IBM Spectrum Scale vs VMware Software Defined Storage comparison

IBM and VMware are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while VMware is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 4.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to VMware’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM Spectrum Scale and VMware Software Defined Storage are competing products in data storage solutions. VMware Software Defined Storage appears to have an edge due to its comprehensive features and perceived worth, despite IBM Spectrum Scale's advantages in pricing and support.

Features: IBM Spectrum Scale features scalability with scalable file systems, management automation, and its ability to handle heavy loads efficiently. VMware Software Defined Storage offers integration, flexibility, and virtualization, with additional benefits of redundancy and data agility.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Scale can improve its initial configuration process, ease of use, and expand its feature set for broader appeal. VMware Software Defined Storage could enhance its cost efficiency, reduce setup complexity, and streamline the user interface to support diverse IT environments more effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Software Defined Storage provides streamlined deployment with strong virtualization support and flexible configurations, making it more straightforward than IBM Spectrum Scale, which requires more initial setup but offers reliable performance once configured. VMware's customer service is noted for being adaptive, while IBM offers stability after setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Scale is competitively priced, promising a solid return on investment through performance reliability. VMware Software Defined Storage may involve higher setup costs but justifies these with significant ROI through features and system efficiency, balancing IBM's cost advantage.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

July 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 September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Scale is 4.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Software Defined Storage is 1.2%, up from 0.9% 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	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Scale	4.2%
VMware Software Defined Storage	1.2%
Other	90.4%

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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MohammadJundiah

Solutions Architect at Logicom Sales Inc

Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

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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

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

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

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

"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."

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

"It's very easy-to-use."

"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."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"I rate this product ten out of ten."

"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."

"GPFS monitoring is the best feature."

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

"I would rate my overall experience with IBM Spectrum Scale as nine out of ten."

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

"It is a scalable solution."

More IBM Spectrum Scale pros

"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."

"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without additional hardware."

"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."

"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."

"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."

"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."

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."

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

"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."

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

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"Maybe it needs integration with HA."

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

"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."

"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."

"Integration with other vendors is not available."

More IBM Spectrum Scale cons

"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."

"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"

"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."

"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."

"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."

"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."

"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"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 customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"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 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."

"The solution is very expensive."

"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."

"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."

"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."

"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

No data available

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	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?

The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?

There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?

I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 23% 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

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Scale

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Scale Competitors

DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 34% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Software Defined Storage

Compared 26% of the time

More VMware Software Defined Storage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Scale product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Software Defined Storage

August 2025

Download VMware Software Defined Storage product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware SDS

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

VMware software-defined storage is a simple, yet intelligent, storage data center architecture that aligns with business and application demands—eliminating static, purpose-built and inefficient hardware with dynamic, agile and automated solutions.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Helse Nord, Sky

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Scale vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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