IBM FlashSystem vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 3, 2022
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
IBM FlashSystem
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
NAS (5th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 7.2%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
Unique Categories:
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
3.9%
NAS
6.6%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
17.9%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

DA
May 21, 2021
Reasonably priced, scales well, and offers good stability
We primarily use the solution for cluster applications and databases. We use the solution on the DBA and those that use double machines Being able to have broken files on-site on the same appliance is quite useful. The newer version of NVME has a really noticeable difference in quality versus the…
Mike Bellemans - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 9, 2023
It's proven technology in a compact, affordable solution
I work for a food manufacturer, and we use FlashSystem to provide always-on, high-availability data storage. It's an active-active configuration where storage data is actively synced between two sites.  FlashSystem offers proven technology in a compact package.  IBM could do more marketing and…
BP
Sep 3, 2019
Easy to use, great technical support, and saves us a lot of space
Our primary use for this solution is storage. We have a private cloud deployment Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space.  The most valuable feature of this solution is the support. This solution is easy to use. The price of this solution could be…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"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 solution is scalable."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."
"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."
"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."
"The most valuable features are, of course, the virtualization of the storage, the performance, and the compression."
"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."
"This solution is very stable."
"Virtualization of external storage, while adding cache and speed to the external storage."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The speed is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."
"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases. The scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
 

Cons

"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."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."
"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 solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel."
"They don't offer subscription-based payments."
"If you want to expand, you cannot expand the disc enclosure. You have to buy a total individual node. Sometimes, this is difficult because we are just looking for capacity and not a node."
"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"
"The security features can be improved such that the encryption does not affect performance in any way."
"The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it."
"The file functionality could be better."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"It is a bit expensive."
"We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"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."
"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."
"Among IBM, Dell EMC, and Pure Storage, IBM is the cheapest. The price is also based on our location, the size of our entity, and our regular annual purchases from them. We are a very big IBM customer, so we normally get very high discounts. We are not a big customer of Pure Storage. We don't buy that much from Pure Storage per year. Everything is included in the price. There is no extra license for different functions."
"The tool is cost-efficient."
"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."
"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."
"My customers got the IBM FlashSystem bundle offer. It was a one-time purchase for three years of service. The price would depend on the storage size and could reach between $25,000 to $55,000."
"There is always room for negotiation."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"I don't know the exact cost but it's around $1,000."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user277539 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 30, 2015
Hybrid storage, all-flash storage, and hyper-converged products offer software capable of running on commodity hardware, providing a better end-user experience at a reduced price.
Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/ Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
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 se...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?
I rate the pricing a three out of ten. The tool is cost-efficient. The prices are good.
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?
Customization features must be improved.
Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
IBM Storwize
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
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
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.