IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

IBM and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7, while StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.5. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 7.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StarWind Virtual SAN and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the data storage virtualization solutions category. StarWind has an upper hand in environments seeking cost-effectiveness and easy deployment, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize excels in large enterprises needing comprehensive features.

Features: StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability, real-time replication, and the ability to use existing hardware, enhancing scalability and making it a suitable choice for smaller setups. IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides a powerful abstraction layer, easy data migration, and cross-vendor array compatibility, making it ideal for large enterprise environments needing comprehensive virtualization solutions.

Room for Improvement: StarWind Virtual SAN could improve its management console for platform independence, document clarity for new users, and enhance alert automation. IBM Spectrum Virtualize needs better scalability, with features like improved multi-site replication, and should focus on easing deployment processes and data deduplication enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for simple deployment, especially using existing hardware, with responsive support simplifying implementation. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, while feature-rich, presents a steeper learning curve; however, it provides comprehensive support ensuring smooth operations in complex setups.

Pricing and ROI: StarWind Virtual SAN is cost-effective with straightforward licensing, providing savings suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. IBM Spectrum Virtualize, although higher-priced, delivers substantial ROI by enhancing data management efficiency and reducing downtime, justified by its extensive capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

May 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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 7.0%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

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WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

Seamless integrations, high availability, and offers a free version

Although I am generally satisfied with VSAN and its performance, there are some areas that could be improved to enhance its effectiveness even further. One area that could benefit from improvement is scalability. While the tool works well in its current configuration, allowing for greater ease and flexibility in adding new nodes to the cluster without complications would be very beneficial, especially in growing environments. Additionally, I would like to see additional features in the next version, such as better support for automated resource management. This could include proactive suggestions for optimizing storage and memory usage, as well as preventive alerts about the health status of the servers. A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.

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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 seen a reduction in the total cost of ownership by around 20%."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

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

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"It has the ability to seamlessly move hardware in and out as we refresh technology."

"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."

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

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"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

"Using our own choice of HW allowed us to price our service to answer our customers' needs."

"The feature I have found most valuable in VSAN is its high availability capability."

"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."

"StarWind SANs come with outstanding support."

"The management was very easy and I was able to find all that I need in the software dashboard."

"The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."

"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."

"The ability to run the software virtually on every virtualization platform and the ability to eliminate all storage vendor locking are the most valuable features."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

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

"The solution is expensive."

"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."

"In terms of scalability, it doesn't expand out quite as robustly as some of the others, but it covers 90% of the market in what it does."

"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 only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"The training program could be improved."

"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."

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

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

"The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time."

"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."

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

"They are actually working on one bug we found, which was with flash restore. This was the user interface design for virtual environments."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"At this moment, I have not seen a return on investment with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"I struggled when bit figuring out how to go about doing the evaluation."

"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."

"Our company was hoping for deduplication and encryption across HCI. That is currently not supported."

"For improvement, I would like to see how the software determines which networks to use for which purpose. It seems like the naming terminology changes a bit from here to there."

"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."

"I would like to see some additional, and possibly clearer, implementation videos with some slower and possibly more detailed descriptions of what the various steps of implementation are for someone who is unfamiliar with high availability and failover clustering in Windows."

"I had issues locating the documentation that applied to my version of StarWind vSAN."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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

"The price is a little high."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The price could be cheaper."

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."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

"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."

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

"I think it is a good value for the price."

"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."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."

"The pricing is fine for the work that it does."

"The pricing is more than reasonable."

"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."

"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."

"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."

"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."

"We are happy with the price."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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-...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combin...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

I have had no setup costs and no challenges with setup and installation for StarWind Virtual SAN. The costs are accep...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

There are times when the feedback in the event of an impending issue or an actual failure can be limited. The remedia...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

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VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 26% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 20% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 10% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

May 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

No data available

StarWind SAN & NAS

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

StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

StarWind

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

May 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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