We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystems and Pure Storage FlashArray based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: PeerSpot users find Pure Storage FlashArray easy to use and say it offers very low latency and excellent efficiency of their deduplication technology. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are better than many other solutions in today’s robust marketplace.
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The solution is scalable."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"Stability-wise, this solution is fine."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range."
"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."
"It's very easy to manage."
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"The solution is very reliable."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"It is on the expensive side."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"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."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"There could be some extra features added."
"The Data Reduction Pools (DRP) support could be better."
"The ease of installation should be improved. We had issues with the configuration model."
"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."
"Events/log analysis tools."
"The array level RAID does not seem available."
"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."
"The technical support in my region is satisfactory but it could improve. Support is very important for customers and downtime is very critical for us. We would like onsite or complete technical support which can help us to minimize our downtime or if problems occur."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, VMware vSAN and Dell Unity XT. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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