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."It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"Technical support has been amazing."
"It has been very stable. I have not seen or heard of downtime storage issues after moving over to it."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"For us, the most valuable feature is the compression and deduplication. Being able to deploy a three to one ratio for storage is absolutely critical in today's world with the growing need for storage and the growing need for more space."
"The deduplication in the array combined with its snap technologies allows the product to be remotely/manually controlled or scheduled."
"The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity."
"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The Flash core models offer amazing performance."
"The storage system is one of the best in the world."
"The performance monitoring feature is useful as it can report in 15 minute intervals by hour, day, week, month, or by a custom date range."
"IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution."
"IBM FlashSystem is flexible, quick, and has a solid design."
"The speed, performance, and stability are the best features of IBM FlashSystem."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."
"I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse."
"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."
"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support. I am not super familiar with all the different NAS protocols that they run on their box, but there could be some improvements made on SMB CIFS side."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"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."
"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."
"The array level RAID does not seem available."
"In the next release having the next level of high-speed performance would be great."
"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."
"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."
"The pricing needs to be more competitive."
"I know they have a flashcopy manager, but it is extra software, an additional license, and some customers don't like to add addition costs to their infrastructure. If IBM could create, or include snapshot management within the GUI, that would really be helpful."
"IBM should improve its data reduction development."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."
"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."
"Better support technicians for CAPP."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."
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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, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF, 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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