We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and NetApp AFF 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."They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"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."
"My rating of Pure Storage is a ten out of ten because of the price for performance and footprint - the overall value."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"It is noticeably easier to manage than other appliances that we have."
"We are a 100% satisfied with the stability of the solution."
"The storage system is one of the best in the world."
"The solution allows for easy migrations from previous products or vendors via its embedded storage virtualization function."
"This solution is convenient, user-friendly, convenient and reliable."
"Virtualization of external storage, while adding cache and speed to the external storage."
"The performance of the All-Flash System is very good. There is more enhanced performance and data production in the solution, which I appreciate."
"The GUI is very easy and performance is also good."
"This solution is very stable."
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"With the new version, they have the FabricPool which works for me. I can extend the hyperscaler storage."
"It scales well, probably more so than the FAS. Because of the storage density with the SSDs, we can't buy enough SSDs to max one out."
"Multi-protocol is the most valuable feature for us. It does everything in one system: sifts, EBES, ISCSI, and fiber channel. Other systems don't do all that."
"If the AutoSupport is well configured, then you need not to do a monitoring. You will get call and mail when any issue is completed."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"Switching to AFF has improved the performance of a lot of our virtual machines in a VMware environment. The number of support tickets that we receive has fallen to almost zero because of this, so it's been a real help for our virtual server support team."
"The most valuable features are the speed and performance for our transactional workloads for our databases."
"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."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"The way Pure Storage does the controller storage warranty or replacement has been an issue for some people who just replace the controllers every couple of years, and that's where some of the confusion with pricing and support has come in. They should be clear on the way the controller replacements happen, as it is important to know whether or not you can get a good return on them, because it can be a little confusing."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"It was not proactive communication."
"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."
"Replication features need improvement. Currently, they are there in the product, but I'm not sure as to how it works exactly."
"It could be easier to implement."
"Customization features must be improved."
"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."
"Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies."
"The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume."
"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."
"I would like to see an improvement in the high availability of the NFS and CIFS sharing during upgrade and patching; this would help to avoid downtime."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"I would like to see aggregate level encryption in the next release. This is critical."
"One of the features that I am looking for, which is already in the works, is to be able to take my code and automatically move it to the cloud."
"Implementation needs to be improved."
"Going forward, I would like improvement in the response latencies, capacity size, cache, and controller size."
"To be more competitive in the industry, they can develop deduplication, compression, and smarter features in the same array instead of all-flash."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, HPE Nimble Storage and Dell PowerMax NVMe, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp ASA. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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