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IBM XIV vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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 XIV
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp FAS Series
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of IBM XIV is 3.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 10.6%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp FAS Series10.6%
IBM XIV3.4%
Other86.0%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Ajith Kandaramage - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operation Engineer at HNB
Good value for money but issues with modular scaling
IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness I've been using IBM XIV for two and a half years. IBM XIV is stable. IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger…
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."
"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."
"IBM XIV is attractive because it gives value for money in terms of features."
"The product is exceptionally reliable and very easy to manage."
"For us, the XIV is pretty much set-it-and-forget-it storage."
"XIV setup is very straightforward and easy to configure."
"The XIVs here are only being used for non-production and dev systems, but still the performance and robustness of the systems are very good."
"Installation is amazingly easy."
"The NetApp FAS Series has helped simplify our infrastructure."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is data consolidation and visualization and snapshots of course."
"They have really good customer service."
"Can use both SAN and NAS at the same time."
"For us, the greatest aspect of the solution is the fact that it just runs."
"It helps us meet all customer requirements. Customers have been using NetApp for many years. They are very satisfied with NetApp and continue to use NetApp and upgrade to new solutions."
"If you need reliability, definitely go for NetApp."
"The new FAS series is a good fit for some customers. We have good performance and capacity, even though it is full flash."
 

Cons

"This product was not a good fit for our organization as we have a ton of latency sensitive applications and XIV was not able to keep up with IO + latency demand."
"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."
"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."
"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."
"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked. This has been an issue a lot of times, especially when the contract says IBM will not replace disks until three drives fail."
"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."
"I encountered stability (performance) issues during enclosure or disk rebuild. Also some power supply issues due to malfunctions of ​circuits. Sometimes "internal" Snap sessions hang and consume pool capacity."
"Management accessibility. Both the GUI and the CLI require installation of a Java-based thick client, which is ridiculous, plus a drain on resources."
"We’ve hit some bugs in the ONTAP code that’s caused it to crash."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"NetApp needs to put its OS on a microchip rather than on disks."
"It may need more flexibility to fight with other competing arrays."
"Installation of the additional switches and ETP could be improved."
"If our customer needs a high-performance storage solution then we don't recommend this product."
"We are not able to connect to the support of NetApp from Sudan. We have to go through many agents for support, which makes it difficult."
"Absolutely, it’s just some compatibility variance with some of the production environment aspects, like AV, and Archiving systems which needed to be integrated with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."
"If you are going to use the product behind an SVC, IBM will price the units lower, since you are likely not to use any of the advanced copy services."
"Licensing is straightforward."
"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."
"The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive."
"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."
"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"The tool is expensive."
"The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."
"There are products available in market with comparatively lower costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise59
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
Regarding its pricing, I believe it is high. I utilize both HDD and SSD, where SSDs are more cost-friendly, yet HDDs are higher in cost, making it not very affordable but still useful. For general ...
What needs improvement with NetApp FAS Series?
Regarding improvements for NetApp FAS Series, I think everything is generally good. If there is a need to improve something, they can extend their support. Previously, in my company, I only saw Net...
 

Also Known As

XIV
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Celero, NaviSite, Technische Universit_t Mªnchen, Netflix Inc., Muhr und Bender KG, Pelephone Communications
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 XIV vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.