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 also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"The performance is very good."
"The scalability is good."
"It is an easy to use product for all of my team members."
"It is always out of the box, and ready to use."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage the tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles."
"Flash disk with Easy Tier option"
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"This solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is reliability."
"The most valuable features in IBM FlashSystem are IOPS, performance, duplication, and compression."
"The most valuable features are flexibility and performance."
"It's very easy to manage."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."
"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"The price could be better."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"They could improve the price."
"The GUI for monitoring performance metrics could provide better visibility. For example, it doesn't let me segregate the IOPS per volume."
"I have looked at a few pages of a report I download and I saw a graph there regarding software-defined vendors. IBM is not in a good position on this graph. I know that they are working very hard on this, to make it much better and to get to a level where it's not only hardware but also software to provide a complete solution."
"The product needs to improve their scalability."
"The array level RAID does not seem available."
"Product support is restricted to IBM only. It must be decentralized to IBM partners as well."
"The Data Reduction Pools (DRP) support could be better."
"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."
"The solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel."
"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."
"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."
"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."
"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."
"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."
"This solution has limited storage."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
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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, NetApp AFF, Dell Unity XT, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series and Huawei OceanStor Dorado. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
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