Huawei OceanStor vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Feb 21, 2023

We performed a comparison between Huawei OceanStor and IBM FlashSystem based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Although a few users experienced difficulties setting up IBM FlashSystem, the prevailing opinion for both products is that they are easy to deploy.
  • Features: Huawei OceanStor is an easy-to-operate scalable product with valuable features for management data performance, hybrid applications and storage, and availability. The solution needs to improve the vendor integration and configuration and the user interface. IBM FlashSystem is a stable and scalable, mature solution with the most valuable features for performance, compression, connectivity, and deduplication. Among its drawbacks are its design and the limitation of certain features.
  • Pricing: Huawei OceanStor has a complex licensing system that may increase its price too much. IBM FlashSystem is in the upper price range but reviewers see improvement in the cost-to-value ratio with new upgrades.

  • Service and Support: The support for Huawei OceanStor is described as good but needs improvements in its communication. IBM FlashSystem’s support is very good and provides helpful responses in a timely manner.

Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, IBM FlashSystem came out ahead of Huawei OceanStor. Although both products have valuable features, our reviewers found that Huawei OceanStor has complex licensing that can make the solution too expensive and needs to improve their tech support’s communication.

To learn more, read our detailed Huawei OceanStor vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 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
"It helps to simplify storage because it has an easy front-end to access everything.""Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation.""The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data.""The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it.""The most valuable feature is its data reduction.""One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage.""We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us.""It's extremely stable and has good performance."

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"The solution works well for non-critical applications that do not require a heavy workload. The tool's all features are valuable.""Great value for money.""It is easy to use, deploy, communicate and manage this solution.""This is a stable storage system.""The solution is easy to scale as needed.""The solution is scalable.""Generally stable with good technical support.""Huawei OceanStor is designed with built-in high availability features, such as fault tolerance, ensuring consistent data access and minimizing downtime."

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"User friendly management interface.""Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data.""The most valuable feature is that is supports a high IOPS rate.""The most valuable features are flexibility and performance.""IBM FlashSystem has an easy to use GUI, similar to the IBM Storewize family, which make it one of the best flash storage systems in the market.""It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently.""This solution is very stable.""The price-performance ratio is most valuable."

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Cons
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable.""They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth.""With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process.""What it needs to do is work a little closer with solutions, like VMware, so it understands the particular workloads that are on it. Today, it does not understand the applications which are running against it.""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.""Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included.""I would like to see data tiering to AWS.""Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."

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"The speed has room for improvement.""The security could be a bit more robust.""In the future release, Huawei OceanStor should improve on what they already have. It is a good solution.""The main concern is regarding the usability of the data storage.""Its data replication features work slowly for nodes.""The duration of the built-in snapshot technology must be improved.""The tool's performance is slow for DBs. We plan to move from Huawei OceanStor to Pure Storage. Its customer service is not good.""The deployment took a little longer."

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"Events/log analysis tools.""The customer's expectations are what they get on the cloud, they're expecting even in the on-premises deployments, going forward.""There could be some extra features added.""I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful.""IBM could do more marketing and improve brand awareness. I had never heard of this product until a colleague told me about it. FlashSystem could add a few features, but it would probably increase the price. For example, Pure Storage offers instant snapshotting and partitioning. That would be nice to have, but I think the cost would go up.""The solution's pricing is a bit high so there is room for improvement.""The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume.""Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies."

More IBM FlashSystem Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This product value matches its price."
  • "It's roughly affordable."
  • "Pricing is very fair."
  • "Huawei OceanStor is priced very well but is a bit complicated."
  • "The price of the solution could be less expensive. However, there are not any licensing costs."
  • "We pay a monthly licensing fee for this solution. The price could be less expensive."
  • "The pricing depends on the features the customer wants, such as storage, RAM, and processors, but in general, Huawei is much cheaper compared to Dell and Cisco."
  • "The price of Huawei OceanStor should be less expensive. It is expensive at the moment."
  • More Huawei OceanStor Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing can be considered as per market competition."
  • "The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array."
  • "It pays to go back and get the best price you can from your supplier. The first offer is not always at the best discount."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."
  • "For a yearly license, it is about $100,000. There are no additional costs. The entire system is included."
  • "The integration is already included in the license cost of IBM FlashSystem. The integration is very easy. You get the IBM storage core with all software, firmware, and upgrades. EMC provides the features in the box, but they are not free for customers. There is a licensing cost for features. We have yearly licensing, but IBM has also provided a new option where you pay as you go. They provide a big box, and I pay, for example, for 10 terabytes. If I exceed 10 terabytes, IBM will charge for the new storage after 10 terabytes. It is a good opportunity in the market for using the storage as a cloud and paying as you go."
  • 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:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Top Answer:The duration of the built-in snapshot technology must be improved. We must be able to keep the snapshots for a specific… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version. In… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System, OceanStor 18000 V3 Series Storage Systems, OceanStor 6800 V3 Storage System
    IBM Storwize
    Learn More
    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."

    OceanStor Dorado V3 is the industry's first all-flash storage that puts NVMe into commercial use. It is specially designed for enterprises' mission-critical businesses, meeting the most-demanding performance and reliability requirements of databases, VDI, server virtualization, and SAP HANA.

    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 Huawei OceanStor
    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
    Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc
    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 Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization32%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Recreational Facilities/Services Company18%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business69%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise48%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    Huawei OceanStor vs. IBM FlashSystem
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei OceanStor vs. IBM FlashSystem and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Huawei OceanStor is ranked 12th in All-Flash Storage with 30 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 105 reviews. Huawei OceanStor is rated 8.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Huawei OceanStor writes "User-friendly and robust storage solution with good performance and easy setup". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". Huawei OceanStor is most compared with Huawei OceanStor Dorado, NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT and Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Dell Unity XT, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and HPE Nimble Storage. See our Huawei OceanStor 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.