IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs Zadara comparison

IBM and Zadara are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. IBM is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.6, while Zadara is ranked #33 with an average rating of 7.5. IBM holds a 0.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to Zadara’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Zadara and IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe compete in the storage solutions category. Zadara has the upper hand in pricing and customer support, while IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is preferred for its advanced features and perceived value.

Features: Zadara is known for its scalability, flexibility, and multi-cloud support. It offers a pay-as-you-go model and comprehensive data protection features. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe excels in high performance, integration capabilities, and advanced storage functionalities, making it ideal for large-scale enterprise operations.

Room for Improvement: Zadara users mention the need for improved performance metrics, reporting tools, and better integration with legacy systems. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe users point out the complexity of the system, a steep learning curve, and desire simpler management tools and more intuitive configuration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zadara users report a straightforward deployment process with strong customer service support. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, while offering comprehensive support, presents a more complex deployment process due to its advanced features.

Pricing and ROI: Zadara's flexible pricing model is billed as a service, making it cost-effective with lower upfront costs and predictable expenses. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe requires a higher initial investment but offers significant ROI through enhanced performance and long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Zadara Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Zadara

July 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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MohammedIsmail

Datacenter Manager at Tracker Connect

Enhanced storage performance and an easy setup with compression challenges

We use IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe as a storage device in the IT industry The features I find most valuable include its use for storage and performance. The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could also be improved as it's been…

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Kirubel Behailu

Cloud System Engineer at cloud251

Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience

Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The latency is good."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The most valuable feature is the speed."

"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."

"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."

"IBM FlashSystem provides the same software on each box, including virtualized solutions."

"What I like about the product are its high availability, maximum efficiency in performance, and its ability to handle a high level of I/O operations."

"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 high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."

"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."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pros

"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."

"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."

"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"The processing is much faster with this product."

"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."

"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."

More Zadara pros

Cons

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

"We need better data deduplication."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."

"The storage system itself should have built-in capabilities for different ransomware attacks."

"The solution's compression feature could be better."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to have replication functionality built directly in the product, rather than having to use a separate device for this."

"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."

"Deduplication and compression should be improved."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe cons

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."

"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."

"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."

"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."

"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."

"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."

"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 is priced well."

"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."

"The tool's pricing is competitive."

"The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe pricing and cost advice

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves ne...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The tool is expensive, though I do not know the specific licensing costs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?

The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best. Furthermore, support from the partner could al...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 24% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 26% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 26% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 23% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Hitachi VSP E Series vs IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 17% of the time

MinIO vs Zadara

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs Zadara

Compared 8% of the time

Wasabi vs Zadara

Compared 8% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe

August 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Zadara

July 2025

Download Zadara product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

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.

IBM

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Zadara

July 2025

Free Report: IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Zadara

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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