IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Nexenta comparison

IBM and Nexenta by DDN are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while Nexenta by DDN is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to Nexenta by DDN’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Nexenta by DDN users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Nexenta and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the storage virtualization space. IBM Spectrum Virtualize often has the upper hand due to its extensive features and robust functionality, whereas Nexenta is preferred for cost-effectiveness and flexibility.

Features: Nexenta offers software-defined storage, open-source licensing, and flexibility, ideal for cost savings. IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides advanced data services, cross-platform management, and scalability, suitable for larger complex environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Virtualize ensures a smooth deployment with structured processes and knowledgeable support. Nexenta provides quicker implementation and informal customer support, beneficial for smaller installations.

Pricing and ROI: Nexenta aligns with businesses focused on immediate ROI and tight budgets due to its lower setup cost. IBM Spectrum Virtualize requires higher initial investment, justified by long-term returns through advanced capabilities and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nexenta Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nexenta

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.0%, up from 0.4% 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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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service

Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.

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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 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."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

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

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

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."

"The abstraction flair and the abstraction layer. We had a mixture of different storage arrays, and the wonderful thing about SVC is is that it normalizes all it into a single driver. A single view that all hosts see simultaneously."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."

"We acquire companies (and things), so we end up with odd hardware. We bring it behind the SVC and it allows us to migrate stuff off of it seamlessly. SVC can also cover up a host of defects of the underlying storage."

"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."

Cons

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

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

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

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

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

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The only errors I find sometimes is the solution tells me I cannot operate it because a service has turned off, you can just go back to the VM, go to services, and turn back the services. However, this should improve."

"The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time."

"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

"I would like to see them provide a unified platform that offers block, file, and object-based protocol access."

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."

"There are things that occur when you get to this size and capacity. We're very large, i.e., petabytes. When you get to that sheer volume of the numbers of things, it is too big for people to keep track of."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"The product is very expensive."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."

"I am very happy with the pricing. There is no comparison when it comes to pricing. I have looked at all solutions from EMC, Veritas, Hitachi, Dell, etc. None of them compares to IBM when it comes to pricing. I get great pricing from them."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize 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

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

12%

Real Estate/Law Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-...

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. T...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware ...

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What needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nexenta?

It's for file systems. It's a NAS solution, and it has flexibility. There shouldn't be any outages because if one nod...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

April 2025

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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 Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

IBM

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage - what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS).We uniquely integrate software-only "Open Source" collaboration with commodity hardware-centric "Software-Defined Storage" (SDS) innovation.

Nexenta by DDN

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nexenta

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nexenta

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