirtual

November 2025

Download HPE StoreVirtual product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

November 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize 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 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

November 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: November 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

874,056 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize report.

See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors.

We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.