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IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs VMware Software Defined Storage 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (12th)
VMware Software Defined Sto...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (15th)
 

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.
Mohammad Jundiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Qatar Datamation Systems
Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery.  Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's actually very stable"
"Data deduplication features make it easier to manage storage and forecast growth."
"The support team is available all the time and they seem to know what they are doing."
"Now they are trying to add more and more applications because they're getting better performance and stability."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"The technical support is very good."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"Pure Storage is seen as a visionary company with leading edge technology."
"It makes data migration straightforward, and on the customer side, there is downtime, but it is very minimal."
"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."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"The ease of management, the simplicity of the CLI, the speed of that interface, and the well-architected design of the product in general are valuable features."
"It helps us to reduce time, reduce complexity, and be more responsive to requests instead of taking an hour to do one volume; now I can do one volume in less than two minutes."
"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."
"Good luck finding anything that does half of what it does."
"This is an absolutely outstanding product and anyone can use it with ease."
"The single management panel is the main feature that is wonderful for the customer."
"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."
"The technical support is awesome."
"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."
"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without the requirement of additional hardware, which is the biggest advantage."
"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."
"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."
 

Cons

"It needs to improve its price."
"The price should be lower."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"The only minor issues that come to mind are that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad. Also, the solution should be cheaper."
"Maybe sometimes we don't get responses back as fast as we would like, but they have always been very professional and they follow through."
"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."
"The training program could be improved."
"I have encountered stability issues in situations when the customer-provided AC power has defects."
"There are some caveats with scalability, such as volume count. We are highly limited by volume count at this point in time."
"The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time."
"One very important feature is the analysis of the logs which should be there in the system."
"Technical support at IBM is actually not as great as it used to be. It seems like IBM has decreased the number of people who can support this environment."
"It's easy to scale and expand but the main catch is the cost. It's expensive."
"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"
"The solution has some limitations in terms of replication to remote sites or cloud infrastructure, which need improvement."
"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."
"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."
"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."
"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."
"It doesn't have the ability to be deployed on any kind of hardware and network connectors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to the competitors, Pure is very price-competitive for the future functionality that it provides."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"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."
"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."
"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."
"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."
"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."
"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."
"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."
"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."
"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
11%
Performing Arts
11%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
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 VMware Software Defined Storage?
The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...
What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?
There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...
What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
VMware SDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services
Helse Nord, Sky
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.