We performed a comparison between DDN IntelliFlash and IBM FlashSystem based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage."The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"User friendly management interface."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the deduplication, because the nature of the data that we are using in our current environment, has a lot of replicated data."
"One of the most valuable features is that it's very easy to use and configure. It used to be more difficult, but now it's almost flawless."
"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."
"The most valuable features are, of course, the virtualization of the storage, the performance, and the compression."
"The most crucial feature of IBM FlashSystem is compression."
"The most valuable features were the performance of the array, i.e., very low latency and high IOPS. Plus, the management interface is very easy to use."
"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"It is on the expensive side."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"We need better data deduplication."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."
"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."
"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."
"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."
"I would like to see bigger modules."
"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."
"The price is very costly."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem."
"Sometimes the performance is effective but it gets resolved in the process."
"The solution's pricing is a bit high so there is room for improvement."
Earn 20 points
DDN IntelliFlash is ranked 29th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews. DDN IntelliFlash is rated 7.4, while IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of DDN IntelliFlash writes "Good features with an easy initial setup but technical support is slow ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". DDN IntelliFlash is most compared with VAST Data, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF and Tintri VMstore T7000, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF.
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