DDN IntelliFlash vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

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Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2024).
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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is very straightforward to set up.""The latency is good.""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.""It has good, reliable, fast storage.""Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""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.""Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

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"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.""The initial setup is straightforward.""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.""High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features.""Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database""It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

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"IBM FlashSystem is flexible, quick, and has a solid design.""When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation.""The installation is nice and easy.""At the FlashSystem level, customers are especially fond of multi-tier and distributed rate systems, particularly the dynamic rate six arrays.""The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good.""The performance of IBM FlashSystem is very good. The new technology and high throughput have given us more confidence in the solution. The management of the system has improved and we can control the monitoring system alerts and multiple FlashSystems with the Enterprise Cloud Edition, which is free. The migration of recently stored data to a new flash is much easier. You can move your data because you can utilize it externally.""The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, which together, enable you to have more space.""Over the years, it has become increasingly user-friendly."

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Cons
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.""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 the pricing of the product.""It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking.""We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.""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 want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center.""I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

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"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition.""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.""Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible.""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.""They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution.""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.""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."

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"The pricing needs to be more competitive.""We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon.""Replication features need improvement. Currently, they are there in the product, but I'm not sure as to how it works exactly.""IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies.""In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great.""This solution needs a management console where we are alerted to issues and can report them, or escalate them through email or another method.""Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well.""The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
  • "We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
  • "With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
  • "Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
  • "As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
  • "They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
  • "Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
  • "The licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
  • "I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
  • More DDN IntelliFlash Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing can be considered as per market competition."
  • "The total storage capacity vs price is still quite high for the IBM Flash Array."
  • "It pays to go back and get the best price you can from your supplier. The first offer is not always at the best discount."
  • "Regarding licensing make sure you add at least three years software maintenance from IBM at the beginning, because you will not be able to download firmware updates or any fixes/patches without this."
  • "IBM V7000 has a new license and price structure which provides intuitive licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most."
  • "The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."
  • "For a yearly license, it is about $100,000. There are no additional costs. The entire system is included."
  • "The integration is already included in the license cost of IBM FlashSystem. The integration is very easy. You get the IBM storage core with all software, firmware, and upgrades. EMC provides the features in the box, but they are not free for customers. There is a licensing cost for features. We have yearly licensing, but IBM has also provided a new option where you pay as you go. They provide a big box, and I pay, for example, for 10 terabytes. If I exceed 10 terabytes, IBM will charge for the new storage after 10 terabytes. It is a good opportunity in the market for using the storage as a cloud and paying as you go."
  • More IBM FlashSystem Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
    Top Answer:The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it… more »
    Top Answer:The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.
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    Top Answer:I rate the pricing a three out of ten. The tool is cost-efficient. The prices are good.
    Top Answer:Customization features must be improved.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series
    IBM Storwize
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

    IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University
    Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Real Estate/Law Firm8%
    University7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business35%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    All-Flash Storage
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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 Pure Storage FlashArray, VAST Data, Tintri VMstore T7000, NetApp AFF and Pure Storage FlashBlade, whereas IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.

    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.