IBM Spectrum Scale vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3, while Red Hat is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Red Hat Ceph Storage and IBM Spectrum Scale are leading products in the realm of large-scale data storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Scale tends to have an edge due to its advanced features and data management capabilities.

Features: Red Hat Ceph Storage features a distributed and self-healing architecture, integration with a variety of storage solutions, and high availability. IBM Spectrum Scale offers high-speed data access, seamless file sharing across platforms, and advanced monitoring capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat Ceph Storage could enhance its analytics capabilities, improve its user interface, and expand support for hybrid cloud environments. IBM Spectrum Scale might benefit from simplifying its deployment process, reducing initial costs, and enhancing its integration with external systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat Ceph Storage provides straightforward deployment and extensive customer support, making it a suitable choice for diverse infrastructures. IBM Spectrum Scale, while more complex in setup, requires detailed planning but supports intricate storage requirements.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat Ceph Storage is cost-effective, appealing to those seeking a low initial investment with satisfactory ROI in scalability and open-source integrations. IBM Spectrum Scale has a higher setup cost but offers superior performance and long-term returns, especially in data-intensive environments where its advanced management features are fully leveraged.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

April 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

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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.

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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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ANDRE VINICIUS HAMERSKI

IT Private Cloud & Infrastructure Leader at Sicredi

Offers cost-effective scalability through open-source storage integration

Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

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

"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."

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

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"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."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to share files across different platforms."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"It is incredibly scalable and stable."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The high availability of the solution is important to us."

"The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good."

"The most valuable feature is the stability of the product."

"The community support is very good."

"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."

"Red Hat Ceph Storage is a reliable solution, it works well."

"We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment."

"It has helped to save money and scale the storage without limits."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pros

Cons

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"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."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

"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."

"They should probably simply the Red Hat implementation portion. This portion was not as straightforward as I would like it to be."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The management features are pretty good, but they still have room for improvement."

"It would be nice to have a notification feature whenever an important action is completed."

"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."

"In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures."

"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."

"I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high."

"The licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective."

"What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"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."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"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."

"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 solution is costly but reliable."

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

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

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."

"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."

"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle."

"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."

"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."

"The price of this product isn't high."

"There is no cost for software."

More Red Hat Ceph Storage pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Scale?

It is a scalable solution.

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...

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How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...

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What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?

The high availability of the solution is important to us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?

I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

MinIO vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 41% of the time

VMware vSAN vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Red Hat Ceph Storage

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat Ceph Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

Download Red Hat Ceph Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

Ceph

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

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an enterprise open source platform that provides unified software-defined storage on standard, economical servers and disks. With block, object, and file storage combined into one platform, Red Hat Ceph Storage efficiently and automatically manages all your data.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Dell, DreamHost

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage

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