IBM Spectrum Scale vs Nexenta comparison

IBM and Nexenta by DDN are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Nexenta by DDN is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Nexenta by DDN’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Nexenta by DDN users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Nexenta and IBM Spectrum Scale are competitors in the storage solutions market. IBM Spectrum Scale is viewed as having the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set, which many consider making it worthwhile for its price point.

Features: Nexenta offers flexible software-defined storage capabilities, efficient cost management, and ease of integration with different hardware. IBM Spectrum Scale provides robust scalability, advanced data management features, and high-performance global file system capabilities, catering to enterprise-level demands.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nexenta ensures straightforward deployment supported by strong customer assistance, facilitating smooth implementation and ongoing support. IBM Spectrum Scale has a more complex deployment process with extensive configuration options, complemented by a responsive service team. This complexity is ideal for larger infrastructures but may be challenging for some.

Pricing and ROI: Nexenta is favored for its lower setup costs, offering quick ROI for businesses seeking cost-effective solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale demands a higher initial investment, providing long-term ROI through enhanced capabilities and scalability, justifying its upfront cost with extensive future benefits.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nexenta

September 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 October 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 3.9%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.4%, up from 0.6% 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	4.1%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.9%
Nexenta	1.4%
Other	90.6%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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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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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service

Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.

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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

"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 main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

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

"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."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"We can have multiple systems within the same file system."

"It has been pretty reliable throughout the years. As far as capacity is concerned, it can handle most heavy loads."

"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."

Cons

"I have not seen ROI."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

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

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."

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

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"The main issue that we have now is with the encryption. They want to use more metrics in encryption, which is not working very well."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

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

"The price is a little high."

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is costly but reliable."

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

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

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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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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What needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent i...

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What is your primary use case for Nexenta?

It's for file systems. It's a NAS solution, and it has flexibility. There shouldn't be any outages because if one nod...

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What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 19% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Gluster Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 60% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nexenta

Compared 40% of the time

More Nexenta Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2025

Download Nexenta 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

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage - what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS).We uniquely integrate software-only "Open Source" collaboration with commodity hardware-centric "Software-Defined Storage" (SDS) innovation.

Nexenta by DDN

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nexenta

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nexenta

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