IBM Spectrum Scale vs StorPool comparison

IBM and StorPool are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while StorPool is ranked #20. IBM holds a 4.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to StorPool’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StorPool users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StorPool and IBM Spectrum Scale are competing in the software-defined storage domain. StorPool seems to have an edge with competitive pricing and strong customer support, making it a preferred choice for budget-conscious companies. However, IBM Spectrum Scale is favored for its extensive feature set, offering more robust scalability and advanced functionality for enterprises.

Features: StorPool focuses on streamlined operations, high performance, and efficiency in managing block storage systems. Its edge lies in simplicity and effectiveness. IBM Spectrum Scale is known for its scalability, global file system capabilities, and integrated multi-cloud management, making it suitable for complex, large-scale deployments.

Room for Improvement: StorPool could enhance its multi-cloud management capabilities and scalability for larger enterprise needs. Another area is improving integration options for diverse environments. IBM Spectrum Scale could work on simplifying its deployment process to reduce the learning curve. Enhancements in user interface and direct customer support accessibility could make it more attractive to a broader range of users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StorPool is known for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, leading to a faster time-to-value. IBM Spectrum Scale, while offering extensive documentation and robust support, presents a steeper learning curve due to its complex architecture. StorPool is favored for its ease and direct support, whereas IBM Spectrum Scale suits enterprises with specialized support needs.

Pricing and ROI: StorPool offers lower setup costs and focuses on operational efficiency, providing attractive ROI for organizations aiming to maximize budget utility. IBM Spectrum Scale requires a higher initial investment but delivers substantial ROI through enhanced scalability and functionality, making it beneficial for large-scale operations.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StorPool

August 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 August 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.5%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StorPool is 2.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

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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reviewer1721697

Managing Director at CloudScale365, Inc.

Great service and support with a constant addition of new features

As of now, the product has been working really well for us. They keep updating and launching new features. Their support has been great and have always been available. I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them. This is a great product.

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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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

"Allows us to share files across multiple environments."

"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 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."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"The two 10GE networks provide redundancy and increased performance as they serve as two separate networks doubling the throughput and doing multipathing and load balancing. We now have a high performance shared storage system which enables us to run on private cloud. Our previous system used bare-metal hardware, which provided high performance but inflexible management. Now we have best of both worlds, SSD-class performance with flexibility of a private cloud system."

"With StorPool we were able to build live failover on top of our LXC infrastructure. This allows us both to live-migrate containers between compute nodes without any downtime and, in case of an entire node suffering any type of failure, we can bring all containers back online within a minute on a spare compute node."

"Creating snapshots within seconds for big disks has helped our different migration projects since it allows us to perform them in a short period of time."

"Performance, redundancy, scalability and cost-effectiveness. StorPool delivers superbly in all of these areas."

"The team behind it was very engaged and had the skills and ability to support a service provider."

"The speed of the storage solution also allows us to provide service to applications that are very I/O intensive."

Cons

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

"Its configuration should be easier."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"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."

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

"I would like to see better integration."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"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 solution's pricing could be better."

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

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

"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."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"At times we need to check the disks and do some minor operations. A friendlier user interface would be useful in such cases."

"he only place we feel they could improve is the time it takes to bring new features to production."

"Monitoring and statistics UI is a bit clumsy."

"Live and historical performance statistics would be useful, though my understanding is that this is on the way in a future release."

"It would be good if, with next releases, StorPool provide a better GUI for monitoring and statistics. This would make our experience even better and complete."

"I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The price could be cheaper."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"The product is very expensive."

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

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

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 solution is costly but reliable."

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

"It provides us with a significant reduction in TCO due to their pay-as-you-grow licensing model, which means we don’t have to pay upfront for hardware and licensing for capacity thStorPoolat we don’t yet need to use."

"StorPool's pricing and licensing model is very transparent. As always, one has to due his due diligence when choosing a product like distributed storage solutions."

"StorPool software is cost-effective and gives us a pricing advantage over our competitors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

Performing Arts

19%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

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...

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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...

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.

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 22% of the time

DDN IME vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 12% of the time

Portworx Enterprise 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 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StorPool

Compared 55% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs StorPool

Compared 21% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs StorPool

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StorPool

Compared 8% of the time

More StorPool Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

August 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

StorPool

July 2025

Download StorPool product 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

StorPool is intelligent storage software that runs on standard servers and builds scalable, high-performance storage system out of these servers (software-defined storage). It focuses on the block-level storage and excels at it. It is incredibly flexible and can be deployed in both converged setups (on compute nodes, alongside VMs and applications) or on separate storage nodes.

StorPool has advanced fully-distributed architecture and is arguably the fastest and most efficient block-storage software on the market today. It is the best storage system when building a cloud.

StorPool

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

CloudSigma, Kualo, Togglebox, Neterra, Serveo, Superhosting.bg, GroupOne, DRFortress, Metanet, Dia, Server Storage Solutions

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StorPool

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. StorPool

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

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