We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystems and Pure Storage FlashArray based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: PeerSpot users find Pure Storage FlashArray easy to use and say it offers very low latency and excellent efficiency of their deduplication technology. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are better than many other solutions in today’s robust marketplace.
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"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."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"IBM FlashSystem has been stable in our operations."
"We've found the solution to be very stable so far."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry."
"The all-flash storage has tier replication capabilities."
"IBM's technical support do excellent work."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The valuable features are high availability, compression, and a failover mechanism. It's a very highly available storage solution."
"It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."
"The technical support is very good."
"I like its speed. It has all the features that I need."
"The tool has reduced our power consumption."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"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."
"We need better data deduplication."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"We use some open-source tools for monitoring, such as Grafana and it should be bundled along with IBM FlashSystem."
"The ease of installation should be improved. We had issues with the configuration model."
"This solution could be improved by offering greater amounts of storage."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."
"Additional licenses might be added for the fundamental licenses, such as those for copying and flash copies."
"It has room for improvement in the area of stability."
"The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"It is a bit expensive."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"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."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 6th in All-Flash Storage with 106 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and HPE Nimble Storage, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, VMware vSAN and Dell Unity XT. See our IBM FlashSystem vs. Pure Storage FlashArray 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.
