IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs VMware vSAN comparison

IBM and VMware are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Accelerate and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware vSAN

July 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

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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Pramod-Talekar

Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enables efficient multi-environment cluster deployment and resource management with versatile features

While VMware vSAN is quite comprehensive, if we are running multiple infrastructures, applications, databases, and other elements, having a diagnostic tool to identify the actual problem area, whether application-side or infrastructure-side, would be beneficial. A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.

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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 most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

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

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

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

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"The valuable features of vSAN are that you can get it up and running quickly, you get redundancy built-in, and it's pretty much the perfect solution for a cluster."

"The most valuable features are the encryption, deduplication, compression, and the ability to manage all of your storage within your server rack."

"I think vSAN's stability is good. It's an underlying solution for both on-prem and in the cloud, especially the VMC on AWS stuff too. VMware has been around for a long time, so it's pretty stable."

"The solution's technical support is good."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Overall the solution is very good."

"The solution is simple to use compared to other solutions, such as Hyperflex, VxRail, and Nutanix"

"In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent."

More VMware vSAN pros

Cons

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

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

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

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"I would like to see better integration."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The reporting mechanisms need improvement."

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

"If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"I would like to see the availability of more template based VMware systems. Combined with the ability to check and measure multiple and converging data segments. Another issue I've seen is that the tool seems to be slow when first starting up."

"Troubleshooting tools could be improved."

"The only thing I can think of at this time is to improve the performance monitoring and performance visibility within the GUI."

"I would like to see better performance graphs, maybe something that you can export outside to a different console, and maybe a little bit longer time period. The 18-hour maximum, or 24-hour maximum, is kind of short. Also, the hardware compatibility limitations are a little frustrating sometimes, but as everybody's starting to adopt vSAN more, you get more options for hardware."

"I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified."

"This solution is not great for large file shares/object/rich media repository."

More VMware vSAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."

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

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"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."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The licenses are very expensive. The renewal of licenses has extra costs attached to it."

"The vSAN licensing is not an inexpensive product. It does cost more than hypervisor."

"It is too expensive."

"Its reasonable, compare with other storage vendors"

"If you compare the price of VMware vSAN with other players like Nutanix and Cisco, its price is good, but could still have some improvement."

"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."

"Its price could be improved."

"We have increased our user productivity."

More VMware vSAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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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Earn 20 points

What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?

While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...

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Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...

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How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 39% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 33% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 28% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Accelerate Competitors

VxRail vs VMware vSAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs VMware vSAN

Compared 15% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs VMware vSAN

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs VMware vSAN

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs VMware vSAN

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware vSAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

August 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Accelerate product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware vSAN

June 2025

Download VMware vSAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM XIV

vSAN

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

VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

VMware vSAN Features

VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.

Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.

Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.

High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.

Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.

HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.

Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

VMware vSAN Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution.

Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance.

Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.

Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly.

Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

VMware

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Silverpop

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware vSAN

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware vSAN

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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