IBM FlashSystem vs Panasas ActiveStor comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and Panasas ActiveStor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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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 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.""One of the valuable features is the performance, it is one of the best in the market.""We've found the solution to be very stable so far.""IBM FlashSystem has an easy to use GUI, similar to the IBM Storewize family, which make it one of the best flash storage systems in the market.""IBM FlashSystem is a flexible solution with plenty of features.""The valuable features for us are the extra add-ons, such as the FIM provisioning, the compression, the disaster recovery capabilities, and the storage pooling functions.""The compression and deduplication features are the most valuable.""High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."

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"I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth.""We've found the product to be quite flexible."

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Cons
"The solution should improve its pricing and the mechanism in the reduction pool.""It is slightly more expensive, however, it all depends on your supplier.""It could be easier to implement.""Events/log analysis tools.""We had issues when attempting to do a flash, we hope to resolve it soon.""GUI interface should be enhanced more as there is some issues in copy services.""The installation is not easy. You need to have extensive knowledge to handle it.""One area for improvement is in the GUI, where host clusters are not properly dealt with. With Hypervisor host clusters, all hosts must see the same volumes in the same order. Using the concept of a “host-group” has been around (even with IBM) for many years, so why not with the V7000?"

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"We have received complaints from customers that the tool is not easy to use. The tool's local technical service is slow. The solution is good for Linux customers and not for customers with other operating systems like Windows. The solution should provide storage without client software integration.""The solution is quite expensive."

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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 →

  • "The solution's price is reasonable."
  • More Panasas ActiveStor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry.
    Top Answer:The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version. In addition to SaaS-based enclosures, the solution's expansion options must include… more »
    Top Answer:I am impressed with the tool's performance and bandwidth.
    Top Answer:We have received complaints from customers that the tool is not easy to use. The tool's local technical service is slow. The solution is good for Linux customers and not for customers with other… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    2,284
    Comparisons
    1,804
    Reviews
    14
    Average Words per Review
    360
    Rating
    8.7
    13th
    out of 27 in NAS
    Views
    389
    Comparisons
    280
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    252
    Rating
    9.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM Storwize
    ActiveStor
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    In our most recent product, the ActiveStor Ultra, Panasas has developed a new approach called Dynamic Data Acceleration Technology. It uses a carefully balanced set of HDDs, SATA SSD, NVMe SSD, NVDIMM, and DRAM to provide a combination of excellent performance and low cost per terabyte.

    • HDDs will provide high bandwidth data storage if they are never asked to store anything small and only asked to do large sequential transfers. Therefore, we only store large Component Objects on our low-cost HDDs.

    • SATA SSDs provide cost-effective and highbandwidth storage as a result of not having any seek times, so that’s where we keep our small Component Objects.

    • NVMe SSDs are built for very low latency accesses, so we store all our metadata in a database and keep that database on an NVMe SSD. Metadata accesses are very sensitive to latency, whether it is POSIX metadata for the files being stored or metadata for the internal operations of the OSD.

    • An NVDIMM (a storage class memory device) is the lowest latency type of persistent storage device available, and we use one to store our transaction logs: user data and metadata being written by the application to the OSD, plus our internal metadata. That allows PanFS to provide very low latency commits back to the application.

    • We use the DRAM in each OSD as an extremely low latency cache of the most recently read or written data and metadata.

    To gain the most benefit from the SATA SSD’s performance, we try to keep the SATA SSD about 80% full. If it falls below that, we will (transparently and in the background) pick the smallest Component Objects in the HDD pool and move them to the SSD until it is about 80% full. If the SSD is too full, we will move the largest Component Objects on the SSD to the HDD pool. Every ActiveStor Ultra Storage Node performs this optimization independently and continuously. It’s easy for an ActiveStor Ultra to pick which Component Objects to move, it just needs to look in its local NVMe-based database.

    Offer
    Want to Hear More?

    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.

    Learn more about Panasas ActiveStor
    Sample Customers
    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
    Advanced Mask Technology Center Airbus Argonne National Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas School of Arts Technology and Emerging Communication Башнефть Boeing Bosch California Academy of Sciences Caltech Canon Case Western Reserve University Conoco Phillips Deluxe DirecTV Fairfield Technologies United States Federal Reserve Garvan Institute of Medical Research Goodyear Halliburton Harvard Medical School Honeywell In-Depth Geophysical Intel Kawasaki Lockheed Martin 3M Magseis Fairfield Mammal Studios The Man Group McLaren Mercedes-Benz MINES ParisTech NASA US Navy National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center NBCUniversal National Institutes of Health Nio National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northrup Grumman Novartis Partners Healthcare Procter & Gamble PGS Pratt & Whitney Rutherford Appleton Lab Siemens Sim International Sinopec Solers Square Cnix TGS Toyota Motorsport GMBH Toppan Turner UMass Medical School United Technologies University of Georgia University of California Los Angeles University of Minnesota University of Notre Dame University of California San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation Whiskytree
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    University13%
    Educational Organization10%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise48%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise63%
    Buyer's Guide
    NAS
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM FlashSystem is ranked 5th in NAS with 105 reviews while Panasas ActiveStor is ranked 13th in NAS with 2 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while Panasas ActiveStor 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 Panasas ActiveStor writes "A stable solution with good performance and bandwidth". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, Dell Unity XT and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas Panasas ActiveStor is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon) and NetApp FAS Series.

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