IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) comparison

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

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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 June 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 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 5.3%, up from 2.4% 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Vipin Kumar Sha

Cloud Engineer at CtrlS Datacenters Ltd

Pricing challenges overshadow efficient data handling and fast deployment

In terms of improvement areas for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), pricing is a significant issue, and another aspect is that the export of Nutanix backups does not support CD-ROMs, which is a disadvantage. Currently, it only supports QZ bus types for backups, which limits compatibility. When comparing Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) with other solutions in the market, it falls short because it only supports iSCSI backups, while competitors also support QZ, iSCSI, fiber channel, and NVMe storage. The solution requires no maintenance for patching since it is designed effectively, but Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) does not support fiber channel connectivity or external attached storage through NAS, limiting its compatibility. Additionally, technical support response time and efficiency are lacking in comparison to competitors.

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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

"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."

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

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

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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance. You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize."

"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."

"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."

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

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

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

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"Nutanix Unified Storage is a stable solution that provides good storage and efficiency."

"Management-wise, it has made work a lot easier. It is all in one place physically. It is much better now."

"The reliability and stability of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) are very good, and after almost four or five years of usage, we haven't encountered significant issues."

"The most valuable feature is the unified dashboard, as it allows us to easily observe everything from a single location."

"I like Nutanix Prism Central. The primary benefit is that we can manage everything from the same page."

"I rate Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) a ten out of ten."

"Unified Storage's centralized management features enable us to accomplish whatever we want in terms of operations and migrations."

"I would recommend Nutanix Unified Storage. It's easy to use, and they are the best when it comes to storage services."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pros

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 deduplication."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"I have not seen ROI."

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

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"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."

"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."

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

"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."

"Adding features for data deduplication is one area of improvement."

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"We have had to deal with some infrastructure and general cluster issues but these issues don't impact storage."

"The licensing terms are restrictive, as they go by terabyte cost."

"Pain points are just in the management and understanding of how the functions work. As far as updating and day-to-day operations, if my staff is properly trained and we have those proper training sessions, we don't have that many issues. There can be more educational resources from their side."

"Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) can be improved involve the limitations I've seen in Files Analytics, specifically to the number of FSVMs today that File Analytics can analyze."

"A centralized file share permissions console might be useful for Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS). Getting in and directly managing permissions instead of using the snap-in from Windows itself might be something to consider, but that's a small thing."

"There are some techniques that need to be improved because sometimes, during processes, it gets stuck on the console, requiring command line interventions, indicating gaps between the GUI and command lines."

"The pricing can be quite high."

"The interface could be improved."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

"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."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."

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

"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."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"Nutanix Unified Storage isn't expensive."

"The licensing model the tool has is cheaper than an HCI storage solution."

"I am not the one who makes the calls, but it seems to me that it was very competitive. Other solutions would have required dedicated hardware, so an additional CapEx has to be put in place. In that sense, it was definitely a more competitive option to go with Nutanix Files."

"The pricing is fair."

"Its pricing is good to okay. It is not super inexpensive, but it is still competitive. Everything could always be lower."

"Nutanix's pricing is definitely much better when compared to other storage providers. That was one of the main reasons we switched to this platform."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

"Nutanix offers different pricing options, including Ultimate and Ultimate Pro."

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

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...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

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

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-...

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...

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 ...

What do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix solutions are often perceived as premium-priced, but they deliver substantial ROI in terms of performance, re...

What needs improvement with Nutanix Unified Storage?

Nutanix Unified Storage is already a robust and forward-thinking platform. That said, one area for potential improvem...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Scality RING vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

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VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 26% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 20% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 16% of the time

MinIO vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 9% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Compared 4% of the time

More Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)

Download Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) product report

Also Known As

No data available

Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage

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

Nutanix Unified Storage provides high availability and seamless cloud platform integration, ensuring robust redundancy, scalability, and streamlined management. It supports hybrid cloud connectivity, enhancing storage security and performance.

Nutanix Unified Storage is designed for effective data protection across block, file, and object storage, offering features like ransomware detection and a centralized management interface through Prism Central. Users gain improved SLAs and IT cost savings through its efficient performance. Despite its user-friendly interface, there is a demand for enhanced security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication and DLP. While its resilience is notable, users seek improvements in protocol compatibility, storage capabilities, pricing, and support processes.

What are the most important features of Nutanix Unified Storage?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies storage management and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures continuous operation and reliability.
Seamless Cloud Integration: Compatible with platforms like Azure and AWS.
Robust Redundancy: Protects data against hardware failures.
Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to growing data storage needs.
Ransomware Detection: Enhances data protection measures.

What benefits and ROI might users find in reviews?

Improved SLAs: Increased service reliability and performance.
IT Cost Savings: Reduces expenses through efficient resource use.
Enhanced Security: Stronger data protection and reduced risk.
Centralized Management: Easier control and monitoring from one dashboard.

Industries implement Nutanix Unified Storage for tasks such as file storage, database performance improvement, and storage solution consolidation. Companies deploying virtual machines, securing against ransomware, connecting hybrid clouds, and backing up data find it useful. It supports workloads like Citrix VDI, Kubernetes, and research data, assisting many organizations migrating from legacy storage for better cost efficiency and reduced data center footprints.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)