IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Portworx Enterprise comparison

IBM and Pure Storage are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and Portworx Enterprise based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Portworx Enterprise

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

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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Paulo Jose Bosco Otto

Consultant at PBOservicos-Informatica

A solution backed by strong customer support, that is stable and scalable

As a company managed in a Kubernetes environment, being trusted by a Kubernetes vendor, Red Hat creates barriers against using other certified solutions that work. Because IBM is a competitor of Pure Storage, things seem to be getting worse. I don't have plans to use Portworx Enterprise in the future because, at the moment, I am working with Ondat, and I have to follow NetApp's direction on that. When evaluating Portworx, one should make sure their company has already chosen Pure Storage. Still, if they are evaluating the solution on Ondat or Dell or other platforms, they should get a roadmap statement from Pure Storage, that they will continue to develop storage hardware diagnostics. I rate Portworx a nine out of ten.

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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 initial setup is pretty quick."

"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

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

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."

"When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization."

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

"IBM offers excellent customer service."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."

"The solution is user-friendly."

"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."

"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."

"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."

"The best thing about Portworx is the Stork, they have called the VPS (Volume Replacement Strategy) and they also have topology awareness, and these are the three features I like."

Cons

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

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

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

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"Its configuration should be easier."

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

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

"The solution is expensive."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution."

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

"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."

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

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."

"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"The documentation could be better."

"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."

"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."

"The integration has room for improvement."

"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."

"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."

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."

"The price is a little high."

"The product is very expensive."

"The price could be cheaper."

"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."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."

"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."

"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."

"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."

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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

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

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-...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Portworx Enterprise?

A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, provid...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?

The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?

It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchas...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 43% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 6% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Portworx Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

April 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Software Defined Storage

April 2025

Download Portworx Enterprise 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 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

Portworx is the solution for running stateful containers in production, designed with DevOps in mind. With Portworx, users can manage any database or stateful service on any infrastructure using any container scheduler, including Kubernetes, Mesosphere DC/OS, and Docker Swarm. Portworx solves the five most common problems DevOps teams encounter when running stateful services in production: persistence, high availability, data automation, security, and support for multiple data stores and infrastructure.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Portworx Enterprise

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Portworx Enterprise

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Portworx Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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