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's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The latency is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It is simple to make an update."
"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance."
"The compression and deduplication features are the most valuable."
"Stability-wise, this solution is fine."
"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."
"It worked flawlessly."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"The support team is available all the time and they seem to know what they are doing."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"I would like to see an improvement in the handling of large amounts of rights."
"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."
"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."
"The solution is not able to replicate data in one-to-many scenario."
"The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."
"Enterprise data storage needs improvement. They should create a feature for data and file storage."
"The solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel."
"When you provision a datastore auto-format takes a long time"
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
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.
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.
