IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

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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 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
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.4%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance	2.4%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	2.2%
Other	92.0%

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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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

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

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

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

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

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"With proactive support, StarWind deploys and configures the solution for you."

"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."

"We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network."

"It did not hurt that the price for the hardware and three years of support cost less than the disparate hardware the cluster used to run on."

"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."

"The presence of built-in storage saved the company from having to purchase a separate storage array and related network equipment."

"UI Options are simple and easy to find."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros

Cons

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

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

"I have not seen ROI."

"The speed could be improved."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

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

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."

"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."

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

"The disk reliability is not that good."

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

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."

"The only issues are when Hyper V itself has limitations and I'd love to see support or enhancement in the area of direct-attached GPU cards."

"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."

"One area for improvement of the solution is that I had to get Windows, which I really didn't want because of the extra maintenance or overhead, as well as viruses, etc. It's going to take time for them to get their Linux to that point. They already have Linux but it's not as mature and they don't really support it on HCAs. They have it for individuals who want to use it on their servers, but not on HCAs."

"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."

"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."

"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."

"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"The product is very expensive."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"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."

"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."

"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."

"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."

"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."

"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."

"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."

"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

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

18%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Hospitality 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	50
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	8

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...

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...

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...

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?

There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made...

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...

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 13% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 9% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 10% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 9% of the time

Azure Local vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 8% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Compared 7% of the time

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance

Download StarWind HyperConverged Appliance product report

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance 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

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance