We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe and Pure Storage FlashArray 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."It has a good interface. Its configuration and flexibility are also good."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud."
"One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time. Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"NetApp AFF has helped to simplify our clients' infrastructure while still getting very high performance for their business-critical applications. One of our customers uses the vSAN environment in the release, then they use NFS for their VMware VCF environment and TKG environment. In this case, when they move to NetApp for the TKG and the VM infrastructures, they use AFF for block, CIFS, and NFS. It provides a single storage with NFS, block, and CIFS with deduplication, team provisioning, and compression. Everything is in there, which makes it very good to use."
"Technical support has been okay."
"The performance is outstanding when it's all Flash. That's the biggest bang for the buck that we get."
"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."
"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."
"The scalability is good."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes."
"In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that."
"It would be better if they just improved the performance of the system."
"Its integration could be improved."
"NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"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."
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"Deduplication and compression should be improved."
"The solution is not cheap."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"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."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"It was not proactive communication."
"Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 21st in All-Flash Storage with 3 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 44 reviews. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 9.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "A game-changer product that doesn't fail, and as compared to the prior generation products, takes about 20% of space and uses about 85% less energy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Provides protection against ransomware threats with immutable snapshots, and it is well known for its scalability, ease of use, and non-disruptive upgrades". IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerMax NVMe, IBM FlashSystem, HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN, HPE Nimble Storage and Dell Unity XT. See our IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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