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IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

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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
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Accelerate
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (22nd), Cloud Software Defined Storage (4th)
VMware Software Defined Sto...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (15th)
 

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.
reviewer1154616 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mohammad Jundiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Qatar Datamation Systems
Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery.  Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"Pure Storage technology allowed us to automate tasks, reducing something which started as a 12-hour turnaround down to about 15 minutes."
"If you factor in the ease in terms of operations, as well as the cost of the array compared to other solid state arrays, it becomes a clear positive for Pure Storage."
"The initial setup was straightforward in the way that it was a database vacuum storage."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."
"I am exceptionally happy with the product and the way it works."
"This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space have good deduplication."
"Pure Storage has the right business model and will be around for a long time."
"Implementing this solution has been a very good decision for our in-house data center."
"The most valuable feature is the robustness, which is typical of IBM because their software generally just works."
"The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect; it's very user-friendly, and the security on the product is very good."
"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without the requirement of additional hardware, which is the biggest advantage."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."
"The technical support is awesome."
"The product is user-friendly from an administrative standpoint and very easy to use."
"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."
"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."
"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."
"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"For scalability, I rate it a six out of ten. We reach a limit. We never reached this limit, however, the architecture allows you to go until a certain size, and after that, you have to buy another array."
"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."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"Some of the issues are that it's probably not on a par with other large storage enterprise type products."
"The interface is not user-friendly so the ease of use could be improved."
"The reporting mechanisms need improvement."
"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."
"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."
"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"
"It's easy to scale and expand but the main catch is the cost. It's expensive."
"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."
"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."
"The cost of the product is where an improvement could be made. It's generally very expensive and requires a lot of architecture that needs to be designed according to specific situations."
"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"The pricing is very attractive and it delivers performance for the money."
"There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
"Pure is not a cheap product. It is not something that is inexpensive. But, the total cost of ownership tends to be lower than with other solutions, because you don't need a lot of expertise, you don't need a lot of training or very expensive engineers or very expensive consultants."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"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."
"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."
"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."
"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
No data available
Outsourcing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

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 find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?
The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...
What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?
There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...
What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
IBM XIV
VMware SDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Silverpop
Helse Nord, Sky
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.