Portworx Alternative
Explore the Future of Storage with simplyblock™
Simplyblock™ delivers high performance, cost efficiency, and deployment flexibility for modern storage needs. By leveraging NVMe/TCP, it ensures ultra-low latency and high IOPS while significantly reducing storage costs through erasure coding and thin provisioning. Unlike Portworx, simplyblock seamlessly scales across Kubernetes and non-Kubernetes environments, making it the ideal choice for businesses looking for a faster, more efficient, and more flexible alternative to traditional Kubernetes-native storage solutions.
Challenges with Portworx
High Storage Cost
Portworx's reliance on replication for data protection leads to a minimum of 2x or 3x storage overhead which dramatically increases the storage cost compared to modern solutions that use efficient erasure coding for data durability. Additionally inflexible pricing with charges on a node basis, make the total cost relatively high.
No Built-in Quality of Service
Guarantees on access latency and IOPS for prioritized volumes and tenant isolation with IOPS and throughput quotas are key features of Enterprise Storage. Simplyblock is the first Kubernetes storage solution providing true enterprise-grade QoS for Kubernetes storage.
Limited Protocol Support
Portworx supports two storage protocols, iSCSI and NVME-RoCE. While iSCSI is an old and efficient protocol, RoCE or RDMA over Converged Ethernet isn't available in all network environments. Simplyblock is build on NVMe-oF and NVMe/TCP standards.
Kubernetes Only
Portworx runs only on Kubernetes, which means that it can't be deployed on plain Linux or Windows. It is not a good fit for virtualization with cloud stacks such as Proxmox or Openstack.
What is Simplyblock?
Simplyblock revolutionizes storage management by unifying access to high-performance storage through NVMe/TCP interface, delivering ultra-low latency performance while significantly reducing costs through advanced features like erasure coding and automated tiering. Unlike Portworx, which relies on costly full replication and older iSCSI technology, simplyblock's NVMe-first architecture provides superior performance with native multi-attach capabilities, all while consuming less storage through efficient data protection.
Deployment comparison
Both architectures, simplyblock and Portworx, offer a great deployment flexibility, supporting a disaggregated setup where storage runs in a dedicated cluster, as well as a hyperconverged model where storage and workloads share Kubernetes worker nodes. Simplyblock, however, adds a third deployment option, a hybrid approach combining the hyperconverged storage and disaggregated storage models for ultra low latency and infinite scalability. Additionally, simplyblock can be deployed outside of Kubernetes, on plain Linux or Windows, and integrate with other cloud stacks such as Proxmox.
Additionally, simplyblock enables the usage of NVMe over TCP (a protocol of the NVMe over Fabrics family) which is compatible with any Ethernet network, and the modern successor to the older iSCSI protocol, offering lower latencies and decreased protocol overhead.
Architecture comparison
Simplyblock takes a fundamentally different architectural approach than Portworx, building upon a modern NVMe-first design that intelligently consolidates different storage tiers (NVMe disks, cloud block storage, and object storage) behind a unified NVMe/TCP interface.
While Portworx relies on costly full replication with factors of 2 or 3 and older iSCSI technology, simplyblock achieves high availability through efficient erasure coding (similar to RAID-5) and delivers superior performance through local NVMe caching and modern NVMe/TCP protocol that's natively supported in the Linux kernel. This architecture enables simplyblock to provide ultra-low latency access while significantly reducing storage costs through intelligent thin provisioning and automated tiering to object storage like S3.
Save on latency and protocol overhead with simplyblock as your modern alternative to Portworx.
Benefits of Simplyblock?
Simplyblock improves the performance, the compatibility, and the cost-efficiency over Portworx.
Multi-tier architecture
While Portworx has basic HDD tiering capabilities, simplyblock offers true intelligent tiering solution that starts with NVMe caching nodes and expands into scalable object storage backends or QLC pools.
Enhanced Compatibility
Portworx offers connections to their volumes through iSCSI or NVMe over RoCE. While both protocols aren't bad solutions, compatibility, latency, and protocol overhead can significantly optimized using NVMe over TCP, utilized by simplyblock. Simplyblock can also run outside of Kubernetes, on plain Linux or Windows, catering for much broader set of use-cases.
3-5x More Cost Efficient
Simplyblock achieves 3x better storage efficiency through modern erasure coding and intelligent tiering, compared to Portworx wasteful double or triple replication. This translates to dramatically lower storage costs while maintaining enterprise-grade data protection and durability. Additionally, dynamic pricing model offered by simplyblock allows to easier match storage consumption with the cost.
