We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Virtualize and VxRail based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Nutanix, Red Hat and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS)."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's got full features, so we can compress volumes. We can do thin volumes and we can change them on the fly."
"We can failover easily, because a lot of our data is replicated from family to the second replication."
"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."
"We are happy with the support that IBM provides us."
"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."
"Using SBC, a valuable feature is the mirroring, which is the virtualization of the disk between disparate places."
"It provides transparency, because of its advanced copy features."
"We deploy VxRail systems to provide our customers with a distributed information solution. The customer was impressed because we delivered a serious data reduction. For example, we showed them that 10 terabytes on their traditional storage solution could be reduced to 1.5 terabytes in the VxRail systems. That's why the customers also like it so much,"
"There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance. Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature. Its performance is also valuable. It delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated."
"Updating the product has been very easy."
"It's somewhat hard to speak about specific features, but I like VxRail's simplicity and ease of use. It's a decent solution for customers with a small footprint. If you're operating a big data center, it's not easy to position VxRail or HCI solutions, but when you have a small customer managing many different components, it's easier to work only with one solution."
"Homogeneity is most valuable. The truth is that having everything in a single cluster helps a lot."
"t's a very good solution with multiple options with VxRail series like based on customer requirements whether they're focused on compute, storage, scalability and high performance, etc. Whether a customer you are going to start your IT Infrastructure footprint with a limited budget, you have freedom of choice and non-disruptive expansion in the future, whether in the main data center or branches. Any idea coming in system admins mind to run this setup continuously and keep service 100% 24/7 is possible in this product line. Hyper-converged appliances allow a datacenter in a box approach, with G, E P, Vand P series."
"You don't need to think about compatibility of components."
"VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager."
"The solution could have a better built-in performance monitor."
"The Storwize port is not so stable."
"Tighter integration with cloud storage might be useful as a target for a variety of use cases."
"The disk reliability is not that good."
"For improvement considerations, I would probably say multiple sites."
"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."
"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 would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."
"We do not use the storage part of VxRail, we use Pure Storage to map out the VxRail because the disk performance from Pure Storage was far better than the performance of the disk on the inside of VxRail."
"It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI."
"There is limited support for SAP HANA with this solution."
"It needs faster deployment of security patches."
"When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12 node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system."
"Next release, we would like to see online applications."
"You have to buy a new server if you want to scale up."
"Obtaining support was hindered by the frequent changes to the hotline numbers."
IBM Spectrum Virtualize is ranked 15th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 36 reviews while VxRail is ranked 1st in HCI with 115 reviews. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is rated 8.8, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Virtualize writes "A highly scalable product that is relatively easy to use and set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "Offers a hassle-free, complete package, and is energy-efficient". IBM Spectrum Virtualize is most compared with Dell VPLEX, VMware vSAN, IBM Spectrum Scale, DataCore SANsymphony and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, whereas VxRail is most compared with VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series.
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