IBM FlashSystem vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, IBM and others in NAS.
To learn more, read our detailed NAS Report (Updated: November 2023).
745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance.""IBM FlashSystem is flexible, quick, and has a solid design.""The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security.""It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently.""The technical support for this solution is good. They used to help us when the motherboard of Power Systems broke. Their response times are really fast.""IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution.""The pricing is reasonable.""The most valuable feature in demand is virtualization and its support storage of virtualization features."

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"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is stable.""VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good.""VMware vSAN is easy to configure, with basic functionality and the customer can maintain the solution.""The main advantage is that it's all in the box, with VMware vCenter Server product.""The feature we have found most valuable is the compatibility of VMware products with VCF and VMware Cloud Foundation.""The implementation is simple, it was very straightforward. It took us approximately three weeks because it was installed in four locations.""It is user-friendly, and its performance is good.""High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."

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Cons
"A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues.""This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage.""Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies.""The product needs to improve their scalability.""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 storage capacity of this solution could be improved.""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.""The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."

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"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.""As a software-based product, it requires a lot of system resources.""They should make the software updates easier. We should be able to upgrade it more easily.""If we have some complicated issues, you have to use the command lines interface. Not everything is possible to be fixed in the GUI. This is a drawback, that some things have to be fixed via command-line interface and should be able to be done in the GUI.""The monitoring feature in VMware vSAN could be better.""This product is very expensive.""I have used the VMware Replication but I can't get it to work properly. The process should be simplified.""A vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this."

More VMware vSAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."
  • "The price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable."
  • "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."
  • "This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "I price of IBM FlashSystem is reasonable and competitive."
  • "The price of IBM FlashSystem is a little high because you pay a premium because the solution is from IBM. We had paid for the SLA prior to using the solution."
  • More IBM FlashSystem Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The product is quite expensive, regarding the open source solution."
  • "There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive."
  • "We pay a yearly licensing fee."
  • "I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
  • "The price of the solution package depends on the nodes and other factors. The cost some of our customers paid was $500,000. The licensing cost for the components is very good."
  • "The cost of the solution is high and if it could be reduced the customers would be very happy."
  • "There is a license required for this solution, it is a one-time payment. However, if they want support for the solution, it can be paid annually or for three years."
  • "Its price could be improved."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
    Top Answer:I rate FlashSystem seven out of 10 for affordability. It's a great value for the price.
    Top Answer:In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future. In the future releases of IBM FlashSystem, I want to see synchronization in three-site… more »
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We found… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us HPE SimpliVity has… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    2,586
    Comparisons
    2,013
    Reviews
    28
    Average Words per Review
    367
    Rating
    8.6
    3rd
    out of 39 in HCI
    Views
    27,992
    Comparisons
    21,030
    Reviews
    47
    Average Words per Review
    451
    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM Storwize
    vSAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

    VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

    VMware vSAN Features

    VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.
    • Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.
    • Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.
    • High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.
    • Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.
    • HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.
    • Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

    VMware vSAN Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution. 
    • Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance. 
    • Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.
    • Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly. 
    • Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

    PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

    A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

    Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

    Offer
    Want to Hear More?

    IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

    Learn more about VMware vSAN
    Sample Customers
    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
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization44%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise48%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise52%
    Large Enterprise34%
    Buyer's Guide
    NAS
    November 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, IBM and others in NAS. Updated: November 2023.
    745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM FlashSystem is ranked 3rd in NAS with 32 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 42 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.6, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "Reliable and easy to configure with simple data migration capabilities ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, Dell Unity XT and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, HPE SimpliVity, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and Red Hat Ceph Storage.

    We monitor all NAS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.