More Reasons to Move to Simplyblock
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial support |
 |
| With your simplyblock subscription, you are entitled to commercial support directly from the developer. Benefit from our deep knowledge of the technology and years of experience in the storage world. |
| Simplicity |
|
| Simplyblock provides virtual block storage devices via NVMe over TCP, a standard that the Linux kernel automatically provides. Additionally, the Kubernetes CSI driver enables seamless integration with Kubernetes. Portworx provides a similar experience with iSCSI which still needs additional initiator software installed though. |
| Enhanced deployment options |
|
| Simplyblock provides three deployment models, a disaggregated setup where storage runs in a dedicated cluster, a hyperconverged model where storage and workloads share Kubernetes worker nodes, and a hybrid approach combining both. |
| Designed for cloud-native |
|
| Simplyblock offers easier integration with cloud environments and APIs, ideal for public and private cloud or hybrid Kubernetes and container setups. |
| Commercial support | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| With your simplyblock subscription, you are entitled to commercial support directly from the developer. Benefit from our deep knowledge of the technology and years of experience in the storage world. | |
| Simplicity | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock provides virtual block storage devices via NVMe over TCP, a standard that the Linux kernel automatically provides. Additionally, the Kubernetes CSI driver enables seamless integration with Kubernetes. Portworx provides a similar experience with iSCSI which still needs additional initiator software installed though. | |
| Enhanced deployment options | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock provides three deployment models, a disaggregated setup where storage runs in a dedicated cluster, a hyperconverged model where storage and workloads share Kubernetes worker nodes, and a hybrid approach combining both. | |
| Designed for cloud-native | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock offers easier integration with cloud environments and APIs, ideal for public and private cloud or hybrid Kubernetes and container setups. | |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High IOPS density |
|
| With over 200.000 IOPS per CPU core, simplyblock provides an industry-leading performance. |
| Low latency |
|
| Simplyblock provides latencies as low as an average of 0.1 ms make simplyblock. With workload-local caching, the latency can be reduced even further to enable the lowest latency-requiring workloads too. |
| Resource efficiency |
|
| With erasure coding and our very CPU-efficient compression, simplyblock provides up to 3x better storage efficiency and decreased cost compared to a Portworx cluster with the same workload-usable capacity. Thin provisioning and deduplication can improve storage efficiency even further. Spent less with simplyblock as your Portworx alternative. |
| Intelligent tiering |
|
| Simplyblock features automatic tiered storage to enable the highest cost-efficiency for infrequently accessed data while offering unprecedented performance for IO-demanding workloads inside and outside of Kubernetes. It is fully transparent to your workload. Portworx offers only basic tiering capabilities into HDDs. |
| High IOPS density | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| With over 200.000 IOPS per CPU core, simplyblock provides an industry-leading performance. | |
| Low latency | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock provides latencies as low as an average of 0.1 ms make simplyblock. With workload-local caching, the latency can be reduced even further to enable the lowest latency-requiring workloads too. | |
| Resource efficiency | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| With erasure coding and our very CPU-efficient compression, simplyblock provides up to 3x better storage efficiency and decreased cost compared to a Portworx cluster with the same workload-usable capacity. Thin provisioning and deduplication can improve storage efficiency even further. Spent less with simplyblock as your Portworx alternative. | |
| Intelligent tiering | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock features automatic tiered storage to enable the highest cost-efficiency for infrequently accessed data while offering unprecedented performance for IO-demanding workloads inside and outside of Kubernetes. It is fully transparent to your workload. Portworx offers only basic tiering capabilities into HDDs. | |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low TCO |
|
| Up to 3x more usable storage capacity than the equivalent Portworx storage solution while delivering superior performance with simplyblock’s thin provisioning and erasure coding technologies. |
| Storage cost-efficiency |
|
| Simplyblock’s storage tiering automatically moves infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers, such as object storage or HDD pools. Decrease your storage cost by up to 3x with simplyblock as your alternative to Portworx. |
| Low TCO | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Up to 3x more usable storage capacity than the equivalent Portworx storage solution while delivering superior performance with simplyblock’s thin provisioning and erasure coding technologies. | |
| Storage cost-efficiency | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock’s storage tiering automatically moves infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers, such as object storage or HDD pools. Decrease your storage cost by up to 3x with simplyblock as your alternative to Portworx. | |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durability |
|
