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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StorMagic SvSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (13th)
StorMagic SvSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
AS
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.
reviewer2619357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Provides immediate benefits after deployment
StorMagic SvSAN is flexible and easy to use. It is compatible with various hardware, including Cisco, HP, Lenovo, and Supermicro. The company is also flexible with its recommended specifications, allowing users to exceed them without issue. I have not encountered any problems with StorMagic SvSAN on any hardware vendor I have tried. The cost of hardware required for StorMagic SvSAN is significantly lower than that of competitive solutions. Their licensing model, based on storage usage, offers flexibility and affordability. For instance, we utilize a two-terabyte license. Overall, StorMagic SvSAN's pricing is comparable to, if not more affordable than other options. StorMagic SvSAN supports various storage types and brands within a cluster, accommodating past and current technologies. Over the years, we've transitioned from traditional spinning disks to SSDs and now utilize NVMe SSDs, with StorMagic seamlessly supporting each upgrade. While faster drives inherently deliver better performance, StorMagic has consistently functioned without issue across a range of drive types and brands. Hardware flexibility is as crucial as cost, especially for a smaller company like ours that needs to adapt quickly. With hardware frequently changing, upgrading, and involving different vendors, maintaining flexibility and consistency is essential. Having a solution that works the same way across all vendors, whether it's Cisco or HP, significantly benefits our small support team. Witness effortlessly manages up to 1,000 SvSAN clusters. While we haven't personally utilized that many, it has effectively handled our multiple clusters without issue. The software's hardware requirements are very flexible. It reportedly runs on platforms as small as a Raspberry Pi. We currently operate it on a small HP desktop computer with excellent results, and it scales seamlessly with the rest of our system. The primary advantage is its two-host architecture, requiring only two hosts plus a Witness for full functionality. This contrasts with competitors who necessitate three hosts, significantly increasing costs. Avoiding the need for a third host translates to substantial savings, estimated at $20,000. Although StoreMagic's costs remain high, the ability to eliminate a host and its associated expenses results in considerable cost savings. This Edge Control provides a simple, visually appealing dashboard for easy administration of all clusters. The well-designed interface ensures clear and understandable cluster management. It provides immediate benefits after deployment. StorMagic SvSAN significantly reduces downtime in our environment by allowing us to perform maintenance or system updates without disrupting user access. With SvSAN, we can seamlessly switch all running machines to a secondary machine, ensuring continuous operation and eliminating noticeable downtime for end-users. This has resulted in substantial savings on maintenance costs and provided peace of mind regarding system reliability. StorMagic SvSAN helped us save costs by eliminating needing a third witness host. Their pricing has remained relatively consistent over the past ten years, with only a modest increase of about 10 to 15 percent. Despite this, their pricing is still very competitive, and they have been proactive in helping us find ways to save money. While I would always like to see even more cost savings, I understand that they need to make a profit as well. We've likely saved 30 to 40 percent annually by using StoreMagic, simply due to the cost reductions in hosting and maintenance time across multiple sites. StorMagic SvSAN provides a hyperconverged high-availability solution with enterprise functionality, and that is all we use it for.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"The data reduction technology part of the scalability has been impressive, like its ability to host additional workloads, volumes of data, and databases."
"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."
"After switching to Everpure FlashArray, we saw significant results, as whatever hardware we used before is now compressed to 80%, maximizing space utilization in a single system."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors, as we've looked at some of the other competitors on the market."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"I would recommend Pure Storage FlashArray to other users because, first, the speed that I get with Pure Storage FlashArray is not remotely possible with any other product at this price range, and second, the support is absolutely fantastic."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"Being able to move things around from one array to the other has been the biggest feature for us."
"It enabled us to build an infrastructure and replace storage with no disruption to our hosts whatsoever."
"I would recommend IBM Spectrum Virtualize because it is very robust, stable, and affordable, has very good performance, and is relatively easy to implement and use."
"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."
