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."Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"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 initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."
"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."
"No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance."
"When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation."
"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."
"IBM FlashSystem is a powerful effective storage solution. Additionally, it is user-friendly, anyone can use it."
"Speed (IOPS/second) – It is most vital for applications that need low latency and high speed for transferring the data."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"With the new version, they have the FabricPool which works for me. I can extend the hyperscaler storage."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the software bundle, replication, and cloud connectivity."
"The most valuable feature of NetApp AFF for us is its ability to manage multiple IP spaces for our customers in a shared environment."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"We had some customers who were running virtualization workloads on classical spinning disks. We implemented an AFF system, and they got a huge performance boost out of it because the latency of the SSDs is simply much lower. Actually, most customers benefit from the improved latency and performance from the AFF systems."
"We have never had a failure. We can upgrade as we move along with zero downtime."
"Other manufacturers claim simplicity. In fact, frankly, they do have an advantage in that regard, however, they don't have the functionality. If you were to compare one of those products to NetApp, head to head from a feature perspective, NetApp would wind up in the top 10."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"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."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"We need better data deduplication."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"The product needs to improve their scalability."
"The marketing could be improved."
"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool."
"The solution's pricing is a bit high so there is room for improvement."
"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"
"In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great."
"The solution is not able to replicate data in one-to-many scenario."
"Their backup software could be improved."
"I have experienced slow responses several times, if the ticket has only been opened in portal."
"It used to give us the volume where LANs should be placed when we created a LAN in the older version. However, in the newer version of ONTAP, it does not give where to place the LAN in the volume. So, that liberty has been taken away. If that was there again, it would be very good."
"In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that."
"Implementation needs to be improved."
"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."
"The bad part about having scalability is the expense. It is currently extremely expensive, to be able to scale so fast on flash."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
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.
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