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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 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 (14th), 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 (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashBlade3.3%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance2.4%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize2.3%
Other92.0%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"It works quite well for us, and I would recommend it."
"The product is fantastic."
"This solution has improved how our organization functions in the way that it has essentially made us not have to think about storage."
"The fact that the solution is extremely stable and it works really great each dollar spent on this solution is worth it."
"As a Pure Storage platform, the cost-benefit is hugely based on the deduplication and capacity."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."
"So when I say our storage services to our client were provided continuously - non-stop - for 12 months, it means that all customer servers had 100% uninterrupted, online SAN access to their data 24x7x365 (minus the power down)."
"The IBM Spectrum Virtualize has gone from strength to strength but at the same time setting the bar for what's possible in the storage virtualization market."
"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."
"This product is very good in terms of the stability and scalability."
"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."
"It enabled us to build an infrastructure and replace storage with no disruption to our hosts whatsoever."
"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."
"My advice to those wanted to implement this solution would be it is very useful and will give you all the details you need; how to set up the data movers, make sure they are balanced so that the load is distributed evenly, how to set it up and get all the documents in place once you log in."
"From a small-shop perspective, this is probably the best experience I've ever had in terms of the backing hardware for the services we provide."
"Compared to before, our downtimes have decreased substantially and maintenance windows have almost been eliminated."
"The stability of the system has been the most valuable part; I never have to do anything, it just runs and runs and runs."
"Knowing that StarWind will drop and do what’s needed to help a customer in dire straights has won us over as a faithful customer for life."
"StarWind Virtual SAN has been a great product for us; the setup was easy to deploy, management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions, and redundancy is achieved at a fraction of the cost when compared to other solutions."
"UI Options are simple and easy to find."
"From a product point of view, it's been ideal."
"We now host all of our VMWare ESXi environments on the StarWind boxes and we wouldn't look back."
 

Cons

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."
"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"There are things that occur when you get to this size and capacity. We're very large, i.e., petabytes. When you get to that sheer volume of the numbers of things, it is too big for people to keep track of."
"There are a few little GUI issues and stuff like that, but nothing major."
"The feature that's kind of missing is getting us up to the point where we can help the application owners see where their data is at, understand it, and potentially help us breakout."
"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."
"Maybe sometimes we don't get responses back as fast as we would like, but they have always been very professional and they follow through."
"We found a gap for smaller clients. Right now, the only offering is a huge, rack-sized storage device, and no more."
"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."
"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."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"The monitoring and reporting console can be improved in the sense that it can have more information on it."
"The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"Overall, we are happy with the level of service, in the past due to time zone differences, getting to phone support later in the afternoon sometimes meant not getting a hold of second-level technical support on the same day, however, this has been improved in the past year."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID, there was an error there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price could be cheaper."
"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
"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 price is a little high."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"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 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."
"I think it is a good value for the price."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
"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."
"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."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"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."
"This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
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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
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Educational Organization
12%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashBlade
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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: April 2026.
890,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.