IBM FlashSystem vs SolidFire comparison

"I appreciate the performance."

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

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

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

"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."

"At the FlashSystem level, customers are especially fond of multi-tier and distributed rate systems, particularly the dynamic rate six arrays."

"The valuable features of IBM FlashSystem include flash copy mapping, which is a procedure to collect instant point-in-time data for testing real data."

"IBM's technical support do excellent work."

"IBM FlashSystem has been stable in our operations."

"One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market."

"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."

"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."

"The square footage for doing development is at a premium when dealing with government networks. To be able to put a lot of IOPS in a lot of high-speed performing drives in a very small location which requires very little HVAC with very little power, it is very valuable to us."

"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."

"We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that."

"The quality of service for minimum iOS, to maximum iOS in a multi-terminal environment is very powerful. The SQL service feature is the best part of SolidFire."

"The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential."

"It's a very compact device. For a medium-sized business, it's very helpful because the device is efficient and very fast."

"If we get complaints about any kind of performance metric issues, whether it's storage related or something on the virtual side, we use it to pinpoint what the actual issue is."

"The simplicity of it."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

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

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

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

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."

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

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

"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."

"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."

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

"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 marketing could be improved."

"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."

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

"The upgrade process could be better."

"They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is."

"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."

"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."

"One of the challenges we faced while using SolidFire was that the product line that we were using in our company was discontinued."

"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."

"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI."

"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud."

"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."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

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

"The product is expensive."

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"The pricing is competitive in our country."

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

"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."

"We have no issues with the price as it is very competitive."

"IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."

"The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."

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

"Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this."

"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."

"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."

"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."

"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"

"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."