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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

IBM and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.7, while StarWind is ranked #12 with an average rating of 10.0. IBM holds a 2.2% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of StarWind users who would recommend it.
Sponsored
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Read 39 Pure Storage FlashBlade reviews
  • 5,529 Views
  • 829 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Read 39 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews
  • 1,101 Views
  • 694 Comparison Views
91% willing to recommend
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Read 66 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reviews
  • 2,052 Views
  • 985 Comparison Views
98% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the hyperconverged and storage virtualization solutions category. StarWind seems to have the upper hand in customer support and cost-effectiveness, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize stands out in storage and data migration capabilities.

Features: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is notable for its flexibility, high availability, and proactive support. Users appreciate its ease of deployment and ability to consolidate storage and compute resources. The appliance includes turnkey solutions for seamless integration into existing infrastructure. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers unparalleled storage virtualization capabilities, with robust data migration and disaster recovery features. It provides a powerful abstraction layer for managing diverse back-end storage options.

Room for Improvement: StarWind users seek an advanced GUI, improved monitoring tools, and better third-party software integration. Enhanced documentation and improvements in communication during support requests are also noted. For IBM Spectrum Virtualize, suggested improvements include more advanced GUI features, detailed reporting, and enhanced cognitive IT capabilities. Users desire data deduplication functionality and comprehensive multi-site support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind is recognized for straightforward installation and minimal setup time, supported by proactive monitoring and a responsive support team. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers seamless deployment but lacks StarWind's hands-on customer interaction, as evidenced by user experiences.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers an affordable solution with flexible financing options, making high availability accessible for small and medium enterprises. Users report significant ROI and competitive pricing compared to alternatives like Nutanix. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is valued for offering strong enterprise features at competitive prices but does not match StarWind’s upfront cost benefits. Its bundled licensing offers flexibility, beneficial for large-scale deployments, resulting in a solid ROI.

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To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: January 2026).
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
January 2026
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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
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), File and Object Storage (8th)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
12th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
HCI (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.4%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade3.4%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance2.4%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize2.2%
Other92.0%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Read full review
AS
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.
Read full review
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
Russ Le Puill
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"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."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros
"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."
"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."
"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."
"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."
"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"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."
More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"It improved all services running on the new cluster and took up less space and less energy."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
"The software is great. It's very easy to understand. I've not delved into any of the command-line stuff, but there's no real need to script it. Since it went in, pretty much the only thing that I have needed to do is increase device image sizes and that process is very straightforward."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"The pricing and discounts given by Starwind on the hardware were unmatched."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros
 

Cons

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."
"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."
"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."
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."
"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."
"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."
"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."
"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"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."
More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons
"I had some initial difficulties understanding the solution which could have been solved via additional documentation aimed at newcomers."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."
"Possible new features could be CSV-level snapshot capability, Veeam integration, and maybe a more straightforward setup. Granted, you don't have to worry about setups with the HCA, but if you want to implement StarWind vSAN in a lab to test it is a tedious setup process."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."
"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"The product is very expensive."
"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
"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."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"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."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"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 HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Performing Arts
15%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
16%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise8
 

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?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
See all answers
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...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
See all answers
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtua...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 18% of the time
MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 9% of the time
Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 8% of the time
VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 8% of the time
Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
Dell ObjectScale vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 6% of the time
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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 14% of the time
IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 14% of the time
Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 9% of the time
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 9% of the time
IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 9% of the time
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StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 8% of the time
Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 7% of the time
Azure Local vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Azure Local vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 7% of the time
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 7% of the time
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 7% of the time
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Pure Storage FlashBlade
January 2026
Pure Storage FlashBlade reportDownload Pure Storage FlashBlade product report
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
February 2026
IBM Spectrum Virtualize reportDownload IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report
Buyer's Guide
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
January 2026
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reportDownload StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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

For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA. 

StarWind
 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
January 2026
Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
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