IBM Cloud Object Storage vs SwiftStack comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cloud Object Storage and SwiftStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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To learn more, read our detailed File and Object Storage Report (Updated: March 2024).
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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there.""IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well.""IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage.""The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution.""The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions.""The integration itself is pretty easy. The access appliances create the connection between both environments."

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"The SwiftStack Controller, which is the web UI, provides out of band management. This has been one of the best features of it. It allows us to be able to do upgrades and look at performance metrics. It is a top feature and reason to choose the product.""In terms of the hardware flexibility, with SwiftStack not being a hardware company, I literally buy any hardware that's the least expensive, from any vendor... from a flexibility standpoint, I think it's fantastic. I can go to anybody, anywhere - any vendor - and get my hardware.""The most valuable feature is its versatility. We use 1space and we can use it for almost anything: for our cloud service, for backups of VMs.""The scalability is phenomenal. It seems infinite, as long as you put enough storage in place, add enough nodes.""The general consensus on what we've done is that the restores coming back from it have been faster than they were from our prior vendor. Ingest speeds are fine. The restore speeds have improved.""The performance is good. It is a secondary storage platform designed for archive and backup, so performance for the right use cases is very good. We have been pretty happy in that regard.""The biggest feature, the biggest reason we went with SwiftStack, rather than deploying our own model with OpenStack Swift, was their deployment model. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. It took my installation time from days to hours, for deployment in our environment, versus deploying OpenStack Swift ourselves, manually.""It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers. As part of our DR strategy, we have nodes automatically replicating data from one data center to the other. This makes it easier for us to not have to shift tapes around."

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Cons
"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have.""One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase.""IBM has limited cloud storage.""IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be.""One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for maintaining a record of changes. While the free version might not include this feature, it could be included in the paid version to provide added value to clients. Additionally, having a version history feature that allows users to access modifications made to files over the past three months could be beneficial.""The performance could improve in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The throughput or objects per second can have degradation.""If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive would be helpful. Sometimes, they can be a little complicated if you're not familiar with them."

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"I would like to see better client integrations, support for a broader client library. SwiftStack could be a little bit more involved in the client side: Python, Java, C, etc.""They should provide a more concise hardware calculator when you're putting your capacity together.""[One] thing that I've been looking for, for years as an end user and customer, for any object store, including SwiftStack, is some type of automated method for data archiving. Something where you would have a metadata tagging policy engine and a data mover all built into a single system that would automatically be able to take your data off your primary and put it into an object store in a non-proprietary way - which is key.""The biggest room for improvement is the maturity of the proxyFS solution. That piece of code is relatively new, so most of our issues have been around the proxyFS.""At the moment we are using Erasure coding in an 8+4 setting. What would be nice is if, for some standard configurations like 15+4 and 8+4, there were more versatility so we could, for example, select 8+6, or the like.""On the controller features, there needs to be a bit more clean up of the user interface. There are a lot of options available on the GUI which might be better organized or compartmentalized. There are times when you are going through the user interface and you have to look around for where the setting may be. A little bit more attention to the organization of the user interface would be helpful.""The file access needs improvement. The NFS was rolled out as a single service. It needs to be fully integrated into the proxy in a highly available fashion, like the regular proxy access is. I know it's on the roadmap.""It's very well done for what it's supposed to do, and I don't have anything to add, but I would like them to keep it available to the public. SwiftStack is going out of the market. NVIDIA purchased SwiftStack a couple of years ago, and they won't be making it available to the public anymore. Our license is up to March 31st."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Pricing is not cheap."
  • "You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."
  • "IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."
  • "Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."
  • More IBM Cloud Object Storage Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "All in, with hardware and everything else - and I hate to say a dollar amount because it's been awhile since I computed it - I know I'm under the $300 to $500 per terabyte mark. I call that my "all in" price, which has replications built in and protections built in."
  • "One of their advantages of being a commercial open source platform is, for the scale that they offer, the pricing is pretty competitive."
  • "The annual support and maintenance costs compared to our old solution for backups had about a two-thirds savings, so about a 60% annual savings on our support and maintenance contract. That savings funded additional expansion for what it was costing us for the support and maintenance contracts on old solution."
  • "The pricing and licensing are capacity-based, so it's hard to put my finger on them, because so many different vendors charge in different ways. We are still saving significantly over any of the other options that we evaluated because we can choose the best hardware at the best price, then put SwiftStack software on it. So, it's hard to complain, even though a part of me goes, "It would be nicer if it were less expensive.""
  • "We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
  • "COST_SAVING; We have had a 40 to 50 percent reduction in CAPEX on the acquisition of new hardware, which is probably conservative."
  • "We find the pricing rather steep. Of course, you get quality for your money, that's absolutely true... [But] when you look at the prices of the licensing and the prices of your hardware, it's quite substantial."
  • "We are able to dynamically grow storage at a lower cost. We can repurpose hardware and buy commodity hardware. There is a huge cost savings, on average $100,000 a year compared to traditional storage for what we have at our size."
  • More SwiftStack Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions.
    Top Answer:IBM Cloud Object Storage may come with a higher price tag, but EMC ECS solution is worth the investment due to its ongoing support and maintenance requirements. Upgrading can be a bit time-consuming… more »
    Top Answer:One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for… more »
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    Overview

    IBM Cloud Object Storage is a web-scale platform that stores unstructured data - from petabyte to exabyte - with reliability, security, availability and disaster recovery without replication.

    SwiftStack enables you to do more with storage. Store more data, enable more applications and serve more users. We do this by delivering a proven object storage solution that's built on an open-source core and is fully enterprise ready. Our object storage software is an alternative to complex, expensive, on-premises hardware-based storage solutions. SwiftStack delivers the features and flexibility you need to easily manage and scale object storage behind your firewall. Customers are demanding storage where they can pay as they grow, find it is easier to consume, and can infinitely scale. Today, our customers use SwiftStack for archiving active data, serving web content, building private clouds, sharing documents and storing backups.
    Sample Customers
    Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research
    Pac-12 Networks, Georgia Institute of Technology, Budd Van Lines
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise36%
    Large Enterprise52%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business43%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    File and Object Storage
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about MinIO, Dell Technologies, Red Hat and others in File and Object Storage. Updated: March 2024.
    767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cloud Object Storage is ranked 9th in File and Object Storage with 7 reviews while SwiftStack is ranked 17th in File and Object Storage. IBM Cloud Object Storage is rated 8.0, while SwiftStack is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IBM Cloud Object Storage writes "Offers the ease with which you can move data between on-premises storage and the cloud and then retrieve it back on-premises when necessary". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SwiftStack writes "It has helped us with the ability to distribute data to different data centers". IBM Cloud Object Storage is most compared with Red Hat Ceph Storage, MinIO, Dell ECS, IBM Spectrum Scale and NetApp StorageGRID, whereas SwiftStack is most compared with MinIO, Dell ECS, Red Hat Ceph Storage, Cloudian HyperStore and Scality RING.

    See our list of best File and Object Storage vendors.

    We monitor all File and Object Storage 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.