IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs SolidFire comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe and SolidFire 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 IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,740 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
"We are very happy with the data deduplication and compression ratio that we have on the platform.""Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use.""It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time.""It simplifies storage.""The solution is very reliable.""The scalability is good.""We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years.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.""I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases."

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"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.""The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes.""Its ease of use, performance, and hardware compression is very useful feature.""The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products.""Good performance with a user-friendly UI.""There are many valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMele I have found to meet my needs. Specifically, the maintenance cycle is a standout feature of this solution. The main component of the IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the maintenance of the batteries, which have a predetermined and reliable four-year life cycle. This is in stark contrast to other solutions that may use spinning disks, which can fail unexpectedly, causing unwanted downtime and maintenance. Having a predictable maintenance cycle is a significant advantage and has made this solution a preferred choice for me.""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."

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"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT.""The quality of service for minimum iOS, to maximum iOS in a multi-terminal environment is very powerful. The SQL service feature is the best part of SolidFire.""We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""It is very easy to scale up SolidFire.""SolidFire is one of the products that does have great APIs right out-of-the-box. It works great. The tools and the other stuff seem to work a little better right out-of-the-box than the ONTAP stuff does, C-Mode.""The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us.""The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."

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Cons
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays.""I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information.""I would like to see data tiering to AWS.""The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality.""The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times.""We haven't seen ROI.""I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side.""Storage. There could be better storage."

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"I would like to have replication functionality built directly in the product, rather than having to use a separate device for this.""The ZIO interface could be improved.""There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version.""Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system. And yet, it's very necessary for all organizations' networks to have file systems. We have other systems for the file system, however, ideally, we would like to have one system with these features.""The support could be better.""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.""IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved.""The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."

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"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud.""SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness.""The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through."""They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!.""This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products.""The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products.""One of the challenges we faced while using SolidFire was that the product line that we were using in our company was discontinued.""It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."

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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 →

  • "The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."
  • "There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."
  • "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 NVMe is less than Dell. For upgrades, the Dell solutions are more expensive."
  • "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."
  • "The solution is priced well."
  • "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."
  • "Price-wise, the solution offers excellent pricing to its users. In short, the prices offered by the solution are competitive compared to similar solutions."
  • More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
  • "The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
  • "Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
  • "On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
  • "It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
  • More SolidFire 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 storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves… more »
    Top Answer:Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective. However, in the context of the Egyptian… more »
    Top Answer:It's a good system, but some vendors limit specific models from being upgraded to larger capacities. This forces us to… more »
    Top Answer:The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance… more »
    Top Answer:It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for… more »
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100
    Learn More
    IBM
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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."

    IBM FlashSystem 9100 combines the performance of flash and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) end-to-end with the reliability and innovation of IBM FlashCore technology and the rich features of IBM Spectrum Virtualize - all in a powerful 2U enterprise-class storage system. Providing intensive data driven multicloud storage capacity, FlashSystem 9100 is deeply integrated with the software defined capabilities of IBM Spectrum Storage allowing you to easily add in the multicloud solutions that best support your business.

    SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Information Not Available
    California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm30%
    Comms Service Provider20%
    Manufacturing Company20%
    Computer Software Company20%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider27%
    Retailer20%
    Construction Company7%
    Legal Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise42%
    Large Enterprise21%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise52%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise53%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. SolidFire
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 13th in All-Flash Storage with 19 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8, while SolidFire is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. SolidFire 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.