IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs Zadara comparison

IBM and Zadara are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.7, while Zadara is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.5. IBM holds a 2.1% mindshare in SDS, compared to Zadara’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Zadara and IBM Spectrum Virtualize compete in the cloud storage and virtualization space. IBM Spectrum Virtualize might have a slight edge due to its comprehensive virtualization and management capabilities.

Features: Zadara offers seamless cloud integration, low-latency connections, and multi-tiered storage options including SSD, NL-SAS, and SSD caches, making it ideal for multi-tenant environments. IBM Spectrum Virtualize excels in managing multiple storage systems, offering strong disaster recovery, non-disruptive data migration, and consistent performance.

Room for Improvement: Zadara faces issues with delayed feature rollouts like auto-tiering, a less service-partner-friendly interface, and lacks comprehensive VMware support. IBM Spectrum Virtualize could improve deduplication and encryption integration, management of large storage environments, and enhance its GUI layout.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zadara supports hybrid and public cloud deployments with 24/7 management and proactive monitoring, ensuring seamless operations. IBM Spectrum Virtualize focuses on hybrid and on-premises deployments, matching industry standards with robust support and quick response times.

Pricing and ROI: Zadara's pay-as-you-use model offers transparency and avoids upfront costs but may be seen as expensive in some regions, while providing flexible scaling and resource utilization for substantial ROI. IBM Spectrum Virtualize offers cost-effective licensing, especially when bundled with the Spectrum Suite, presenting significant value in multi-vendor integrations and scalable usage.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Zadara

December 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 January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Virtualize is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	3.3%
IBM Spectrum Virtualize	2.1%
Zadara	2.1%
Other	92.5%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström

IT Manager at Regin Dalarna

Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades

In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.

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AhmedSorour

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.

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KirillKolesnikov

IT Technical Architect at AVALIS

Troubleshooting becomes more accessible and management improves over time

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara Zadara's troubleshooting feature is very valuable for me. After the last update, managing the product became easier. Management is more straightforward and useful. These improvements are…

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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

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

"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 most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"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."

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

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"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."

"The scalability is very good. It can handle anywhere from very small to large enterprise class."

"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."

"Although the GUI from the XIV was used (in my view), IBM has polished and refined the GUI providing a pleasant and easy to navigate GUI experience."

"When we add storage behind it, the product is good for the customers because their customers do not notice that anything is happening due to the virtualization."

"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."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

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

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."

"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."

"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."

"The processing is much faster with this product."

"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."

"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."

More Zadara pros

Cons

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"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."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

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

"GUI should be developed in HTML5 as opposed to Java."

"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 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."

"The training program could be improved."

"Level 1 technical support needs improvement."

"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"The initial setup of the solution is complex."

"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."

"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."

"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."

"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."

"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."

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

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

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price could be cheaper."

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

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

"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."

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

"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."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

"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."

"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 is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Performing Arts

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Large Enterprise	4

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?

Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...

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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 needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 11% of the time

Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 11% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 10% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 9% of the time

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Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs Zadara

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Zadara

Compared 7% of the time

DataCore SANsymphony vs Zadara

Compared 6% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

December 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Zadara

December 2025

Download Zadara 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

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

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

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Zadara

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Virtualize vs. Zadara

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