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 9.4. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 6.7% 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 July 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 6.7%, down from 8.7% 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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Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support

The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

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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 tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."

"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."

"The most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There are many benefits to this solution. Storage virtualization and the ability to migrate massive amounts of data to other systems without impacting your client are the most valuable. It is non-disruptive for my users. We migrated 350 terabytes of data in one night to a new machine without a small system going down and a single user complaining about the performance. You have to fine-tune a lot of storage machines constantly for performance and for making sure that they are optimal, but IBM Spectrum Virtualize does this by itself. It does the adjustment on its own, and it does it right. That's what makes it different. I had a huge VSP from Hitachi, which is also a type of virtualization-based engine but with a decent size. It was a continuous performance-tuning exercise. I never had that issue with IBM Spectrum Virtualize."

"In my opinion, the quick restore, the low latency, and the ease of use are some of the most valuable features."

"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

"The best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers in my experience are its simplicity to use, and it's easier to manage on a daily basis, which stands out to me."

"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."

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

"It eliminates the use of expensive physical shared storage."

"The backup is readily available for use, and the restoration process is easy."

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

"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."

"StarWind has provided us with a top-notch, well-supported, robust vSAN offering when other vendors have moved to hyper-converged solutions that are outside of our average clients' reach from a financial and resource perspective."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

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

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"I would like to see better integration."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

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."

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

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

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"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."

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

"In general, the migration is complicated. Though, it is case-by-case."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome."

"There needs to be more visibility on how long the cloud replication will take as there is no current ETA."

"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."

"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."

"A central management console may be nice to see all nodes."

"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."

"I would like to see options for automated notifications of any changes, including, for example, synchronization issues."

"It would be helpful to have a little more insight into what kind of performance the VSAN cluster is utilizing; something that would be more proactive on our side, versus their ProActive Support."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."

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

"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 is a little high."

"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 pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"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."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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

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

"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."

"The cost was ultimately low to implement, which allowed us to be 3-2-1 complaint."

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

"The pricing is more than reasonable."

"This solution has a great price for the functionality."

"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Performing Arts

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

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...

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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...

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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...

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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

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

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VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 30% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 28% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 22% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 20% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 25% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 15% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN 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

June 2025

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

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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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