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IBM XIV vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

 

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
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd), NAS (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of IBM XIV is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp FAS Series is 15.2%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp FAS Series15.2%
IBM XIV1.6%
Other83.2%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Ajith Kandaramage - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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

"Installation is amazingly easy."
"Hands down, this is the easiest storage platform on the market to manage."
"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."
"Very easy to produce reporting data (Snaps). Very easy and fast for provisioning devices and Remote mirroring."
"The performance and robustness of the systems are very good."
"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."
"It's a stable product. No issues there."
"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."
"Can use both SAN and NAS at the same time."
"NetApp FAS Series is simple to set up."
"End-users like that they can rely on the Snapshot technology so they can do their restores themselves."
"I have found all the features useful in NetApp FAS Series."
"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."
"One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments."
 

Cons

"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."
"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."
"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."
"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."
"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."
"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."
"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."
"When we were going through all the MFA hardening and the anti-ransomware setup, I gave some feedback to our executive. The MFA process for getting that set up on the AFF systems was cumbersome compared to some of our other systems."
"No other area for improvement comes to mind other than its price. Making the price more attractive will help this solution have a bigger market share."
"I would like to see less latency and higher IOPS."
"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."
"I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"The main area for improvement for NetApp FAS Series is price. Unfortunately, in India, NetApp price clearance takes longer than EMC."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."
"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."
"Licensing is straightforward."
"It is a moderately low-priced platform."
"The only area that could be improved is to lower prices for their All Flash FAS."
"Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."
"NetApp FAS Series could be less expensive."
"Most storage vendors also have software, or licensing bundles, which may offer the required licenses considerably cheaper, but do also maybe offer licenses, which are not needed."
"The tool is expensive."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
 

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 2025.
869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.