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 6.4% 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: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

August 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 August 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.4%, up from 4.4% 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 6.4%, down from 8.8% 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 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."

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

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"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 FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ability to have a feature-rich software set which extends the capabilities of the back-end storage arrays."

"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"It's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"It is extremely stable."

"Quick setup, great support, stability is great"

"The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices."

"We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment."

"The most valuable features of StarWind Virtual SAN include its cost-effective repurposing of older hardware, seamless integration with vSphere, and high scalability."

"It has improved our organization in terms of its uptime as our main cluster has never been offline due to a SAN failure."

"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."

"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."

More StarWind Virtual SAN pros

Cons

"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."

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

"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."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

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

"I have not seen ROI."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."

"They need to improve the speed of the interfaces, thus allowing for better traffic on the network."

"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."

"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."

"It would be great if the Linux version of the management console offered the same features as Windows."

"StarWind Virtual SAN architecture is slightly complex and requires the team to carefully identify and study how the solution integrates with VMware vSphere."

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

"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."

More StarWind Virtual SAN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be cheaper."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"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."

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

"The price is a little high."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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 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."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"The cost seems a bit steep, and I wish it was less expensive."

"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."

"Their pricing seems pretty good, and their licensing structure is pretty straightforward."

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

"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."

"The StarWind VSAN business model is very cost-effective."

"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."

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

More StarWind Virtual SAN pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Performing Arts

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

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 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...

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 had experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing through using the free version of StarWind Virtual SAN for t...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

One area for improvement regarding StarWind Virtual SAN is the lack of a full-feature trial. At the time I tested it,...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 23% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 21% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 16% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 24% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 16% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 11% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

August 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

July 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

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

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