We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and NetApp AFF 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."It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry."
"The all-flash storage has tier replication capabilities."
"The initial customer technical support was efficient and effective."
"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."
"The most valuable feature is reliability."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"The speed and the ease of installation are the most valuable features."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"Technical support is good."
"AFF has opened our eyes in a different light of how storage value works. In the past, we looked at it more as just a container where we could just dump our customer dBms and let the customers use it in terms of efficiency. Today, to be able to replicate that data to a different location, use that data to recover your environment or be able to have the flexibility with the solution and data. These are things which piqued our interest. It's something that we're willing to provide as a solution to our customers."
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time. Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love."
"We are using the AQoS operating system, which allows us to get a lot more out of our AFF systems."
"Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features."
"We do a lot of financial modeling. We have a large compute cluster that generates a lot of files. It is important for us to get a quick response back for any type of multimillion file accesses across the cluster at one time. So, it's a lot quicker to do that. We found that solid-state performs so much better than than spinning drives, even over multiple clusters."
"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."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"There could be some extra features added."
"Sometimes the performance is effective but it gets resolved in the process."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage."
"The storage capacity of this solution could be improved."
"The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem."
"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."
"Events/log analysis tools."
"On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products."
"As for AFF itself, I don't have any suggestions of what I would be excited about seeing. I think that adding the support for the rest of APIs to AFF would be super handy. I think it's something that we've been waiting for for a while which would be fantastic."
"Higher communication: I love the professional services and I love everything that everyone's able to offer us, but I find sometimes we're not aware of all the things that NetApp can do."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
"I just got through the session where it looks like they are going to support Oracle running on Linux with SnapCenter. That is one of the main things that we are hoping to get integrated."
"Technical support is a little lackluster. Some of the issues that we've had were opening up tickets. They seem to be routed in the wrong direction or it takes one or two days to get a call back for simple tasks."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while NetApp AFF is rated 9.0. 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 NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Dell Unity XT and Huawei OceanStor Dorado, whereas NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. NetApp AFF report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
