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IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Scale

Overview

What is IBM Spectrum Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale supports storage management of unstructured data for big data analytics.

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

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Product Details

What is IBM Spectrum Scale?

IBM Spectrum Scale is a multi-protocol, high-performance, highly available, clustered file system and associated management software. The vendor says IBM Spectrum Scale can scale in several dimensions, including performance (bandwidth and IOPS), capacity, and number of nodes (instances) that can mount the file system. IBM Spectrum Scale promises to address the capacity and performance requirements to support modern scale-out applications such as AI/ML/DL with multi-cloud support.

The latest version of IBM Spectrum Scale delivers a high level of performance for file storage. The vendor says the improvements were driven by the demands of providing the storage software for the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the US Department of Energy Summit system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Those same innovations are now available to commercial customers, and include major improvements across the product, including performance, space efficiency, improved installation and setup, more powerful GUI and improved security to help organizations address new regulations such as GDPR.

IBM Spectrum Scale Features

  • Supported: Storage management at scale
  • Supported: On-premises and/or multicloud
  • Supported: Data economics
  • Supported: Software-defined open platform

IBM Spectrum Scale Screenshots

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IBM Spectrum Scale Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, IBM AIX v7
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesWorldwide
Supported LanguagesEnglish

IBM Spectrum Scale Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)3%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)17%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)80%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(34)

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Diana Dumpsey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Spectrum Scale i have to say that its the most effective storage management solution and its features are very powerful and simple to configure the interface security. IBM Spectrum Scale ability to manage storage capacity and dataflow management, offering secure environment for large project data management and data transfer across various storage systems and the workflow management is fantastic.
  • Secure data storage platform.
  • Secure environment to handle big data through.
  • Creating reports from multiple platforms easily.
  • The setting is a complex duty to the new users.
  • Handling multiple data formatts from other solutions.
  • Creating data visuals and migrating big data.
IBM Spectrum Scale creates excellent and real time data results and the capability to extract data and data modeling tools via IBM Spectrum Scale is amazing. The capacity planning and data archiving and the data security offered by IBM Spectrum Scale is more productive and the data quality control using the system is impressive.
  • Capacity management functions.
  • Data storage capability.
  • Data sources connection tools.
  • Access control options are intuitive.
  • Using IBM Spectrum Scale data security and storage management capability is helpful.
  • Migrating high volume of multiple projects data and files is faster.
  • Archiving and workflow management is easy and the data accessibility is simple.
Through the use IBM Spectrum Scale tools its quite easy and secure environment that are provided to manipulate business data smoothly and manage multiple data storage platforms. IBM Spectrum Scale also allows effective data access and data transportation channels for big files transfer and reports are accurate and easy to transform and even the data visualization this product is excellent.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Spectrum Scale is used as a file server box. Due to its many supported protocols, it is a good choice when choosing one box to store all your files, access through NFS, CIFS, and BLOCK. It was mainly used to support file access to hospital images (PACS). When we began using it, we had a steady capacity growth of 4 TB/3 months. Thanks to the technology used by separating metadata from data, we were able to store metadata files on SDD disks making it very fast to search and access files. Before that, searching through a filesystem would take minutes, just to list all files.
  • Easy scalability, vertically and horizontally.
  • Active-active high availability across datacenters.
  • Great to store massive amounts of data.
  • Upgrading procedure, many times we had to do manual upgrades instead of the automatic one provided by IBM.
  • Many advanced features are only available through the command line, it would be best they would be available on the GUI.
  • More easy understanding of its compatibility matrix, regarding support for NFS and CIFS protocols.
When you get a Spectrum Scale solution from IBM you are certain of two things.
1) You will need a specialized storage admin who will be able to take all of its advantages and make available for your organization. It is an appliance that not so many storage admins would be comfortable working on. Invest properly on both hardware and human resources.
2) You will scale forever. We started with a couple of hundred of Terabytes and grew to dozens of Petabytes.
  • Positive impact: one solution for many years to come. Turn your CAPEX on many many years of OPEX.
  • Negative impact: it is an expensive solution.
  • It is a door to send your less frequent accessed data to the cloud, and still under the umbrella one solution.
  • NetApp FAS series and Dell EMC Celerra (Discontinued)
When we implemented the Spectrum Scale solution, we had in place a NetApp FAS series working in Metro Cluster mode. What is great about NetApp is its low maintenance. On the other hand, it lacks performance, especially on the CPU nodes. We needed a solution that will deliver steady performance while keeping a steady growth.
Leonardo Molinares Meza | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
IBM Spectrum Scale is being used to optimize video rendering times and storage economics. The solution is using TS4500 libraries for storage, archiving, and Supermicro Intel Nodes for NSD Servers. The networking is being supported by 1o Gbps Ethernet Switches in the cluster. After the implementation, our review of the current versus past platform shows that it's been optimized by 10 times.
  • Good for storage Optimizing.
  • Good velocity.
  • Strong agility in the product.
  • Not suited for HPC.
  • Doesn't work well for retail.
Suited to cine, technology, medical, and retail purposes.
  • Solid ROI.
We chose this solution thanks to our experience with GPFS, and we have confirmed the functionalities of the product.
Not Sure
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
Principally Cost
Product functionalities is another great factor in making a decision.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is a clustered environment that helps to share information among the servers in the cluster. It helps to share information in a fast and efficient way.
I manage the information to help the several users access and create data for different departments.
IBM Spectrum Scale is a good solution for the requirements of our customers.
  • It shares information
  • It's efficient
  • Good management of clusters
  • Support for high availability
  • Better ways to update
  • Less outage time in the upgrades.
  • More time between versions
Solutions help the user access information in an efficient and fast way.
Easy way to share information among servers.
Reliability of the information.
High Availability of the information.
  • Different versions in a short period of time
  • Re-creation of the certificates after an update creates confusion
It was the solution that fit the requirements of our customers.
February 14, 2019

IBM Spectrum Scale Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We evaluated Spectrum for use by large organizations who were looking to streamline their storage management.
  • Provides a single pane of glass for storage management
  • Orchestrates both IBM and non-IBM storage
  • Can manage both cloud and on-premise storage
  • Price
  • Requires a learning curve and training to manage the product
IBM Spectrum Scale works well for large organizations who have a combination of storage devices, in a complex technical environment. It also is well suited for organizations who are trying to get the most out of both new and existing storage devices.
  • Allowed reuse of existing storage
  • Flexibility to provision storage quickly, allowing us to right size storage.
Spectrum Scale is a unique product in that it allows for both storage management and orchestration.
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