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IBM Spectrum Scale vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), File and Object Storage (8th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
HCI (4th), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
 

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 Scale is 4.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is 6.1%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)6.1%
Pure Storage FlashBlade4.2%
IBM Spectrum Scale4.2%
Other85.5%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Bernd Stroehle. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."
"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."
"Technical support has been very helpful. They provide us with pretty good solutions that we can implement moving forward."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."
"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."
"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."
"I find IBM Spectrum Scale to be an excellent product known for its fast parallel file system."
"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."
"The management interface of this solution is great."
"There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes."
"Acropolis AOS is scalable to nodes and the cloud."
"One of the main features of the solution is that it works on many hypervisors. It is a big advantage. Additionally, the solution is compatible with VMware and Hyper-V, and the management interface, which is called Prism, is very intuitive and user-friendly."
"Nutanix has the best virtual desktop infrastructure."
"It supports multi-cloud integration that includes AWS, Google, and Azure."
"Hyper-convergence is the most valuable feature for me as it allows me to scale the hardware according to project requirements."
"This operating system offers stability. Setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"The solution is expensive."
"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."
"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."
"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."
"I wish there were some graphical user interface to access the GPFS file system creation and monitoring."
"Integration with other vendors is not available."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"Making it a little easier to add bad file sets would help. There is a transition to how you add storage and how you add a file set, so making that a little smoother would probably be my recommendation."
"We had a few problems with the foundation machine that you can use to build your systems out. We've got it working now, but it should be improved."
"I think some of the tasks that must be done using CLI could be added to the web interface."
"Benchmark testing indicated that workloads did slightly better on our Vblock by a few percentage"
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure can be improved in terms of the sizing of the solution."
"They could improve the graphical user interface."
"When moving a critical infrastructure from a physical machine to Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), we currently have to use a third-party tool to convert the physical machine to a VM."
"Nutanix can be a bit complex to understand."
"It would be ideal if it was more secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"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 product is very expensive."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"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 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."
"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."
"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
"It's a bit expensive, but it's worth it."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is affordable, it has good value. The final price depends a lot on the hardware used, it's an appliance in the end. Whether you use HPE as the hardware vendor or Supermicro as the hardware vendor, it really depends on what hardware is used which is the main cost."
"The price of the solution could improve. Nutanix has recently changed its pricing model from perpetual to subscription. They have identified there are challenges with the pricing model."
"There is a license required for this solution and my clients usually purchase a two-year license with extended support. The price of the solution could be reduced, it is more expensive than competitors."
"If they could further reduce the cost, that would be great. I would like to see the cost be less than the equivalent three-tier architecture."
"Cost-wise, it is very good. It is like the hypervisor cost is not there. We only need to pay for the system and AOS licenses."
"The price is good but I think there is still room for improvement on the price."
"The price of the solution is high."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise82
 

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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?
My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Information Not Available
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.