IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs StorPool comparison

IBM and StorPool are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7, while StorPool is ranked #20. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in SDS, compared to StorPool’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StorPool users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

StorPool and IBM Spectrum Virtualize are competing enterprise storage solutions. StorPool appears more attractive in pricing and customer service, while IBM Spectrum Virtualize leads in feature richness, appealing to those seeking comprehensive capabilities.

Features: StorPool offers powerful performance optimization and seamless scalability. Its efficient resource use and cost-effective storage solutions make it ideal for businesses needing high performance. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is notable for robust virtualization capabilities, advanced storage management, and support for diverse environments, offering extensive virtualization features.

Room for Improvement: StorPool could improve in expanding its feature set, increasing compatibility with various systems, and enhancing its management interface for more versatility. IBM Spectrum Virtualize could simplify its complex deployment process, reduce the upfront cost burden, and optimize user interfaces to improve user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StorPool provides a straightforward deployment model with responsive and personalized customer service. In contrast, IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers extensive support with a more complex deployment due to its wide-ranging functionalities and features.

Pricing and ROI: StorPool's competitive pricing and lower setup cost make it appealing for quick ROI, with a straightforward pricing structure enhancing cost predictability. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers strong ROI over time due to advanced features, though its higher initial investment targets resource-intensive environments and justifies its premium pricing with comprehensive capabilities.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StorPool

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 StorPool is 2.5%, up from 1.8% 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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reviewer1721697

Managing Director at CloudScale365, Inc.

Great service and support with a constant addition of new features

As of now, the product has been working really well for us. They keep updating and launching new features. Their support has been great and have always been available. I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them. This is a great product.

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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."

"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."

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

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

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The main feature I have found to be product replication."

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

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"IBM offers excellent customer service."

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

"One of the main features of Spectrum Virtualize is it virtualizes the servers from the storage. We have a very large infrastructure. A major advantage is when you get the aged storage arrays and you have to replace all of those."

"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."

"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."

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

"The SVC gives excellent performance with tiered storage behind it."

"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"Performance, redundancy, scalability and cost-effectiveness. StorPool delivers superbly in all of these areas."

"With StorPool we were able to build live failover on top of our LXC infrastructure. This allows us both to live-migrate containers between compute nodes without any downtime and, in case of an entire node suffering any type of failure, we can bring all containers back online within a minute on a spare compute node."

"The two 10GE networks provide redundancy and increased performance as they serve as two separate networks doubling the throughput and doing multipathing and load balancing. We now have a high performance shared storage system which enables us to run on private cloud. Our previous system used bare-metal hardware, which provided high performance but inflexible management. Now we have best of both worlds, SSD-class performance with flexibility of a private cloud system."

"The speed of the storage solution also allows us to provide service to applications that are very I/O intensive."

"The team behind it was very engaged and had the skills and ability to support a service provider."

"Creating snapshots within seconds for big disks has helped our different migration projects since it allows us to perform them in a short period of time."

Cons

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"The speed could be improved."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"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."

"The integration would be an option that we would like, but I understand that's not how it's going to be implemented."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution."

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

"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."

"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

"It would be good if, with next releases, StorPool provide a better GUI for monitoring and statistics. This would make our experience even better and complete."

"he only place we feel they could improve is the time it takes to bring new features to production."

"I have personally met with multiple Storpool engineers and spoke about different options and features. There are too many features that we don't know or use yet. My recommendation would be to promote the new features and give users different examples of how they can be used and how we can benefit from them."

"Monitoring and statistics UI is a bit clumsy."

"At times we need to check the disks and do some minor operations. A friendlier user interface would be useful in such cases."

"Live and historical performance statistics would be useful, though my understanding is that this is on the way in a future release."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

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

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

"The product is very expensive."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

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

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

"It provides us with a significant reduction in TCO due to their pay-as-you-grow licensing model, which means we don’t have to pay upfront for hardware and licensing for capacity thStorPoolat we don’t yet need to use."

"StorPool software is cost-effective and gives us a pricing advantage over our competitors."

"StorPool's pricing and licensing model is very transparent. As always, one has to due his due diligence when choosing a product like distributed storage solutions."

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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

25%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Performing Arts

12%

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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Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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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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Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StorPool

Compared 56% of the time

LINBIT SDS vs StorPool

Compared 22% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs StorPool

Compared 14% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StorPool

Compared 9% of the time

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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

StorPool

May 2025

Download StorPool product report

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

StorPool is intelligent storage software that runs on standard servers and builds scalable, high-performance storage system out of these servers (software-defined storage). It focuses on the block-level storage and excels at it. It is incredibly flexible and can be deployed in both converged setups (on compute nodes, alongside VMs and applications) or on separate storage nodes.

StorPool has advanced fully-distributed architecture and is arguably the fastest and most efficient block-storage software on the market today. It is the best storage system when building a cloud.

StorPool

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

CloudSigma, Kualo, Togglebox, Neterra, Serveo, Superhosting.bg, GroupOne, DRFortress, Metanet, Dia, Server Storage Solutions

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StorPool

May 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StorPool

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. StorPool and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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