We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe and Pure Storage FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"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 has good, reliable, fast storage."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"Good performance with a user-friendly UI."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"It is a very stable solution."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."
"The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves nearly 30% of the bank's capacity."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe are its steady performance and usefulness in high-traffic environments."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its upgrades, as we don't have to do much homework because of its different controllers."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"It is fast and reliable. It works."
"I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"We like the speed. It's very low latency. In virtualization, you can mask lots of problems, and even in code you can mask lots of problems, with low latency. It's just pure speed and low latency."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"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."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version."
"Deduplication and compression should be improved."
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"The tool's architecture is complex. It also needs to add data utilization reports."
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"The price should be lower."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
"I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is ranked 13th in All-Flash Storage with 19 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is rated 8.8, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe writes "Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN. See our IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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