IBM Spectrum Scale vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 3.7%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
IBM Spectrum Scale	3.7%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance	2.2%
Other	90.8%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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Sachin Prakash

Assistant Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Has optimized performance using cluster deployment and distributed file access but needs better visibility into network dependencies

IBM Spectrum Scale being software-based storage allows users to utilize any hardware supported or defined by IBM without dependency on physical hardware provided by IBM. This is one of the features I appreciate most because if you have existing infrastructure at your site but don't want to reinvest in hardware, you can purchase IBM Spectrum Scale software and deploy it as software-defined storage. Users can comfortably access data from their host to the storage host without relying on new network setup when deploying GPFS as it uses the existing corporate network. However, high-speed ethernet network is required. By adding switches to the same network where client hosts reside and deploying GPFS storage array, any file system created on the storage cluster can grant export permissions determining which hosts can access specific file systems. These hosts can directly mount them as remote file systems. The process is simpler compared to defining IQN for providing access to client hosts. Creating a cluster for clients with virtual machines or physical Linux/Windows machines requires installing GPFS services on client nodes, which creates a client cluster. Access is defined on the storage cluster for the particular client cluster, allowing all hosts in that client cluster to mount file systems with granted permissions.

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Russ Le Puill

IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School

Proactive support with improved speed and resilience

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

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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 product is scalable and easy to expand."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

"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 feature of this solution is performance."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The profile share is a valuable feature."

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

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

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

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"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."

"It is a scalable solution."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"We have found the live migration to be the most valuable feature. It allows us to seamlessly maintain our servers, as well as have peace of mind if something goes wrong."

"With StarWind's Proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health."

"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."

"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."

"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."

"The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."

"Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own."

"The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

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

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

"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."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"I would like to see better integration."

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

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"Initially, stability was a concern as we encountered numerous issues and errors."

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

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

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

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."

"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."

"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."

"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."

"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."

"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."

"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."

"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be cheaper."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"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."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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."

"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."

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."

"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."

"Its cost was reasonable."

"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."

"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."

"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."

"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."

"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."

"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	8

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale functions as software-based storage, allowing users to utilize any hardware supported or defined b...

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Scale?

The system relies heavily on ethernet networking, and when issues occur, we must consult with the network team to inv...

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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.

What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?

We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 10% of the time

Portworx Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 10% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

IBM Spectrum Scale

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report

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

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA.

StarWind

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Sears Home and Franchise Business

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance