IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Scality RING comparison

IBM and Scality are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.7, while Scality is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 2.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to Scality’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Scality users who would recommend it.

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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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING

December 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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Scality RING is 4.0%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Scality RING	4.0%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	2.1%
Other	90.6%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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AhmedSorour

IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM

Unified storage solution supports cross-vendor replication and diverse industries

One of the most valuable features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is its virtualization capability. It allows for the creation of stretched clusters, which are crucial for running Linux-based workloads that need mirroring for boot disks. The solution also provides asynchronous and synchronous replication, supporting operations across different data centers. Its deployment options across public, private, and hybrid clouds add to its versatility.

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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

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

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

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

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"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

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

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

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

"IBM offers excellent customer service."

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

"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 most valuable feature is its reliability."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"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."

"Scality RING's capacity and performance scaling across sites and clouds have positively affected our operational efficiency."

"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."

"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."

"Scality RING is very robust."

"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."

More Scality RING pros

Cons

"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 have not seen ROI."

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

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

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

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

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

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

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

"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

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

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Encryption today is not up to date. Encryption and data security need improvement. We don't have a solution for customers who need confidentiality."

"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."

"When considering the initial setup of Scality RING in 2015, it was, at first, very complicated. Installation and documentation were still being finalized."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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

"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."

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

"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."

"The price is a little high."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The product is very expensive."

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

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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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.

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What needs improvement with Scality RING8?

There are areas that may have room for improvement, and the Scality team is aware of it. You can obtain information d...

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What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?

Scality RING serves multiple use cases for storage, for GenAI and analytics, unstructured and structured data, backup...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Pure FlashArray X NVMe vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 12% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 11% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Scality RING

Compared 12% of the time

MinIO vs Scality RING

Compared 12% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Scality RING

Compared 11% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Scality RING

Compared 10% of the time

Scality ARTESCA vs Scality RING

Compared 5% of the time

More Scality RING Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Scality RING

December 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

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Scality RING

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