simplyblock: Virtualization Storage Ledger 2026 Scorecard

	’26
Data services core
Resilience and HA	1
Performance and protocols
Hypervisor integration
Scale and topology
Data protection and DR	2
Security	3
Operations and automation
Hardware and deployment freedom
Kubernetes and containers

Part of the Virtualization Storage Ledger (edition 2026-10-16). How the scores work: methodology.

Snapshot

Type: product
Owner: simplyblock GmbH, Germany, founded 2022 by Michael Schmidt and Rob Pankow; seed round of 2.75 million USD led by 42CAP with Antler and Begin Capital; team of 20 or more (vendor)
Engine: SPDK (the vendor maintains its own fork); operator Apache 2.0 and sbcli MIT on GitHub
Licence: Community Edition free with no licence key, self-supported; Enterprise subscription priced by worker-node CPU like an OpenShift subscription, standalone storage by usable capacity; prices not published
Latest release: 26.3.2 (sbcli 2026-10-05, operator 2026-10-07); 26.4.0-beta1 (2026-10-06)
Support lifecycle: not published
Next milestone: 26.4 line with async replication for CSI-addons (beta1 on 2026-10-06); no GA date
Hypervisors: OpenShift Virtualization and KubeVirt (Enterprise tier on the pricing page); Proxmox VE through a Debian package with live migration (June 2025 press release; plug-in repository has no tagged release); VMware named only as a migration audience
Tier: Software-defined storage
Archetype: Sharp opportunist
Evidence grade: C. GitHub release lists for the operator and sbcli, the pricing page, the about page and the 2025 and 2026 press releases were read; GitHub shows day and month only and the docs release-notes page is empty. Feature claims for compression, deduplication and FIPS come from vendor pages. Nothing before June 2025 could be dated.

Scope of the scores: simplyblock entered the research as an extra candidate. It passes the tests on releases, documentation and shared HA storage, and is flagged as a young company whose control plane is Kubernetes-first. The first scored year is 2025, the first year with a dated GA release; earlier beta versions could not be dated.

Scorecard

Dimension	Score	Direction
Capability today	64.5 / 100	higher is better
Momentum since 2025	+4.1 points	higher is better
Credibility	13.0 / 25	higher is better
Commercial risk	13.0 / 25	lower is better
Technical lock-in	9.5 / 25	lower is better
Integrator fit	9.5 / 20	higher is better
AI leverage	3.0 / 20	higher is better
Ledger Index	51.3 / 100	balanced weights; see the methodology

Capability by domain, 2015 to today

Scores 0 to 5 against fixed anchors; total is weighted to 100.

Domain (weight)	2015	2019	2022	Today
Data services core (15)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3.5
Resilience and HA (15)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3.5
Performance and protocols (12)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3.5
Hypervisor integration (12)	n/a	n/a	n/a	2.5
Scale and topology (10)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3
Data protection and DR (10)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3
Security (8)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3
Operations and automation (8)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3
Hardware and deployment freedom (5)	n/a	n/a	n/a	3.5
Kubernetes and containers (5)	n/a	n/a	n/a	4
Total / 100	n/a	n/a	n/a	64.5

Year by year: 2025: 60.4 · 2026: 64.5

What moved the score

Year	Domain	Change	Points	Trigger
2026	Data protection and DR	2.5 → 3	+1.0	Operator 26.3.0: BackupRestore and BackupPolicy CRDs; async replication from a one-minute RPO announced 2026-09-29 without a GA label (half step)
2026	Operations and automation	2.5 → 3	+0.8	26.3.0 and 26.3.1: node drain coordinator, OLM manifest, alerts API; no Terraform or Ansible found
2026	Resilience and HA	3 → 3.5	+1.5	2026-09-29: synchronous metro replication with zero RPO announced as shipping without a version or GA label (half step)
2026	Security	2.5 → 3	+0.8	Operator 26.3.0: mTLS; FIPS 140-3 is a vendor claim

Direction, 2023 to 2026

Each release item carries one theme and one driver (V vision, C customer need, M market window, U upstream, P portfolio).

Date	Item	Theme	Driver
2025-06	June 2025 release: Proxmox VE integration with live migration between nodes, GCP support, Talos integration, several storage nodes per host by NUMA node	Hypervisor integration	M
2025-08	MLPerf Storage v2.0 result published (vendor submission)	AI	V
2025-11	General availability on AWS (year inferred from the newsroom listing)	Packaging	M
2026-02	Vela serverless branchable Postgres launched in beta as a second product line	Packaging	V
2026-06	Operator 26.2.7 to 26.2.8: maintenance releases	Operations	C
2026-09	Operator 26.3.0: device API, multi-cluster support, node drain coordinator, BackupRestore and BackupPolicy CRDs, mTLS, OLM manifest	Operations	C
2026-09	sbcli 26.3.1: shared subsystems aligned to one pool, 50 TiB volume limit, 100 snapshots per volume, alerts API	Scale	C
2026-09	Built-in business continuity for OpenShift Virtualization: synchronous metro replication, async replication from a one-minute RPO, live forward replication, S3 backup	Data protection	M
2026-10	sbcli 26.3.2: backup rework, three-step node removal API, device flapping logic removed	Data protection	C
2026-10	26.4.0-beta1: async replication and DR for CSI-addons, pool and subsystem affinity	Kubernetes	U

