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IBM SAN Volume Control vs NetApp OnCommand [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 SAN Volume Control
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Storage Management (9th)
NetApp OnCommand [EOL]
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager Ict & Innovations at Bangalore International Airport Limited
A sustainable product that has ultra-low latency and reliable security features
Initially, we had some challenges with massive amounts of customer data. We have an airport segment where the passenger data are required, and it’s huge data. We needed a system that could store bulk data with low latency and provide a good customer experience. The solution is very famous. Ultra latency provides miraculous performance and productivity. It also enables advanced virtualization for good scalability. Anyone can opt to use the product. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Henry Aragon - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Administrator at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Versatile data protocols improve efficiency while execution capabilities need enhancement
The ease of configuring NetApp FAS series is noteworthy, as they support multiple standards like iSCSI, NFS, Fibre Channel, and NVMe. NetApp's data efficiency protocols are unmatched in the industry. ActiveIQ offers significant improvements in data monitoring and error notification. It provides crucial data management features and has versatile support for various protocols and standards, making it a one-size-fits-all storage solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use, easily configurable, and easy to upgrade, manipulate, and add new storage."
"The most valuable features of IBM SAN Volume Control are the copy services, performance metrics, and analysis. Additionally, they have upgraded and introduced visual volumes."
"The product has an ultra-low latency."
"With SVC it is very easy to manage and to use for migration, meaning that when we want to move or to keep control of the volume or update a server database, it is very easy. That's why we use it."
"The virtualization layer has been great."
"The virtualization layer has been great; we have SAN Volume Controller, and below that we can use any kind of storage, which is perfect for us because if we run out of storage, we can add more storage from any of our vendors."
"In OnCommand Unified Manager, we can monitor the entire cluster as well as configure data protection through Unified Manager."
"NetApp is competitive in terms of licensing costs."
"The system manager helps us to manage our NetApp server with a user-friendly GUI instead of a CLI, giving us fast, simplified configurations, simplified management, and extensive administrative capabilities that unlock the power of clustered Data ONTAP and clustered scale-out storage."
"Their technical support is very strong."
"One of the main features is the ability to run the block and file storage from the same system."
"NetApp's data efficiency protocols are unmatched in the industry."
"Snapshot is a valuable feature."
"The ease of configuring NetApp FAS series is noteworthy, as they support multiple standards like iSCSI, NFS, Fibre Channel, and NVMe."
 

Cons

"IBM SAN Volume Control could improve by better integrations with other vendor systems. IBM SAN Volume Control can store the environment and are able to integrate with Veeam, but I don't know if they can integrate as well with SVC or other vendors' systems."
"They just need to put in the snap volume because now they use what is called a flash copy. This means that you have to take all the volume instead of NetApp which uses their snapshot."
"Patch management and upgrades must be made easier."
"IBM support can be very slow. Sometimes they take a lot of time to solve a problem; this is an issue with IBM."
"IBM support can be very slow."
"I would like to see the usage of virtualized storage boxes improved. I'd like to see this feature fixed, especially for SVC controller, and to be able to hold more storage."
"The tool is not intuitive and the menus are confusing, especially the snapshot view."
"At present, OnCommand Unified Manager has just the monitoring and data protection features. It would be better to add some features for entire cluster management and storage management. Automation should also be included so that instead of separately accessing Unified Manager and OnCommand Workflow Automation, we can work in a single window. It is very much required."
"The solution lacks the ability to generate reports from Snapshot."
"The technical support is not very good and could be significantly improved."
"There are always areas for improvement, but they need intuitive browser-based GUI, wizard-driven configuration to get up and running quickly, automated non-disruptive (Data ONTAP) upgrade, storage provisioning and disk aggregate management, CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, FC, and FCoE configuration, Snapshot and SnapMirror management, SnapVault support, storage virtual machine management, monitoring of HA pairs, support for SVMs with Infinite Volume, user interface enhancements, support for storage Quality of Service (QoS), support for all NetApp FAS systems and FlexArray software, support for NetApp All Flash FAS, and built-in reports and dashboard summarizing data around inventory, capacity, and efficiency at the enterprise level."
"My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is that the file storage is good, but the block storage is not good."
"There could be better performance in block storage and the GUI could be improved because not every operation is available. You need some operations in the CLI."
"ActiveIQ only provides read access and does not allow making changes directly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial price of IBM SAN Volume Control is steep."
"With SAN Volume Controller, we need to license by terabyte."
"The tool is cheaper than EMC but more expensive than HP and Pure Storage. I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"When we compare with other similar kinds of products from Dell EMC and HP, the price of NetApp OnCommand is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Recruiting/Hr Firm
10%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp OnCommand?
NetApp collaborates with us to provide deals when possible, optimizing storage based on business requirements, allowing us to save on costs for unnecessary storage space.
What needs improvement with NetApp OnCommand?
ActiveIQ only provides read access and does not allow making changes directly. Making it capable of executing changes to NetApp would be beneficial.
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp OnCommand?
My overall rating for NetApp OnCommand is seven out of ten. The solution offers unmatched data efficiency protocols. Improving ActiveIQ by allowing it to execute changes to NetApp would make it eve...
 

Also Known As

IBM SVC
NetApp Operations Manager, NetApp SANscreen
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Norfolk County Council, Yahoo Japan, Sheridan College, Citrix Systems, Avanade, Quasar Data Center, DG Khan Cement Co. Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Dell Technologies, IBM and others in Storage Management. Updated: May 2026.
899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.