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HPE StoreVirtual vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize 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
231
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) (16th)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th)
 

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.
AS
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The speed is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless."
"I would definitely suggest this solution to a colleague because of the ease of use."
"Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space."
"I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be much better than traditional storage because it has a GUI interface. It makes the process of allocating the storage much easier, and most activities are automated. It is like clicking a button for every task."
"The money I saved by not renewing maintenance on the Dell EMC devices paid for the Pure Storage devices."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"What I like most about this solution, is the speed, resiliency and scalability."
"The HPE StoreVirtual Network RAID-10 (mirroring between nodes) is the most valuable feature, allowing for multi-node redundancy so if one node fails, the other in the cluster picks up the entire load with automatic resync and failover and no loss of data during node failures."
"There is not an easy way to build redundancy at this price."
"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."
"This is a very reliable product."
"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."
"All of the administrative tasks are easy and everything is centralized."
"It has scaled to our needs."
"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."
"It is very good for compatibility and stability."
"IBM offers excellent customer service."
"It helps us to reduce time, reduce complexity, and be more responsive to requests instead of taking an hour to do one volume; now I can do one volume in less than two minutes."
"I would recommend it, for sure, because it offers supportability, reliability, and some scalability, and the vendor is there as a partner."
"Good luck finding anything that does half of what it does."
"I think probably one of the biggest benefits of this solution is that it is relatively easy to use and easy to understand."
"We look for reliability of the product itself."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"The latest release contains bugs that shouldn't be in a production environment. Two incidents impacted our client, including hardware-related bugs. They need to be more cautious in testing before they release."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"HP needs to be more careful about the partners they select for implementation."
"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."
"Configuration of application integrated snapshots for VMware is convoluted and it did not work immediately."
"It would be nice if there were more parts available in Brazil and HPE could swap out faulty equipment quicker."
"The user interface needs to be updated. It's getting kind of long in the tooth, and the user interface makes it look a lot more complex than it actually is to manage, and I think that you can mask a lot of that with a refresh of the user interface."
"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."
"According to HPE, they say that they will stop making updates from maybe next year or something."
"I would like to have this solution easily integrate with VMware."
"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."
"The feature that's kind of missing is getting us up to the point where we can help the application owners see where their data is at, understand it, and potentially help us breakout."
"Maybe sometimes we don't get responses back as fast as we would like, but they have always been very professional and they follow through."
"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."
"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."
"Technical support is sometimes good and sometimes it is low."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
"The SVC port (virtualized port) is very stable, but the Storwize port is not so stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"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 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."
"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."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"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."
"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."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
 

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 have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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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-...
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...
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 ...
 

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
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE StoreVirtual vs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.