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IBM Spectrum Scale vs Portworx Enterprise comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (16th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th), File and Object Storage (8th)
IBM Spectrum Scale
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (10th), Cloud Software Defined Storage (2nd)
Portworx Enterprise
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd), Data Storage for Kubernetes (1st)
 

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.
Paulo Jose  Bosco Otto - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution backed by strong customer support, that is stable and scalable
As a company managed in a Kubernetes environment, being trusted by a Kubernetes vendor, Red Hat creates barriers against using other certified solutions that work. Because IBM is a competitor of Pure Storage, things seem to be getting worse. I don't have plans to use Portworx Enterprise in the future because, at the moment, I am working with Ondat, and I have to follow NetApp's direction on that. When evaluating Portworx, one should make sure their company has already chosen Pure Storage. Still, if they are evaluating the solution on Ondat or Dell or other platforms, they should get a roadmap statement from Pure Storage, that they will continue to develop storage hardware diagnostics. I rate Portworx a nine out of ten.

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 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 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."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."
"It is incredibly scalable and stable."
"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."
"Its great servicing high availability. That is what it is used for."
"The high performance of the solution is its most valuable aspect. If you compare it to other storage solutions, it's much better."
"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."
"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."
"The profile share is a valuable feature."
"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."
"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."
"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."
"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."
 

Cons

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"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."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"I have not seen ROI."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"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."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"There can be improvements in fault tolerance and making erasure coding faster."
"Maybe it needs integration with HA."
"This is probably the biggest challenge, getting everything upgraded, because it just takes time. We wish it was a faster solution to be able to do everything at once, but you have do each node individually. The more nodes, the longer it takes."
"It would be helpful if there was a graphical user interface that could walk you through the deployment process. The instructions surrounding setup aren't the best. They need to be more step-by-step."
"The pricing and licensing model for this solution are complex and it is sometimes difficult to explain it to customers."
"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."
"The biggest problem is that it is not able to provide block storage."
"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."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"The integration has room for improvement."
"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
"The documentation could be better."
"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be cheaper."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The price is a little high."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"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."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"The licensing model is complex and depends on factors such as the number of processing cores and the amount of storage."
"The solution is costly but reliable."
"The licensing is based on the number of terabytes."
"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."
"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."
"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."
"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
 

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...
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 do you like most about Portworx Enterprise?
A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, provid...
What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?
It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchas...
What advice do you have for others considering Portworx Enterprise?
I would recommend ensuring that you perform regular backups, specifically the TX backup, which is essential for Portw...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Information Not Available
NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT
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