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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th), HCI (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
AS
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.
reviewer2865906 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Admin at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
High availability server failover has provided reliable on‑premises hardware redundancy
The best features StarWind HyperConverged Appliance offers are easy and simple setup. Support did a lot of the work during the setup process, which made it easy for me. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has positively impacted my organization by giving us high availability. High availability has benefited my team and organization by providing redundancy for hardware failure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best features Everpure FlashArray offers are the speed and dependability, which are the main features that we get from Pure; it is faster than its competition, and we do not have any documented downtime from it ever."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"The first set up we had was really straight forward and simple."
"The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"From the performance that I've seen, the simplicity of how to use it, the responsiveness, and customer experience, it is one of the best companies that I have worked with so far."
"This is a very good product at a very good price, with very good support."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."
"The most valuable feature is its reliability."
"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."
"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."
"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."
"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."
"The versatility is the main benefit, since it virtualizes everything, they use it for so many different things."
"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."
"The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-V for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution, allowing me to expand my virtualization footprint while reducing my overall physical server footprint."
"I really can't recommend them enough."
"The StarWind Hyperconverged Appliance really took us forward in terms of technology, delivery speeds, and management overheads."
"This solution came preconfigured. All we needed to do was plug it in and move our VMs."
"What makes it valuable is the high-availability. In the education field, when you've got students in classrooms, any loss of service disrupts the lessons to a point that the whole lesson is affected. For part of the business which isn't business-critical, to have a little bit of a hiccup wouldn't be such a big thing, but here, it's the high availability of service that is important."
"The biggest thing we were looking for was redundancy, with both the compute and the storage, so that way we could lose a full node and still keep everything up and running, and not have to worry about it... StarWind was able to provide a solution for what we wanted, - to provide for redundancy."
"StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has made the servers redundant, reducing downtime from just having a single standalone server with a much lower hardware cost than having an extra storage device which then reduces the redundancy unless purchasing much more hardware that increases the cost significantly."
"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."
 

Cons

"What I dislike about Everpure FlashArray is that in the replication, if it is in the pod, we cannot directly add devices to the pod without breaking the relationship."
"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."
"On the technical side, the way that the array performs cleanup and garbage collection sometimes pushes it close to 100 percent utilization, causing some stress."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"There are a few little GUI issues and stuff like that, but nothing major."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"We found a gap for smaller clients. Right now, the only offering is a huge, rack-sized storage device, and no more."
"Technical support can be improved in terms of the knowledge base for the first level of support. We have to reach the second level to receive good support."
"One very important feature is the analysis of the logs which should be there in the system."
"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."
"The training program could be improved."
"The only thing I really don't like about Spectrum Virtualize is the application area."
"We did have some issues with shipping the product to one our sites."
"Multi cluster support for their Command Console would be very beneficial."
"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind."
"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."
"Better overall monitoring software. Maybe integration with Windows Admin Center was a good direction to go with on monitoring software."
"The truth is that the operation and support offered are good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."
"It's been a few months since the implementation, and so far, the only improvement I'd like to see is the addition of a web console to manage the clusters instead of a client to install."
"What would have to be done urgently, however, is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"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."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"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."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"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."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"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."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Construction Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 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.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
I think nothing needs improvement in StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
My main use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is server failover. I use StarWind HyperConverged Appliance fo...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.