IBM Spectrum Scale vs QoreStor comparison

IBM and Quest Software are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Quest Software is ranked #23 with an average rating of 7.0. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Quest Software’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

IBM Spectrum Scale and QoreStor offer storage management solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale is ideal for large-scale storage systems, while QoreStor is preferred for its de-duplication and cost-efficiency.

Features:IBM Spectrum Scale provides high performance, scalability, and data management across multiple locations. QoreStor specializes in data deduplication, cloud integration, and enhanced backup and recovery, focusing on storage optimization.

Room for Improvement:IBM Spectrum Scale can improve its complexity during deployment, maintain usability for smaller environments, and enhance integration with non-IBM platforms. QoreStor could benefit from integrating advanced security features, improving cloud-tiering options, and refining its user interface for more seamless operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:IBM Spectrum Scale presents a complex deployment process but offers extensive documentation and professional support. QoreStor allows straightforward deployment, ease of integration, and focuses on personalized customer service, making it more attractive for user-friendly experiences.

Pricing and ROI:IBM Spectrum Scale requires a significant initial investment, justified by long-term ROI in large environments. QoreStor offers budget-friendly setup costs and emphasizes lower ongoing expenses with competitive ROI through powerful data efficiency and reduced storage expenses.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. QoreStor

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 QoreStor is 0.1%. 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%
QoreStor	0.1%
Other	91.9%

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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Jeff Manuszak

CTO at EDSI

Cost-efficient, highly scalable, and installable on different types of hardware

They could improve on support a little bit. We have not had to engage their support much, but when we do have issues, it can take longer to get things resolved. We are pretty lenient as we do a lot of IT support ourselves. We are not very hard on support organizations, but when a customer has a support issue, it would be easier if the support processes were a little bit more automated. It would be beneficial to have an easier way to upload diagnostic dump files. They can make it easy for the customer to collect the diagnostic data. There can be some kind of monitoring solutions to alert users to issues with the appliance or software, making it easy for customers to monitor their systems in the field. This is especially critical because it stores customers' backups, and a failure can have significant business impacts. If a customer does not have the backups and has a disaster, they can be out of business, so monitoring is key.

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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

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

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

"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."

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

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"We are using it for monitoring all of our storage."

"It is a scalable solution."

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

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

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

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"Deduplication is the most valuable feature. It saves us a lot of space. When we back up 100 terabytes of data, after dedupe, it only uses maybe five to six terabytes for the disk space in QoreStor."

"I would rate QoreStor a ten out of ten for what it offers for the price."

"The extreme compression of data is a big thing for us. We were looking for an online backup solution, and QoreStor is very good in terms of data compression. It helps us minimize the required storage in the Blob Storage environment."

"This software solution can be installed on many different types of hardware, which makes it very flexible. We can run it on virtual machines or virtual servers, providing convenience for solutions of varying sizes, from small to large."

"QoreStor has helped us to reduce our backup storage requirements on-premises. We've been using the same devices for quite a while, and so it lets us keep using them as opposed to having to rip out all that hardware and create a new on-prem solution. The advantage here is even if we had to retire the hardware tomorrow, the QoreStor part doesn't change. We just have to have additional hardware and put the solution back on whatever hardware we pick and it'll do the same thing."

"The dedupe and compression are pretty extreme. On disk, we're getting dedupe rates of up to 65 percent of data and compression of 34 percent. When you go to the cloud, it's more like 76 percent for dedupe and almost 50 percent for compression."

"We need revisions and safe backup so that it could be held up in court, but deduplication and compression are the main features why we have Quest QoreStor. That's where it really shines. I use ZFS and XFS at home, and Quest QoreStor is even better."

"Quest QoreStor definitely saved us money."

More QoreStor pros

Cons

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"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."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"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."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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

"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial. After everything is set up and configured, there should be a way to export the configuration. In case something happens to the QoreStor server, and we need to reinstall and configure everything, being able to import the configuration would be helpful. This feature does not currently exist."

"The importance of support is significant to me. I was working for a service provider, and all of our customers had a Quest or warning. Sometimes the support really underperforms."

"The management interface is in need of improvement. The graphical user interface (GUI) for the web management tools appears clunky, and not super intuitive."

"Support is one point of improvement for Quest QoreStor. Support is sometimes not adequate."

"Overall, I am happy with this solution, but a way to export configuration settings would be beneficial."

"In terms of improvement, we would like to have an Air Gap feature to prevent a virus from attaching to something. So that when we don't do a backup, we want the QoreStor to stay offline. It would be a nice feature to have."

"The ransomware protection of QoreStor could use improvement."

"The installation could use improvement. The initial installation was a little touchy and it's not really user-installable. You have to have a connection to support to install."

More QoreStor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

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

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

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

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."

"The pricing is good. It is competitive for a managed services provider. I like the ability to pay by the terabyte, allowing for an incremental cost that we and our customers can afford, so the solution grows with the customer."

"The cost is per terabyte, and overall, the cost was reasonable when compared to some competitors."

"Its pricing model is very attractive. You have one price, and you get everything from QoreStor."

"Quest QoreStor's pricing is affordable. We evaluated Veeam, a well-known company for backup solutions, but found their pricing to be quite high. Veeam's price was almost double. For us, Quest QoreStor is very affordable."

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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

Performing Arts

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

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	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

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...

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 else besides data replication does QoreStor offer?

Quest QoreStor can be used for multiple things besides data replication. For example, it can be trusted to make a bac...

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How does Quest QoreStore protect your data?

One of our favorite features of Quest QoreStore for data protection isn't the backup, actually, though we're using it...

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How does Quest QoreStore solve repetitive data replicas?

When I first found out about data replication and the many benefits it had, I couldn't help but wonder - what about t...

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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

No data available

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

QoreStor

September 2025

Download QoreStor product report

Also Known As

No data available

QoreStor

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

QoreStor optimizes storage costs through advanced deduplication and compression, seamlessly integrating with backup infrastructures and supporting diverse hardware. It enhances data security with replication and offers flexible deployment with minimal maintenance.

QoreStor offers significant benefits in deduplication, which leads to space savings and reduced storage expenses. This system integrates effortlessly with backup platforms like NetVault and Veeam, functioning as a reliable backup target for both on-premises and cloud environments. The ease of integration is complemented by its replication capabilities, which add a layer of data security by enabling geographically dispersed backups. Its cloud tiering functionality extends storage capabilities, ensuring cost-effectiveness compared to other solutions. While enhancements are needed in areas like Cloud Tier support, Air Gap features, and GUI intuitiveness, the continued developments aim to further optimize storage and backup solutions.

What are QoreStor's key features?

Deduplication and Compression: Achieves high deduplication rates and space savings.
Seamless Integration: Works well with diverse backup infrastructures.
Replication: Facilitates data security through multi-location backups.
Cloud Tiering: Extends storage capabilities efficiently.
Minimal Maintenance: Requires low maintenance efforts.

What benefits should be considered in user reviews?

Cost-Effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing and optimized storage.
Storage Optimization: Reduces storage needs with advanced data handling.
Flexibility: Supports diverse hardware and deployment options.
Data Security: Enhances protection with robust replication features.

QoreStor is widely implemented in industries for backup and restore operations, providing data deduplication and compression as key functionalities. Its integration as a backup target across platforms like NetVault and Veeam makes it ideal for enterprises that require efficient data management and storage cost control. Many organizations utilize its features to optimize cloud storage seamlessly while focusing on internal data handling or acting as service resellers.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

American Airlines, at&t, Bank of America. Barclays, ebay, Ford

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. QoreStor

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. QoreStor

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. QoreStor and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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