HPE Primera vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE Primera and IBM FlashSystem based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: September 2023).
734,156 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions.""The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic.""I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities.""On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.""This is the best all-flash storage array on the market.""Provides fast access and is user-friendly.""The scalability is good.""FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

More Pure Storage FlashArray Pros →

"The most valuable feature is an all-flash system, which means the data access speed is amazing while the latency is almost nothing, and it can deliver IOPS up to 16,000.""HPE Primera is scalable.""When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution.""It is a stable and scalable solution with quick and efficient storage capability.""The high availability was most valuable because they come with what's called 100% data availability. With special terms, they license and guarantee 100% data availability. That was probably one of the key features or components that HPE was offering with that model.""We sold Primera to a public university, and they're happy with it. They have been using it for about four months with no significant problems.""HPE Primera is an all-flash storage product that's very stable and has a higher storage capacity. It can also give better ROI compared to NetApp.""The most valuable feature of HPE Primera is its performance and simple replication."

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"IBM's technical support do excellent work.""This solution is really user friendly. It also offers good performance and is highly reliable.""The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person.""The price-performance ratio is most valuable.""Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself.""This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable.""No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance.""The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system."

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Cons
"There was some complexity in the initial setup.""Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations.""The price should be lower.""We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile.""Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features.""From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable.""Automation could be simplified.""The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."

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"We used to receive hardware errors a lot of times. The ambient temperatures rise rate was approximately 35 to 55 degrees, but when it was approximately 27 or 28, we used to get errors a lot.""The solution has good performance but it could improve further.""The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors.""The initial setup is not straightforward.""I would like to see improved training offered with HPE Primera.""Price is always important in Turkey, so HPE could lower the price to keep it competitive. It's not as competitive as other solutions in this market.""The solution could prove the reporting.""We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."

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"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it.""The price is very costly.""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.""The interface of this solution could be improved.""This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done.""Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies.""A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues.""The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • "I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
  • "You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
  • "The best features come included without any additional cost."
  • "We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
  • "The price of the solution is not expensive."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."
  • "HPE Primera service is cost-effective."
  • "Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."
  • "The license for HPE Primera is all-inclusive."
  • "The cost is $75,000 for a three-year contract."
  • "HPE Primera is less expensive than HPE Alletra."
  • "The price of the solution should be cheaper."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More HPE Primera Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The cost of the IBM FlashSystem is lower than the HPE solution."
  • "The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from."
  • "The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."
  • "The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."
  • "There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."
  • "Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."
  • "This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • More IBM FlashSystem Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Top Answer:FlashArray is a premium solution, having all-inclusive licensing including future functionalities, and being end/to/end… more »
    Top Answer:HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. The… more »
    Top Answer:HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective… more »
    Top Answer:The product has better replication features than the previous products.
    Top Answer:FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package.
    Top Answer:I rate FlashSystem seven out of 10 for affordability. It's a great value for the price.
    Top Answer:IBM could do more marketing and improve brand awareness. I had never heard of this product until a colleague told me… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Primera
    IBM Storwize
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    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
    HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

    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.

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Learn more about HPE Primera
    Want to Hear More?

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Information Not Available
    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
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization37%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm31%
    Computer Software Company19%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm27%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise44%
    Large Enterprise40%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise36%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise44%
    Large Enterprise39%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise56%
    Buyer's Guide
    HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    734,156 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HPE Primera is ranked 9th in All-Flash Storage with 18 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 35 reviews. HPE Primera is rated 8.2, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of HPE Primera writes "A rock-solid, enterprise-class product that provides 100% availability and is backed by an excellent company". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "Reliable and easy to configure with simple data migration capabilities ". HPE Primera is most compared with HPE 3PAR StoreServ, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF and Dell Unity XT, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, Dell Unity XT and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. See our HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.