IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Scality RING comparison

IBM and Scality are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7, while Scality is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to Scality’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Scality users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Scality RING and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the data storage solutions category. IBM Spectrum Virtualize seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and reliability, despite Scality RING's flexibility and scalability.

Features: Scality RING offers object storage capabilities, robust scalability, and flexibility, ideal for expanding data needs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides virtualization features, data management capabilities, and enhanced performance optimization. It includes a single management interface, thin provisioning, and robust data migration tools, giving it a feature advantage over Scality RING.

Room for Improvement: Scality RING could enhance its data management and integrate more advanced virtualization features. It may improve customer support and expand its compatibility with diverse storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Virtualize can work on streamlining the user interface, further reducing its initial setup complexity, and improving cost-effectiveness for smaller enterprises to increase accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Scality RING's deployment model attracts those seeking scalable solutions with easy integration into existing systems. However, IBM Spectrum Virtualize is praised for a straightforward deployment process and superior technical support, appealing to organizations prioritizing vendor assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Scality RING is attractive for its accessible pricing and high ROI potential due to lower initial setup costs. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, while more costly upfront, compensates with a higher value proposition through advanced features and performance benefits, often delivering a superior long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING

May 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 July 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 Virtualize is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Scality RING is 4.1%, up from 4.0% 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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Sebastien Foucou

Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management

I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.

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

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

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

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

"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 initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"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."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."

"The ease of management, the simplicity of the CLI, the speed of that interface, and the well-architected design of the product in general are valuable features."

"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 SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."

"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"The best functionality of Scality RING is its ease of administration; it is out of the box and was set up for us in collaboration with Scality and HP."

"The most valuable feature of Scality RING8 is its performance and good interface."

"Scality RING has influenced our approach to scaling in different dimensions by providing a cost-effective solution for the tremendous amount of data we generate every day for each customer. It allows us to store, sort, and analyze data effectively while meeting our performance thresholds."

"Scality RING has had a positive impact on our business in that we can store backups more securely than before even though this has nothing directly to do with Scality RING but also with an S3."

"I would give customer service and technical support a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10 based solely on my own experience."

"Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency."

"Scality RING is more stable and performs better than before; we don't experience issues from mechanical failures, only from human intervention."

"The best features of Scality RING are its object storage solution, scalability, and durability."

More Scality RING pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

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

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

"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."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"The disk reliability is not that good."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Scality RING is not easy to learn for someone new. It is a little bit difficult. There are a lot of components to it, and you also need to understand them to work with it effectively."

"What we are currently missing and will be demanding in the new tender is an additional external backup of all data, ideally on a simple system, to safeguard against any severe local incidents so that we still have the data protected elsewhere."

"Scality RING8 could improve by having more features. We have to use two automation tools to meet our needs. We would prefer to use only one."

"There are too many changes because it's software-defined storage and host-based. They should reduce the number of patches and enhance product reliability and stability. When releasing new versions, they should perform thorough quality checks instead of flooding us with patches."

"When we used this solution in 2015, it was not scalable at all. I don't know if they have improved on that, but at the time, scalability was just horrible."

"I evaluate the simplicity of managing large volumes of data via Scality RING's user interface as limited because the user interface is mainly used for administration or monitoring purposes."

"I typically have at least three different views with three user interfaces open when I work on something. I find it quite complicated at times."

"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product. Apart from the UI improvements, I would like to see more features implemented with S3 since not all features are implemented in Scality RING, particularly features such as the S3 select in AWS and the possibility to manage all RINGs with one portal."

More Scality RING cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The product is very expensive."

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

"The price is a little high."

"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."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"The cost of Scality RING8 could be less expensive. It is difficult for smaller businesses to afford it."

"The initial cost (CAPEX) to set up the infrastructure is expensive due to the specific hardware required."

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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

15%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

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 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...

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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 do you like most about Scality RING8?

Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Scality RING8?

There are too many changes because it's software-defined storage and host-based. They should reduce the number of pat...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?

Our use cases for Scality RING include data analytics and AI. Our business is in the insurance industry, and we're us...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp StorageGRID vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

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VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 30% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 28% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 22% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 20% of the time

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Cloudian HyperStore vs Scality RING

Compared 15% of the time

MinIO vs Scality RING

Compared 15% of the time

Dell ECS vs Scality RING

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Scality RING

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Scality RING

Compared 3% of the time

More Scality RING Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

Scality RING

June 2025

Download Scality RING product report

Also Known As

No data available

Scality RING, RING8

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

Scality RING is the scalable and resilient object storage solution designed for modern workloads, providing seamless data protection against evolving cyber threats.

Scality RING leverages S3 object storage to meet unpredictable demands with a patented MultiScale Architecture that offers limitless scalability across capacity, performance, and more. It delivers end-to-end cyber resilience with CORE5 for ransomware protection, while its cloud-style economics and intuitive management empower enterprises to accelerate AI initiatives and optimize cloud deployments. Its flexibility is ideal for service providers managing extensive data needs.

What are the key features of Scality RING?

S3 and CDMI Support: Ensures compatibility for application needs.
Erasure Coding: Provides cost-efficient, durable storage.
Unified Tiered Infrastructure: Aids billing per IOPS.
Lifecycle Management: Optimizes storage utilization.
Unlimited Scalability: Ideal for large enterprise demands.
Data/Metadata Ring Deployment: Ensures robust performance and tailored SLAs.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Economic Value: Offers cost-effective storage solutions.
Effective Support: Enhances collaboration through responsive assistance.
Improved Flexibility: Adaptable deployment models for complex needs.

Scality RING is extensively implemented in backup solutions across industries, supporting platforms like Veeam and CommVault. It aids in storage expansion and management of large data volumes alongside multi-site architectures. While not leading in AI spaces due to performance constraints, there's potential with faster disk support. It's also used in archives, binary lakes, multimedia services, and AI data lakes.

Scality

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING

May 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING

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