IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."

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

"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 all-flash storage has tier replication capabilities."

"FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package."

"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space."

"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."

"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."

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

"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."

"The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range."

"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

"I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse."

"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."

"The management software is very good."

"The replication and mirroring features are very good."

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

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"We need better data deduplication."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

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

"The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent."

"One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"

"The product needs to improve their scalability."

"Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection."

"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."

"There could be some extra features added."

"The marketing could be improved."

"They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"This solution has limited storage."

"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."

"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."

"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

"NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate."

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

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

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

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced it would be better."

"I'd rate the basic licensing and the Virtualize software a ten out of ten, and the extra Spectrum and other an eight out of ten."

"Its price is very good."

"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."

"The price depends of the technology that our customers need. The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added."

"You purchase it as a bundle and the price is comparable."

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

"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."

"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."