"The most valuable feature for me is its ease of use."
"I would recommend it, for sure, because it offers supportability, reliability, and some scalability, and the vendor is there as a partner."
"We have reduced a lot of power and cooling requirements in the data center."
"I think Spectrum Visualize is a very good product to address a lot of problems."
"One of the most valuable features of StorMagic SvSAN is its user-friendly hyperconverged infrastructure."
"It helps us prevent any data loss while working with the failover clusters."
"StorMagic SvSAN helped us save around sixty percent on previous costs."
"We compared two solutions for this use case, but we went with StorMagic because it had more capabilities than the others. It's also more reliable, especially in production environments that require availability and sustainability."
"The most valuable feature of StorMagic SvSAN is its high availability. We have not had any downtime or data loss. Business continuity is highly important."
"StorMagic SvSAN has demonstrated flawless stability over the past six years, with no reported downtime, bugs, or glitches."
"The best part is how simple it is to use."
"StorMagic SvSAN allows customers to eliminate the cost of SAN hardware; it's also 70% cheaper than competitors and provides all the enterprise feature requirements at low cost."
 

Cons

"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says it is completely full."
"The price should be lower."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"I have encountered stability issues in situations when the customer-provided AC power has defects."
"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."
"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."
"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."
"We are not happy with the technical support. In the last seven or eight years, I honestly think that IBM's technical support has gotten way worse."
"It's been pretty stable, but we've had some issues. I wouldn't say it's poor, but the resiliency has been less than what we expect from an enterprise class product."
"It even has a component, which I would say is a bit lacklustre."
"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."
"The deployment of StorMagic SvSAN is very small. However, you need some time to do it."
"Expanding beyond two nodes significantly increases licensing costs, potentially discouraging clients from growing their infrastructure."
"The deployment of StorMagic SvSAN is very small. However, you need some time to do it. It's important to make a test deployment before the real deployment."
"It could be a little bit more intuitive in terms of the way you set it up initially."
"StorMagic does not have extensive scalability capabilities as it is tailored for SMBs. If catering to a bigger enterprise customer, scalability might be a concern."
"They should enable data compression deduplication features for the platform."
"StorMagic SvSAN's management or witness server, a standard Linux box, lacks security hardening."
"The only improvement area I can see is their licensing. For example, the memory caching feature is only available in an advanced license. Normally, it's in a standard license. It would be better if they had memory caching features in the product. Some backup features should also be in the product"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"The licensing is $100,000."
"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."
"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."
"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."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"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."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable 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."
"StorMagic SvSAN offers competitive pricing within the market."
"The product has good pricing."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. Our budget was two terabytes and the price met our use case well."
"While I lack specific cost details, StorMagic's segmented pricing options offer valuable flexibility, allowing companies to choose solutions based on their needs and capacity."
"The pricing for StorMagic is okay, but as a distributor, I suggest some reduction."
"70% cheaper than competitors and provides all the enterprise feature requirements at low cost."
"It's fairly cheap when compared to other options. But it can be improved as some features may not be available in the standard license. The vendor positions it as an edge product, so it isn't suitable to compare with VMware vSAN or Nutanix because that's another product altogether."
"While not the cheapest option, it offers comparable functionality for 20 to 30 percent lower than its competitors."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Performing Arts
14%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise155
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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-...
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...
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StorMagic SvSAN?
I find the pricing moderate. However, since some features should be given in the default price, I find it a little bi...
What needs improvement with StorMagic SvSAN?
Some advanced features feel like they should be included by default, which are paid. The scalability is a bit limited...
What is your primary use case for StorMagic SvSAN?
I use StorMagic SvSAN for the virtualization of my storage. I mainly use it for the high availability at the small an...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
StorMagic
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Sheetz Inc., Giant Eagle, RWE Renewables, Keiser Corp., TDK, Oxford University, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rommelsbacher, Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort, Eugen Forschner GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StorMagic SvSAN and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.