We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and Pure Storage FlashBlade 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."The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"We can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."
"The installation is nice and easy."
"The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well."
"This solution is very stable."
"The maintenance service and support from IBM is very good."
"The performance is very good and we use this product to enhance our core system."
"The solution is very easy to configure and use."
"The FlashSystem 900 consistently delivers performance below 1ms for read/write. This performance is essential for an effective SVC stretch-cluster configuration across two datacenters, and presenting active-active storage to the customer."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."
"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"The solution is able to handle workloads and is easy to use. It allows us to actually manage the boxes in less time."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"In the next version of this program, I would like to see increased security, higher encryption, and faster throughput."
"The solution is not cheap."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage."
"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."
"In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great."
"Sometimes the performance is effective but it gets resolved in the process."
"The solution's pricing is a bit high so there is room for improvement."
"The data reduction pool feature sucks and is not recommended for use with heavy workloads."
"Cloud file sharing is an area that needs improvement."
"The price is very costly."
"The speed could be improved."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 31 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. 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 FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, Dell Unity XT, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell ECS. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade 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.
