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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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
226
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th), 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.
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its data reduction."
"If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"We currently have four Pure Storage FlashArray boxes, and all the storage boxes are on an Evergreen subscription model where we receive the latest hardware and features without any cost in a completely non-intrusive task."
"My advice to others looking into using Everpure FlashArray is that it's a really good product, especially if your main purpose is to get high speed with more redundancy and reliability; then go for it."
"Manageability is its most valuable feature; it is simplified storage, as we don't have to maintain or administer it on a daily basis, which is good, and we can depend on the solution's ability to phone home and leverage the built-in support function of the product."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"Being able to move things around from one array to the other has been the biggest feature for us."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."
"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."
"It helps us to reduce time, reduce complexity, and be more responsive to requests instead of taking an hour to do one volume; now I can do one volume in less than two minutes."
"Stability has been outstanding."
"The versatility is the main benefit, since it virtualizes everything, they use it for so many different things."
"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."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"Simply put, StarWind HCA just works."
"You're getting a really good solution at a really good price, and you're not actually making any compromises."
"Using the StarWind solution, I was able to consolidate all the servers, hardware and firmware, with a three-node StarWind cluster, based on Hyper-V, and as a result I have seen gains in I/O rates on the order of ten times what they were and a better performing environment."
"It seems like a great product; it does what it's supposed to do and it does it very quickly."
"With StarWind's Proactive monitoring we can go about our day helping our customers and not have to worry about our cluster's health."
"We were able to set it up via the documentation and only needed their support a handful of times."
"StarWind HCA is much more reliable than our original failover cluster solution, the virtual SAN allowed us to dramatically decrease our footprint and power consumption in our data center, and it is much simpler to manage."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal."
"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"The cost of the storage needs improvement."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease the total cost of ownership, and I believe our total cost has probably gone up, but that's balanced by our increased amount of data and number of use cases."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"Because we're so big, they have a little bit of trouble tracking all the products and making sure we get connected with the reports, but, in general, they are very good."
"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."
"Anything which improves performance and the ability of our systems would be a nice."
"The only thing I really don't like about Spectrum Virtualize is the application area."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore."
"The training program could be improved."
"The product should have better management capabilities."
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
"We would like more complete documentation to manage on your own without support - even though they are great to work with."
"The control center looks really good and looks like it could be very valuable. However, at the moment, not having email notifications makes it less worth it."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me."
"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."
"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."
"At times there has been a language barrier when communicating issues."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"The price is reasonable."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"I think it is a good value for the 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."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"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 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."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"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."
"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."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"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."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Performing Arts
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Educational Organization
12%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise22
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 needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.
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...
 

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: May 2026.
896,387 professionals have used our research since 2012.