We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and SolidFire 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."All our junior partners can administer the storage arrays. It is simple and easy to use. We don't have to dedicate a whole team of full time people to work on it."
"The solution offers amazing performance."
"NVMe data storage platform that's easy to set up and easy to use. It's stable, with a lower response time, and quick technical support."
"The reliability is very good."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"The support team is available all the time and they seem to know what they are doing."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space."
"Flash disk with Easy Tier option"
"The performance of IBM FlashSystem is very good. The new technology and high throughput have given us more confidence in the solution. The management of the system has improved and we can control the monitoring system alerts and multiple FlashSystems with the Enterprise Cloud Edition, which is free. The migration of recently stored data to a new flash is much easier. You can move your data because you can utilize it externally."
"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."
"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."
"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 Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"The system efficiency is excellent overall."
"We can just buy them, scale them as we need on demand, and we don't have to spend so many front end cycles on designing the architecture."
"I would say in terms of architecture and in terms of functionality, the product is quite good."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"If you buy the solution for its specific purpose it will work well."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."
"It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"It was not proactive communication."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"This solution needs a management console where we are alerted to issues and can report them, or escalate them through email or another method."
"The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem."
"It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier."
"The basic setup can be challenging when it comes to certain IP addresses and the configuration of the IP. You have to go in to different menus to makes changes and ensure it is stable."
"The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it."
"Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."
"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud."
"A little better segregation of the multi-tenancy. Right now, it's just VLAN-specific, that's all you can do."
"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
"We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"The scalability of HCI or SolidFire as such isn't a concern, but when you compare it to PowerMax or NetApp AFF series devices, scalability is a concern because it's only the drives that are connected to the nodes. We don't have any shelf connectivity."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"One of the challenges we faced while using SolidFire was that the product line that we were using in our company was discontinued."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while SolidFire is rated 8.2. 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 SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. SolidFire report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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