Centre of gravity: Packaging (2), Operations (2), Data protection (2)
Blind spots (no items): Data services, Resilience, Performance, Security, Hardware, Licensing
Driver mix: Vision 20%, Customer need 40%, Market window 30%, Upstream 10%, Portfolio 0%
Idea-to-need index: 0.22 (0 = demand-pulled, 1 = thesis-pushed)

Credibility: 13.0 / 25

Criterion	Score	Basis
Cadence	3	Frequent CalVer tags (26.2.7 to 26.3.2 within four months) with hotfixes days apart; no published rhythm
Roadmap transparency	2.5	Public GitHub releases with notes; the docs release-notes page is empty; no roadmap
Say-do	2.5	Few dated promises; the DR set was announced 2026-09-29 as shipping without a version or GA label
Velocity	3.5	Multi-cluster, backup CRDs and DR within one quarter
Lifecycle stability	1.5	CRD renames and parameter removals in the 26.4 beta; the old CSI repository archived; no support window published

Commercial risk: 13.0 / 25 (lower is better)

Criterion	Score	Basis
Price and licence volatility	1.5	Short history; Enterprise price fixed for the term (vendor)
Purchase constraints	2.5	Enterprise by quote, priced by worker-node CPU; free Community Edition without support
Channel and access	2	Public docs and code; Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog and AWS Marketplace; partner programme not found
Owner stability	4	Seed-stage company founded 2022 with 2.75 million USD raised
Cost of staying supported	3	Support lifecycle unknown; fast CalVer cadence

Technical lock-in: 9.5 / 25 (lower is better)

Criterion	Score	Basis
Formats	1.5	Standard NVMe-oF namespaces; proprietary on-disk format
Export path	2	Standard block devices at the host; no export tool
Stack coupling	2.5	Kubernetes-first control plane, or a Linux install with sbctl; Proxmox VE through a Debian package
Hardware / cloud coupling	1	Any Linux server with NVMe; AWS and GCP
Skills and tooling coupling	2.5	Kubernetes plus an SPDK-based CLI

Integrator fit: 9.5 / 20

Criterion	Score	Basis
Partner programme openness	2.5	Not found
Multi-tenancy and self-service	2.5	Tenancy with QoS (vendor); Control Center RBAC
API and infrastructure-as-code	3	CRDs, REST API and sbcli; Terraform not found
Skills and certification	1.5	Not found

AI leverage: 3.0 / 20

How the product uses AI, scored per year like capability. Only GA counts.

Criterion	2019	2022	Today	Latest step
AI workload infrastructure	n/a	n/a	1	2025: MLPerf Storage v2.0 submission and a GPU-utilisation benchmark on AWS (vendor claims); no AI-specific feature
AI platform stack	n/a	n/a	0	2025: None
AI-assisted operations	n/a	n/a	0	2025: None
Agent openness	n/a	n/a	2	2025: Kubernetes CRDs, REST API and sbcli; no MCP server

Year by year: 2025: 3 · 2026: 3

AI say-do, 2023 to 2026: 0 AI items announced; 0 GA, 0 still preview, 0 pending, 0 dropped. Two benchmark results were published; no AI feature has been announced.

simplyblock markets throughput for AI training with an MLPerf Storage submission and an AWS GPU-utilisation benchmark, both its own numbers. It has no AI feature, no assistant and no MCP server; agents get the CRDs and the REST API.

Reading

simplyblock scores higher than its age suggests because its feature list, taken from vendor pages, already covers erasure coding, compression, deduplication, QoS and two NVMe transports. The scores are discounted where the evidence is thin: the September 2026 DR set has no version or GA label, the Proxmox plug-in has no tagged release, and the docs have no release notes, so grade C applies. Lifecycle stability is the weakest line, with CRD renames in the 26.4 beta and no support window. A buyer should run the live migration and metro replication claims in a proof of concept and ask for the support policy in writing before paying for Enterprise.

Open questions and items to re-score

GA status and version of the 2026-09-29 DR features (metro synchronous, async, S3 backup).
Supported Proxmox VE versions and a tagged release of the simplyblock-proxmox plug-in.
Compression, deduplication and FIPS 140-3 claims: vendor pages only.
Seed round date conflict: February 2024 in trade press, 2024-07-15 on the vendor's release page.
Node limits, erasure coding schemes and KubeVirt RWX block support.
Whether the archived simplyblock-csi repository means the operator's CSI driver is the only supported one.