| Simplyblock's distributed data placement and erasure coding algorithm provide a high degree of data durability and fault tolerance. Additional features such as data replication (sync and async) can increase the durability even further. |
| Efficient Data Protection |
|
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces CPU overhead with heavy workloads compared to a similar-sized Portworx cluster while also increasing data protection due to the distribution of the parity information across all cluster nodes. |
| Fault tolerance |
|
| Simplyblock’s autonomous storage engine delivers automatic self-healing while keeping the data fully available. In case of an individual disk or node failure, simplyblock will automatically and transparently recover the data onto a new disk in the background without operational impact. |
| Low RPO Disaster Recovery |
|
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. |
| Point-in-Time Recovery |
|
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. |
| Durability | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock's distributed data placement and erasure coding algorithm provide a high degree of data durability and fault tolerance. Additional features such as data replication (sync and async) can increase the durability even further. | |
| Efficient Data Protection | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces CPU overhead with heavy workloads compared to a similar-sized Portworx cluster while also increasing data protection due to the distribution of the parity information across all cluster nodes. | |
| Fault tolerance | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Simplyblock’s autonomous storage engine delivers automatic self-healing while keeping the data fully available. In case of an individual disk or node failure, simplyblock will automatically and transparently recover the data onto a new disk in the background without operational impact. | |
| Low RPO Disaster Recovery | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. | |
| Point-in-Time Recovery | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Portworx |
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. | |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial support |
|
| With your simplyblock subscription, you are entitled to commercial support directly from the developer. Benefit from our deep knowledge of the technology and years of experience in the storage world. |
| Simplicity |
|
| Simplyblock provides virtual block storage devices via NVMe over TCP, a standard that the Linux kernel automatically provides. Additionally, the Kubernetes CSI driver enables seamless integration with Kubernetes. Portworx provides a similar experience with iSCSI which still needs additional initiator software installed though. |
| Enhanced deployment options |
|
| Simplyblock provides three deployment models, a disaggregated setup where storage runs in a dedicated cluster, a hyperconverged model where storage and workloads share Kubernetes worker nodes, and a hybrid approach combining both. |
| Designed for cloud-native |
|
| Simplyblock offers easier integration with cloud environments and APIs, ideal for public and private cloud or hybrid Kubernetes and container setups. |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High IOPS density |
|
| With over 200.000 IOPS per CPU core, simplyblock provides an industry-leading performance. |
| Low latency |
|
| Simplyblock provides latencies as low as an average of 0.1 ms make simplyblock. With workload-local caching, the latency can be reduced even further to enable the lowest latency-requiring workloads too. |
| Resource efficiency |
|
| With erasure coding and our very CPU-efficient compression, simplyblock provides up to 3x better storage efficiency and decreased cost compared to a Portworx cluster with the same workload-usable capacity. Thin provisioning and deduplication can improve storage efficiency even further. Spent less with simplyblock as your Portworx alternative. |
| Intelligent tiering |
|
| Simplyblock features automatic tiered storage to enable the highest cost-efficiency for infrequently accessed data while offering unprecedented performance for IO-demanding workloads inside and outside of Kubernetes. It is fully transparent to your workload. Portworx offers only basic tiering capabilities into HDDs. |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low TCO |
|
| Up to 3x more usable storage capacity than the equivalent Portworx storage solution while delivering superior performance with simplyblock’s thin provisioning and erasure coding technologies. |
| Storage cost-efficiency |
|
| Simplyblock’s storage tiering automatically moves infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers, such as object storage or HDD pools. Decrease your storage cost by up to 3x with simplyblock as your alternative to Portworx. |
| Simplyblock | Portworx | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durability |
|
| Simplyblock's distributed data placement and erasure coding algorithm provide a high degree of data durability and fault tolerance. Additional features such as data replication (sync and async) can increase the durability even further. |
| Efficient Data Protection |
|
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces CPU overhead with heavy workloads compared to a similar-sized Portworx cluster while also increasing data protection due to the distribution of the parity information across all cluster nodes. |
| Fault tolerance |
|
| Simplyblock’s autonomous storage engine delivers automatic self-healing while keeping the data fully available. In case of an individual disk or node failure, simplyblock will automatically and transparently recover the data onto a new disk in the background without operational impact. |
| Low RPO Disaster Recovery |
|
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. |
| Point-in-Time Recovery |
|
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. |