We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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."We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"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 standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The latency is good."
"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."
"IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features."
"No queuing and high ops, speed, and performance."
"User friendly management interface."
"The technical support for this solution is good. They used to help us when the motherboard of Power Systems broke. Their response times are really fast."
"It's a mature product. It's like a BMW that evolves consistently."
"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."
"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features of IBM FlashSystem are performance and security."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."
"The replication and mirroring features are very good."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."
"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."
"The management software is very good."
"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."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"We need better data deduplication."
"We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon."
"The pricing needs to be more competitive."
"Events/log analysis tools."
"They can improve its initial configuration. The initial configuration is currently very difficult. There are multiple choices or alternative ways to configure based on the use case and what you are targeting out of the device, that is, more capacity or more performance. These multiple alternatives cause a lot of confusion. They should increase the processing part of the nodes. Currently, you can cluster up to eight nodes. From my experience and the workload that I am facing in my environment currently, I would like to see either a bigger or stronger node or a larger number of nodes that can be clustered together. We formally communicated to them that we need to see either this or that, and they are working on something."
"The pricing could be improved, but I think it's getting better and better with each version. IBM needs to implement NAS storage again, as this is a big flaw. Dell EMC is very good at this and if you compared them based on NAS storage, Dell EMC would win right away. IBM's solution for NAS storage is very complicated. We don't have a storage box that provides file sharing from itself, we have to put software on it and go through a whole complicated process. It should be simplified."
"Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well."
"A big area for improvement is that the data reduction pool feature is not recommended for use in a production environment because it has stability and performance issues."
"The solution is quite expensive. That's one of the downsides to using it."
"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."
"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."
"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."
"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."
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IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6. 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 EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, Dell Unity XT and NetApp AFF, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Primera. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
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