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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 2.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 2.2% 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
  • 5,227 Views
  • 732 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Read 39 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews
  • 944 Views
  • 576 Comparison Views
91% willing to recommend
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Read 66 StarWind HyperConverged Appliance reviews
  • 1,799 Views
  • 882 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: December 2025).
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
December 2025
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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)
8th
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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 2.2%, down from 2.3% 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 FlashBlade3.3%
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance2.2%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize2.1%
Other92.4%
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

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."
"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."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros
"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."
"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."
"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."
"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."
"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."
"The biggest benefits of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are its stability, data security, and customer support."
"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."
"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."
More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros
"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."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"This solution came preconfigured. All we needed to do was plug it in and move our VMs."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"The solution has easily deployed instances for multiple fast-paced projects."
"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."
"The StarWind array has greatly improved our workflow internally as it is quite easy to use and provides robust features that allow us to provide anything our clients need quickly and efficiently."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pros
 

Cons

"Its configuration should be easier."
"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."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."
"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons
"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."
"The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."
"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."
"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."
"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."
More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons
"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 monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."
"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."
"In the future, it would be nice to be able to migrate from the Windows vSAN to the Linux vSAN without having to do a full restore from backups."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be..."
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"An emphasis on security can be improved."
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."
"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."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"The product is very expensive."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice
"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."
"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."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"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."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable 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."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Performing Arts
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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

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Compared 10% of the time
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MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 10% of the time
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 7% of the time
VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade Logo
VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade
Compared 6% of the time
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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 15% of the time
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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 12% of the time
Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 11% of the time
DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 10% of the time
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize Logo
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Compared 10% of the time
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DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 13% of the time
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 12% of the time
Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
Azure Stack HCI vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 12% of the time
StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 12% of the time
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Logo
VxRail vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
Compared 12% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Pure Storage FlashBlade
December 2025
Pure Storage FlashBlade reportDownload Pure Storage FlashBlade product report
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
January 2026
IBM Spectrum Virtualize reportDownload IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report
Buyer's Guide
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
December 2025
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
December 2025
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: December 2025.
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