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.
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.
"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"We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years.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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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.
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.