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IBM ProtectTIER vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM ProtectTIER
Ranking in Deduplication Software
13th
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (86th)
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of IBM ProtectTIER is 1.0%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 3.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software
 

Featured Reviews

ValereFEUGWANG - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects data in hybrid infrastructures, but it is an expensive product with poor support
The main challenge for our customers is to replicate the virtual environment upon restart, without using any additional solutions such as VMware SLM. I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM. It would be much better for us. This solution can be made easier to use. Technical support is very frustrating and we are considering other solutions because of it. Stability is something that should be improved. The product is expensive and the licensing should be changed.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The cataloging is the best feature. It takes millions of frames for the backup. It's incremental, so it takes less time to complete."
"The solution is highly stable."
"The most valuable features are the Self-Service, and the ability to search the data."
"The command-line interface is good."
"In terms of stability, I've found it to be very stable. I've walked into the server room when it was at 60 degrees Celcius, and it was still running fine."
"Overall IBM ProtectTIER is a great solution. It is easy to use."
"It's an easy product to use that is stable and has good performance."
"It allows our Windows and Unix teams to have a centralized point to share data between the two."
"Adaptive balancing is a valuable feature."
"The solution is very stable and reliable"
"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."
"It changed the way we do Disaster Recovery (DR) around NetApp replication."
"Good for NAS and unified solutions."
"It is very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS."
 

Cons

"The configuration wizards are still complex and hard to navigate. These should be easier to manage."
"Setting up the system to work with legacy equipment is a bit complex at times."
"The backup for a large amount of data is slow."
"I would like the possibility to back up the infrastructure and then replicate it upon on restart, without having to orchestrate the starting of the VM."
"IBM ProtectTIER could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The user interface could be improved to have better graphics and the performance analyzer could be better."
"I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS."
"I think this kind of infrastructure is mostly obsolete. To keep up with developments in this space, you need to move all these features to an All-Flash solution."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"Needs to ​add wizards for newer, inexperienced users."
"It lacks automatic tiering, When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives."
"Needs more SAN support."
"The adoption of flash by NetApp has also been lagging behind the trendsetters, like TMS, Nimble, and others."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The customer can decide how they want to purchase a license. However, the price of the solution is expensive."
"IBM ProtectTIER is an expensive solution."
"We have a capacity-based license, which is managed centrally for all the sites of my company."
"This solution is very expensive."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"The product is on the expensive side."
"The NetApp FAS series price is very competitive compared to other solutions on the market it is a good choice."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"When we need to implement a less expensive solution we use Huawei. NetApp FAS Series is a little bit expensive compared to the average of the market."
"The tool is expensive."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They focus on storage only, which is really good; it works."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They fo...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Durham Police Department, Re-Store LLC, CenterGrid, pixx.io GmbH, Australian Government Department of Defence, QD, Refresco Gerber
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM ProtectTIER vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,624 professionals have used our research since 2012.