IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale comparison

IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Scale are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM Spectrum Accelerate is ranked #24, while IBM Spectrum Scale is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM Spectrum Accelerate holds a 2.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to IBM Spectrum Scale’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM Spectrum Accelerate users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM Spectrum Scale users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Scale compete in the storage solutions category. IBM Spectrum Scale often has the upper hand due to its extensive features and scalability that outperform the affordability of IBM Spectrum Accelerate.

Features: IBM Spectrum Accelerate offers consistent high performance, flexible scaling in all-flash, and hybrid-cloud environments. IBM Spectrum Scale provides enterprise-grade data management, seamless synchronization, and broad scalability, crucial for complex storage scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Accelerate has user-friendly setup procedures for streamlined deployment. Spectrum Scale, requiring more technical expertise, presents a complex deployment model with numerous configuration options. It provides comprehensive customer service to support its intricate deployment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Accelerate is seen as cost-effective with lower setup costs and rapid benefits, suitable for budget-constrained environments. IBM Spectrum Scale, while demanding a higher initial investment, offers significant ROI through advanced capabilities for handling large-scale data management and processing.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

August 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 September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Accelerate is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.2%, down from 4.9% 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	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Scale	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Accelerate	2.0%
Other	89.6%

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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reviewer1154616

IS Auditor at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

A robust solution with good performance and support

This is a solution that scales well, although I think that we have stabilized in terms of use. With respect to scalability, we have an open question as to whether we will be able to grow into a cloud-based deployment. We don't know in what ways this solution will assist us with the migration, or whether we can still use it for DR. We don't know about the type of backup, be it full, incremental, or otherwise. We are also looking for a cost-savings if we migrate. These are things that we will find out over time. We have about two petabytes of data.

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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

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

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"We have seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the robustness, which is typical of IBM because their software generally just works."

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

"We use GPFS Scale for parallel file access, the file management, and it's an essential part of our operations."

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

"It makes our file system sharing a lot easier, even across different continents. We have had file systems shared across different continents with no performance degradation."

"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

Cons

"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."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

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

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"I would like to see better integration."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The reporting mechanisms need improvement."

"he interface is not user-friendly so the ease of use could be improved."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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."

"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

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

"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

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

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"The price could be cheaper."

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"If you are cost-sensitive then this solution is not for you."

"For a database, on a yearly basis, we pay approximately $3,500 for licensing fees. The solution is sold as a subscription on a yearly basis so there are no other ancillary costs."

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

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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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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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?

My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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StorMagic SvSAN vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 43% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 32% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 22% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Accelerate product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM XIV

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

IBM Spectrum Accelerate is a software-defined block storage solution designed for rapid deployment across heterogeneous infrastructure for hybrid cloud and delivering consistent service levels to a dynamic workload mix. It is based on proven grid-architecture, enterprise-scale IBM XIV technology. IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed, including as hyper-converged infrastructure, on any x86 server, on pre-installed third-party appliances or on public cloud infrastructure, and is available as a service on IBM Cloud infrastructure.

IBM

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

Silverpop

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. IBM Spectrum Scale and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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