IBM Spectrum Scale vs LizardFS comparison

IBM and LizardFS are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.3, while LizardFS is ranked #21. IBM holds a 4.6% mindshare in SDS, compared to LizardFS’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of LizardFS users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

LizardFS and IBM Spectrum Scale are competitors in the distributed storage solutions market. IBM Spectrum Scale appears to have an advantage due to its rich features and capabilities, while LizardFS attracts with its pricing and customer support.

Features: LizardFS is valued for simplicity, scalability, and fault tolerance, specifically benefiting small to medium enterprises. IBM Spectrum Scale offers robust data management, advanced metadata handling, and superior scalability, tailored for large-scale environments. LizardFS is noted for ease of use, contrasting with IBM Spectrum Scale’s extensive feature set.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LizardFS provides straightforward deployment and excellent customer service, making it ideal for smaller teams. IBM Spectrum Scale has a more complex deployment process requiring skilled technical expertise, supported by comprehensive documentation and professional services.

Pricing and ROI: LizardFS is a cost-effective solution with quicker setup, providing favorable ROI for budget-conscious users. IBM Spectrum Scale involves higher setup costs that correlate with its extensive features, offering high ROI for large enterprises seeking advanced storage solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. LizardFS

May 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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Categories and Ranking

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LizardFS is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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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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it_user504762

Lead solution architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Providing relatively cheap NAS solution with great scale-out functionality.

Management console - today it is managed via scripts and flat files which need to be synchronized among all master/shadow nodes in a cluster. There are severall possible problems in such approach: - it is possible to 'damage' config by mistake - it is required to copy modified config file to other servers (typically you change it on master server and populate this to other - shadow servers using scp). If one forgets this, shadow servers have incorrect/old config and in case the cluster failovers the new master service is using wrong config I would suggest to write a dedicated program or script which checks syntax and do all the changes in a proper way in background. It could look like this: to create new export: - lizard-admin create-export to modify: - lizard-admin modify-export etc.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Educational Organization

No data available

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 for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

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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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Comparisons

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VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 27% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs LizardFS

Compared 51% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs LizardFS

Compared 49% of the time

More LizardFS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

May 2025

Download LizardFS product report

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 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

Software Defined Storage LizardFS is a distributed, scalable, fault-tolerant and highly available file system. It allows users to combine disk space located on many servers into a single name space which is visible on Unix-like and Windows systems in the same way as other file systems. SDS LizardFS makes files secure by keeping all the data in many replicas spread over available servers. It can also be used to build space-efficient storage, because it is designed to run on commodity hardware. Disk and server failures are handled transparently without any downtime or loss of data. If storage requirements grow, it's possible to scale an existing SDS LizardFS installation just by adding new servers _ at any time, without any downtime. The system will automatically move some data to newly added servers, because it continuously takes care of balancing disk usage across all connected nodes. Removing servers is just as easy as adding a new one.

LizardFS

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Orange Polska, Platige Image, United State Department of Agriculture, Virtu Financial

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. LizardFS

May 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. LizardFS

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