IBM FlashSystem vs IBM System Storage DS5000 Series comparison

IBM FlashSystem vs. IBM System Storage DS5000 Series

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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

IBM FlashSystem

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

111

Ranking in other categories

NAS (4th), All-Flash Storage (13th)

IBM System Storage DS5000 S...

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 20.1%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM System Storage DS5000 Series is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

Featured Reviews

Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

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Gustavo Rosello

Technological Infrastructure Manager at Mercado Argentino de Valores S.A.

Provides solid hardware and ROI to users

Companies or groups of business units are growing fast. We have perhaps between four and five more people than what it was two years ago, so the systems are increasing, and now we are working with RPA in some of our processes for automation, especially wherever it is mandatory in the financial branch, like a common investment fund and the investment in action or where there are other products. Our market is directly related to small business. We are working with companies where data translation is needed or where invoices, specifically credit invoices, the negotiation of cheques, or a doc that shows receipt of money, which you can sell at a future date. We have a sub-warehouse that has a back office in the cloud to use all operations related to creditors so that the company can increase its share in the markets. I think that we may need something on-premises in the future. The trends indicate that users are returning to on-premises systems because of the high cost of public clouds. We are looking for a better data center. In Argentina, hardware costs are high, but now, it is a great investment. We are slowly planning to expand the tool. In the USA, when it comes to object-first devices, there is a cost of 48,000 USD for 128 TB, but in Argentina, the cost is 64,000 USD for 84 TB. In Argentina, we have a lot of taxes, and the government is in the process of reducing these taxes, but now we have a situation associated with our economy. Out of 100 companies, only two are seeking employees. We are waiting for the recovery of the economy, but everything here is expensive apart from the salaries.

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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 valuable features for us are the extra add-ons, such as the FIM provisioning, the compression, the disaster recovery capabilities, and the storage pooling functions."

"The FlashSystem 900 consistently delivers performance below 1ms for read/write. This performance is essential for an effective SVC stretch-cluster configuration across two datacenters, and presenting active-active storage to the customer."

"The speed and the ease of installation are the most valuable features."

"IBM FlashSystem is the best solution for storage virtualization."

"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."

"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."

"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."

"The performance of the solution is noteworthy."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

"The most valuable aspects of the DS5000 Series are its high availability (almost six nines), stability, cost-effectiveness, and the unique IBM FlashCore modules, which other competitors lack. These FlashCore modules enable local operations on the drive itself without a performance overhead, a significant advantage."

"The solution is stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten."

"The tool is very stable...The solution's scalability is very good."

"The stability is excellent."

"The stability and performance of the drive are the most valuable."

"I like that it's stable, and I am satisfied with it. We have had some issues, but that is normal in IT. IBM System Storage DS5000 works fine most of the time."

"You can easily virtualize and share the storage."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

More IBM System Storage DS5000 Series pros

Cons

"The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem."

"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."

"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."

"The GUI needs some improvement."

"The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."

"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."

"IBM FlashSystem 5300 needs improvement in its deduplication and compression features."

"Enterprise data storage needs improvement. They should create a feature for data and file storage."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

"The initial setup is hard."

"If you decide to expand the IBM System Storage DS5000 Series by adding an extension frame to the controller, you won't have the ability to incorporate flash storage models directly. Instead, you'll need to work with SSD which may be slightly slower."

"The product should improve its support."

"I don't like the storage now, as it is in the same data center. I want to separate the data center from the backup to another floor of the building or outside the building in a data center of another provider."

"I find the solution isn't so easy to understand. A user must be quite knowledgeable in the product. It isn't like HPE 3PAR, which you can use quite easily without too much storage experience."

"The amount of storage could be increased."

"IBM is not always as agile as other competitors when it is about cloud integration and user interfaces. They're not renewing themselves very often. They have been slow to evolve from the old GUI. The user interface should be improved, especially regarding performance analysis, which has always been a little bit weak as compared to other solutions. As a global solution, it lacks the feature for containing integration object storage. Even though they have now started to offer this feature, it is quite young and not as developed as some other vendors. There are also no mass possibilities at all. They have a lot of competition in the mid-range segment. They need to have a NAS gateway or something like that. It doesn't specifically need to be integrated into the controllers that are keys to the gateway."

"The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

More IBM System Storage DS5000 Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution requires a license and could be less expensive."

"Pricing can be considered as per market competition."

"The price is a little bit high so is rated a six out of ten."

"I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable."

"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."

"It pays to go back and get the best price you can from your supplier. The first offer is not always at the best discount."

"The solution has good pricing, but it is not cheaper."

"There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

"We mounted all the virtualization with less than 1,50,000 USD. We are negotiating to get the tool for 800,000,000 Argentine Pesos. The tool is expensive, but it is worth the money."

"The basic functionalities of the product are provided within the normal license, but users can opt for some optional features from IBM's licensing model."

"This product is priced well. The ratio between cost and productivity is very high and we're happy with it."

"It's an expensive solution."

"It is a competitively priced solution. The cost can vary depending on whether it is purchased from the hardware or the software departments."

"Its price is fair. IBM is quite fair in price when you compare it with others. We also use Hitachi internally, and Hitachi is always a little bit more expensive. NetApp is also a bit more expensive. So, IBM has good positioning in terms of price."

"Compared to other vendors, I think it's expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

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

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in banking, often use the latest devices as they are upgrading, indicating they do not ...

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete volumes, especially if they are compressed or deduplicated.

What do you like most about IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?

The solution is reliable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?

The price fits well with the proposal of this equipment. Although IBM is not cheap, the cost fits well with the propose.

What needs improvement with IBM System Storage DS5000 Series?

There are some functions that can only be used in prompt mode. If these functions could be shown in the graphical interface, it could be better.

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More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

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Product Reports

IBM FlashSystem

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

IBM System Storage DS5000 Series

Download IBM System Storage DS5000 Series product report

Also Known As

IBM Storwize

System Storage DS5000 series

Overview

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.

IBM

DS5000 storage systems are equally adept at supporting transactional applications such as databases and online transaction processing (OLTP), throughput-intensive applications such as high-performance computing (HPC) and rich media, and concurrent workloads for consolidation and virtualization. DS5000 series storage systems can support service level agreements (SLAs) for the most common operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Apple Macintosh.
With drive-level encryption, DS5000 series storage systems support affordable data security with no performance penalty. The DS5000 storage system’s multiple replication options, drive-level encryption, and persistent cache backup can help ensure that any data in cache is captured and safe in the event of a power outage.

IBM

Sample Customers

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

Engine Informštica

IBM FlashSystem vs. IBM System Storage DS5000 Series