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IBM SAN Volume Control vs NetApp OnCommand Insight 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
Ranking in Storage Management
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp OnCommand Insight
Ranking in Storage Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of IBM SAN Volume Control is 6.0%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp OnCommand Insight is 6.2%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Management
 

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Anuj_Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives an end-to-end view of your environment and has a very good interface for report creation and customization
NetApp OnCommand Insight is a pretty good tool, and the only concern I have with it is the price. Its price is quite high and could be improved because the licensing feature of this particular tool is on a per GB basis instead of the price being for the complete tool itself. The more you discover, the more you need to pay, and this makes NetApp OnCommand Insight more costly when compared to other tools which are available in the market. My company doesn't have a cloud environment, so all storage is on-premises. I'm not aware of the integration of NetApp OnCommand Insight with the cloud environment, but the tool fits all the marks in terms of what I require and need. It checks all columns for me, so at the moment, nothing comes to mind in terms of additional features I'd like to see from the tool in the future.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The virtualization layer has been great."
"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."
"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 product has an ultra-low latency."
"Being able to immediately look at my data. See the sizing, where I'm at on different virtual machines."
"Performance monitoring of hundreds of switches and being able to see results in one dashboard."
"We haven't gone to the extent where we are using the anomaly detection, but from a reporting perspective and single-pane-of-glass perspective, to look at our heterogeneous infrastructure, it is doing a great job."
"The machine learning features help me troubleshoot faster."
"Scalability: If you're from a large enterprise, it's easy for us to go into customer environments and pull the data out. It's very security-friendly."
"It has helped us optimize our storage."
"OnCommand Insight's most valuable feature is the ability to see figure applications."
"The most valuable feature is the security. When we identify a vulnerability, it is easy to mitigate it. NetApp provides the solution. It's also easy to create and move volumes."
 

Cons

"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."
"Patch management and upgrades must be made easier."
"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."
"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."
"I'd like it to be more stable, simpler, and get Java out of it."
"When we first went to Cluster Mode, we had a lot of problems. Setup took a few months. We had people onsite, including one of the top guys from NetApp for a while. Going from 7-Mode to Cluster Mode was rough."
"Just make it one product, not in pieces like performance and discovery. Stop having all these individual pieces."
"I would like to see better graphics. We have seen regular graphs and pie graphs. I am sure that there are better ways to show this information."
"You can build those out, but initially when you bring up the dashboard, that was one thing they couldn't take away. They couldn't change that. It just looks kind of kludgy. I'd like it to look a lot more clean when I first login."
"Enhance SNMP monitoring in order to broaden the number of storages that can be discovered."
"I would like them to develop voice commands so that I can say to the product, "Create a volume.""
"A little bit more from technical support would give us a little bit more insight."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial price of IBM SAN Volume Control is steep."
"With SAN Volume Controller, we need to license by terabyte."
"Pricing by terabytes, not the end of the world, and that's okay. Stop if I want this, I have to buy that. Just release it as a single product."
"Pricing for NetApp OnCommand Insight could be cheaper. On a scale of one to five, I would rate its price a four."
"The cost: It is expensive as a solution. You need to be an expert to get anything out of it and we don't have that kind of expertise."
"We just made a major investment back in May of this year, so we'll have it for another four and a half or five years easily. Thus, we have a five year bumper to bumper agreement."
"The company has saved money by narrowing down issues faster using servers and performance."
"For me, it is always too much. Licensing is on TBs, and I think, nowadays that is outmoded."
"We like that it is one license and everything is bundled in together."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
12%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering IBM SAN Volume Control?
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 bu...
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Also Known As

IBM SVC
OCI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Société Générale, TechnologyOne
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SAN Volume Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.