IBM Spectrum Scale vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

IBM and Nutanix are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Nutanix is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Nutanix’s 5.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Scale and Nutanix Unified Storage compete in providing enterprise storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale holds an edge in scalability and integration flexibility, while Nutanix Unified Storage excels in ease of deployment and speed.

Features: IBM Spectrum Scale supports massive data volumes with scalability, data security, and advanced management. Nutanix Unified Storage offers a hyperconverged infrastructure, ease of use, and robust performance through efficient integration of computation and storage.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Scale could enhance its user interface for simpler management and reduce deployment complexity. It might also focus on improving integration processes for users unfamiliar with its architecture. Nutanix Unified Storage could expand its scalability options to handle larger enterprise systems and improve customization features to fit diverse operational requirements. Additionally, Nutanix could enhance support for legacy systems to ease transition challenges for new customers.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Unified Storage offers quick deployment and excellent customer service, providing personalized support. Its straightforward process is favored by businesses looking for an uncomplicated setup. IBM Spectrum Scale, though offering customizable integrations, involves a more complex deployment needing specialized expertise, presenting a challenge for those without specific technical knowledge.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Scale generally requires a higher initial investment, targeting customization and long-term expansion with significant ROI over time through extensive capabilities. Nutanix Unified Storage presents a cost-effective option with lower setup costs and faster ROI, appealing to businesses aiming for quick returns on investment without extensive initial expenditure.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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 Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 5.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)	5.0%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.1%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.9%
Other	87.0%

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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Amarnath Charugundla

System Engineer at Tata Consultancy

Unified management and cost-effectiveness lead to positive experiences and future savings

Improvement is necessary wherein the memory or storage should not breach 90%, because if breached, it becomes unmanageable. We have to set alerts or CPU triggering for 95% for the first warning. Other activities on nodes or file systems should be properly maintained. We must monitor the dashboard for P1, P2 alerts in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) file share system including SMB, NFS, objects, and blocks. Attention should be maintained for any alerts such as CPU, memory, and RAM alerts, as exceeding these creates issues within teams. If triggered to 95% and forgotten, it crosses the SLA breach, causing disturbances to application, web, and platform teams. Continuous monitoring on the Nutanix dashboard is essential. Even a highly experienced person in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cannot provide a 10 rating out of 10 because it is a vast system. I would rate it eight from my perspective.

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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 initial setup is pretty quick."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"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."

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

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

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

"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."

"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"Nutanix Unified Storage is a simple, user-friendly, and stable solution."

"The real-time alerts generated by this system enable us to swiftly address and mitigate such threats."

"The biggest return on investment for me when using Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is the management aspect since it's easier to manage."

"The most important point is the simplicity of the API integration. We can leverage the API integrations and connect our hybrid-cloud network environment with Nutanix's cloud storage."

"The features I appreciate the most about Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are the compatibility with the market."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is very fast in terms of migration and data access with respect to VM, OS, and storage, experiencing a 30% faster performance compared to VMware."

"Nutanix Objects is reliable."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the Prism Central centralized management console."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

Cons

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"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."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The initial setup is complex, especially if trying to avoid erasure coding, as it requires more discs. Avoiding erasure coding can significantly increase costs."

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

"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."

"I believe there is no graphic user interface, so they should include it."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The dashboard can have more details and be more useful."

"A more consistent flow of information would improve the solution, as I've noticed some inconsistencies, mostly stemming from the coordination between the hardware vendor and Nutanix."

"Areas for improvement in Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) include more redundancy to ensure no data loss, and balancing the workloads is very important to maintain managed workloads throughout the year."

"Allowing the use of the Gflag compromises the integrity of the Nutanix system and its established standards."

"From the speed perspective of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), it could enhance some features to make it the best storage solution in the market."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) needs improvement, particularly for firmware upgrades, as sometimes updates take a whole day and it can be unclear whether the issue is with Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) or the hardware, requiring us to reconfigure everything, which is a main point we want consolidated into one solution."

"I really want some AI or even basic AI to be included in the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) license."

"We would love to see the analytics and ransomware protection extended beyond just file servers to virtual machines, but they have a different product that covers that."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

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

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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."

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

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is costly but reliable."

"We are Nutanix partners, so it is pretty good. With the free terabyte that comes with the Nutanix clusters, we have started to build proposals for the clients. The price adjustment with the new policy of Nutanix Unified Storages seems attractive. Let us see if it has results."

"The pricing is fair."

"It's definitely a lot cheaper than buying a new EMC array. We bought a five-year commitment on all the hardware and software. I don't know what the cost was back then, but I do remember it was cheaper."

"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."

"The price can always be improved. As a customer, you always seek reasonable solutions within your budget, and they give us little to do a lot. My IT team always has to justify that we are choosing an optimal solution, so the price could be a little lower Maybe the prices could be a little bit lower."

"The licensing currently works based on a software license. If we have files, volumes, and other licenses combined, that would be more valuable. I don't want to go for a separate license for files and a separate license for volumes. We have unified storage, so the licensing should also be unified. That would be helpful."

"The solution is highly-priced."

"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

28%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	63

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Scale?

My personal use of this product is for parallel writing or reading files.

See all answers

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

It is very cost-effective compared to the traditional environment. With new hardware, it's a long-term investment but...

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What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

The cybersecurity features are used for protecting unstructured data against threats such as ransomware.

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

Dell PowerStore vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% 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 Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Storage Fusion vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 4% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 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

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

September 2025

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

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

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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