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 9.3. IBM holds a 1.6% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 5.7% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

September 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 November 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.8%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.7%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	5.7%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.8%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	1.6%
Other	88.9%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

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.

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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 most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

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

"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."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."

"I like all the features, but the most impressive recently has been the introduction of IBM's Flash Core Modules. They are a form of a flash drive, but they have many more features."

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

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"It lowers cost. It does so by getting more efficient use out of the technology behind it."

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"I have found the graphical user interface to be the most useful thing about Virtual SAN."

"The best feature is its ease of installation and integration within a current infrastructure."

"I like StarWind's high availability. The failover is almost immediate, so the end users have no idea the guest VM moved at all. We can failover all guest VMs onto a single hypervisor, place it into maintenance mode, install updates, and reboot a hypervisor all during the daytime and remotely, with confidence the process will be successful."

"The biggest benefit was that it allowed us to provide SAN services on a limited hardware budget."

"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."

"StarWind allowed us to deploy highly available shared storage within our budget."

"StarWind Virtual SAN is essentially hardware agnostic, allowing us to build out a specific hardware layer based upon the customer's unique requirements."

"The StarWind products have enabled our organization to modernize stations where larger and more expensive equipment was not an option."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."

"Its configuration should be easier."

"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."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

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

"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."

"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

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

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

"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 hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

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

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"It could have a dashboard so that you can check all servers' SAN health and performance."

"A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node."

"I would like to see an extensive set of cmdlets that could allow for easier automation as well as status management."

"New versions of this solution should be tested more thoroughly before the release as we had a few problems with one version due to a bug."

"It would be great if it provided thin provisioned virtual disks."

"I did not see any indication that StarWinds vSAN is a usable solution with non-GUI instances of Hyper-V."

"That limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better."

"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"The price is a little high."

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

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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

"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."

"This is the best priced solution for an SMB."

"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."

"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."

"We found that the pricing was perfect; simple and clear."

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

"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	162
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	33

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 of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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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?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for StarWind Virtual SAN was okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

An improvement for StarWind Virtual SAN would be to have an updated admin console.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 18% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 13% of the time

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 13% of the time

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VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 12% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

October 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

October 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

October 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

September 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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