Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. IBM FlashSystem

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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 FlashArray X NVMe

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

A robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee

Ozair Amin

Sales Manager - Infrastructure at Synergy Computers

We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products. Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes. The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings. Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand. I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others. There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers. The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues. The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive. Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service. The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions. In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task. Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The solution provides excellent scalability."

"The most valuable feature of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is the platform and overall usage has been good. We have not had very many issues."

"It's a state of the art solution in storage systems. High-availability and performance are the strongest aspects of these machines."

"The feature I like best is the stability of the hardware."

"This is one of the most reliable and dependable products on the market."

"Storage is the most valuable feature."

"It is the most stable high-end solution in this area."

"The most valuable features are external storage virtualization and the 100 percent data guaranteed availability."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pros

"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression."

"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."

"The most valuable features in IBM FlashSystem are IOPS, performance, duplication, and compression."

"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."

"They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time."

"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."

"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."

"The solution allows for easy migrations from previous products or vendors via its embedded storage virtualization function."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The complex setup phase is an area where improvements are needed."

"In the next version I would like to see additional features like artificial intelligence and an increase in the amount of data it can store."

"The controllers in the product do not provide options for scalability."

"The software has always been lagging a bit compared to the newer features. It usually takes a cycle for it to catch up."

"The user experience is pretty bad in Hitachi. A lot of mandatory tasks take a long time to work through."

"The distributor needs more knowledgeable resources for technical support. It would be better to connect directly to the vendor in case of queries."

"The pricing is high, but the product is good. Additional features like data duplication might make it even better."

"For mission critical issues the performance is low."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform cons

"The initial setup is complex."

"Cloud file sharing is an area that needs improvement."

"The basic setup can be challenging when it comes to certain IP addresses and the configuration of the IP. You have to go in to different menus to makes changes and ensure it is stable."

"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."

"Our model does not support compression or deduplication."

"The interface of this solution could be improved."

"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight. Customers are uncomfortable with remote access, which affects automated remote support."

"I would like to have a larger disk. Right now, you can get 57 terabytes in a shelf. Once they get the larger disk and you get larger capacities, it'll be even better."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The product is expensive."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The cost price of this product is better than its competitors."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"We pay for a support contract agreement."

"It is cheap. It is not very expensive. If you decide to expand the system, the cost is pretty low as compared to other vendors, such as Dell."

"It is a little expensive."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Pricing could be better, because the cost is very high."

"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series tools are highly specialized, such as management and performance tools and the overall solution is expensive. If customers want to have a lot of data in their hands, they need to purchase several solutions."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."

"The tool is cost-efficient."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"The cost of the IBM FlashSystem is lower than the HPE solution."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."

"Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this."

"Among IBM, Dell EMC, and Pure Storage, IBM is the cheapest. The price is also based on our location, the size of our entity, and our regular annual purchases from them. We are a very big IBM customer, so we normally get very high discounts. We are not a big customer of Pure Storage. We don't buy that much from Pure Storage per year. Everything is included in the price. There is no extra license for different functions."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user277539

Vice President, Products and Services with 51-200 employees

Jul 30, 2015

Hybrid storage, all-flash storage, and hyper-converged products offer software capable of running on commodity hardware, providing a better end-user experience at a reduced price.

Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/ Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the…

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or...

What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The interface management and monitoring need improvement. Although I receive emails from Hitachi Virtual Storage Plat...

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete ...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 30% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 12% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 23% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Download Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform product report

IBM FlashSystem

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series

IBM Storwize

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

RETHINK YOUR DEFINITION OF SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

With adaptive, guaranteed data reduction and a 100% data-availability guarantee, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F series helps you tackle complicated business challenges. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) VSP F series delivers up to 4.8M IOPS with sub-millisecond response times.
Featuring legendary Hitachi reliability, VSP F series arrays are backed by the industries only 100% availability guarantee. For these reasons, 80% of the Fortune 500 choose Hitachi all-flash arrays to accelerate the performance of mission-critical applications like Oracle, SAP, Virtualization, Microsoft apps etc. With over 350 patents in flash technology, Hitachi’s innovative mix of flash hardware and software accelerates ROI with enterprise-class reliability and performance.

Hitachi Vantara

IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

IBM

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. IBM FlashSystem