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IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (26th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (11th)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (2nd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe2.3%
Dell PowerStore13.3%
NetApp AFF10.5%
Other73.9%
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)8.9%
VxRail9.6%
VMware vSAN7.7%
Other73.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Yacine Bouakttaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer North Africa at Huawei
High-speed data processing has improved billing cycles but performance headroom still needs growth
In terms of improvement regarding IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, I can compare with other competitors, especially regarding solution architecture. Data resiliency can be a concern because IBM can reach up to only four controllers, while others like Dell EMC can support up to eight controllers with better resiliency without service staff. Additionally, the SBC one benchmark is a storage performance console that stresses different storage solutions like Dell EMC and NetApp. It generates metrics of IOPS and latency, showing that the competition can have two million IOPS, significantly outperforming IBM's capabilities. As for the capability of scaling, we can see the limitations in reaching such high-performance levels.
JD
Dsi at OFFICE PUBLIC DE L HABITAT DE ROUEN
Hyper-converged storage has improved performance and now supports high redundancy for our VMs
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) was transparent because we were on a regular infrastructure before. We went on NCI and were able to improve performance, but it did not really change how things worked. The performance was really better for applications and access times to the data. I regularly looked at the analytics to see what was going on in my servers and what it was saying to optimize performance. It was pretty interesting because it could analyze and give insights on how to get things working better. In the latest versions, the Prism interface has been replaced by Prism Central. This requires another machine to be deployed to manage the servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's simple, powerful, and ready to use."
"The cost of Pure FlashArray is a bit high compared to peers, but its sustainability and features justify the price."
"Very stable; no worries about how much it can handle."
"The most important feature of any storage array is its reliability, measured by its uptime."
"I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"The snapshot feature is valuable. It protects data based on the policy."
"We tested our VDI environment on this array and it performed flawlessly and boosted the user experience."
"The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."
"IBM FlashSystem provides the same software on each box, including virtualized solutions."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"IBM FlashSystem is an excellent product."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."
"It is a high-performance product that serves our requests well."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."
"Our environment is now consolidated into one solution, making it easier to get support because we no longer need to go to multiple vendors and can just have one point of contact."
"Data locality provides super-fast data access and ultra-low latency."
"One major thing that comes up again and again is stability. Our downtime is literally based on hardware upgrades that need to be done. Acropolis is very, very user friendly. You don't have to physically have a super IT guy to manage the system. You can actually give it to a younger guy to manage and there won't be problems. And if he makes a mistake, it's very, very easy to fall back and sort out the mistake."
"I like NCI's dashboard. If there are any infrastructure issues, we'll get alerts inside the dashboard. NCI provides a single platform for managing all of our databases. We are running SQL and Linux databases."
"The solution is well integrated with other vendors."
"My advice to anyone considering Nutanix Acropolis AOS is that you won't go wrong."
"We couldn't have chosen better, as we were able to reduce our data center footprint by two-thirds, reduced the management tools and teams, eliminated the SAN complexity, increased the IOPS metrics, and increased the overall performance by 40%."
"From a performance perspective, I have not had any issue as of now and from a latency and performance position, it has done quite well."
 

Cons

"The latest release contains bugs that shouldn't be in a production environment. Two incidents impacted our client, including hardware-related bugs. They need to be more cautious in testing before they release."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"It can go down from time to time, but it's been pretty solid so far."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"Improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial."
"The support could be better."
"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system."
"I would like to see IBM products become more affordable because they can be quite expensive, which limits their accessibility to a broader customer base."
"In the future, the limitation is upgrading the same storage by adding a shelf to the desk. There is a limitation in the backend connection between the storage and extended shelf."
"In terms of improvement regarding IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, I can compare with other competitors, especially regarding solution architecture."
"Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex."
"As of now, Acropolis and VMware cannot talk to each other."
"The software-defined networking should be improved. It is quite substandard as compared to the VMware variant."
"The solution does not lend support when we connect with a few dongle licenses."
"We would like to see it support other systems outside of the compute stack from which it was built."
"As far as what could be improved, they have some built-in backup functions already, but any built-in isolation features like vision security features and free LAN features become a security concern."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with external storage using the fiber channel."
"The reporting section of the dashboard could be improved to include more detailed reporting about the servers."
"The software-defined networking should be improved. It is quite substandard as compared to the VMware variant. The software-defined networking is quite limited, and we usually use other products to do that. We're aware that Nutanix is working on that and will be coming out with better solutions, and we can't wait because to do a fully software-defined architecture, the abstraction layer needs not only software-defined storage, which you have, but also the software-defined networking piece."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."
"Compared to other solutions, the cost of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable, with a one-time payment of around $70,000. However, additional support is available for $25,000 for three years. The overall maintenance cost is steep."
"It's a lot less costly than cloud storage. People get surprised by the cost of cloud storage, which is extremely expensive and four or five times the cost of storage on-premises. People don't realize what they're spending on storage until they start getting bills from Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This is a good way to reduce your cloud storage expenses."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele can be considered affordable when taking into account the operating system that is required for it to function properly. This operating system, which is licensed by IBM, may carry a higher cost, but it is worth the investment for larger corporate entities, such as insurance companies, Fortune Five companies, and banks, who make up a significant portion of their target market. The FlashSystems are designed for larger corporations and multinational enterprises, and may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller businesses."
"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"The solution's price is competitive."
"Price-wise, the solution offers excellent pricing to its users. In short, the prices offered by the solution are competitive compared to similar solutions."
"Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure could be cheaper. It's costly to upgrade the solution. There are no additional costs aside from the license."
"The product’s licensing fee is moderately expensive."
"Our customers are on three years license to use Nutanix Acropolis AOS. The price of the solution includes all features and support."
"The pricing is fair for the package."
"Cost-wise, it is very good. It is like the hypervisor cost is not there. We only need to pay for the system and AOS licenses."
"Nutanix Acropolis AOS is affordable, it has good value. The final price depends a lot on the hardware used, it's an appliance in the end. Whether you use HPE as the hardware vendor or Supermicro as the hardware vendor, it really depends on what hardware is used which is the main cost."
"We just have a support license for Nutanix."
"If a customer has been using VMware, the difference in pricing is lower. However, if they are looking to use the VMware, the price can be much higher depending on the license."
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Comparison Review

it_user244362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees
Aug 30, 2015
Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod
Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business93
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise88
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
The licensing cost for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe can be seen as a bit expensive compared to competitors. You can eith...
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
In terms of improvement regarding IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, I can compare with other competitors, especially regardi...
What is your primary use case for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
There are many advantages that we have with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe against, for example, IBM full flash systems an...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...
What makes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) worth using?
NCI is a product with many tools and services but the one that, in my opinion, makes it better than similar products...
Have you received reliable help from Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's support when you contacted them?
NCI is one of the best out there. For any software, no matter how good it is, technical support makes it or breaks it...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nutanix and others in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.