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IBM Cloud Object Storage vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (15th)
VMware vSAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
HCI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

File and Object Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cloud Object Storage1.8%
Red Hat Ceph Storage10.7%
MinIO9.9%
Other77.6%
File and Object Storage
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware vSAN7.8%
VxRail9.3%
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.0%
Other73.9%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
reviewer2384904 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Engineer For Channel Organisation at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enables seamless data replication and supports comprehensive data analytics workflows
The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites. Also, important is the capability to provide RESTful APIs for custom connectors. In terms of security, I advise customers to rotate access keys to enhance protection. Additionally, scalability is effortless as you can add nodes or expand the license.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its data reduction."
"The best features Everpure FlashArray offers are its ease of setup and incredible performance, which is better than most other software or hardware that we have used."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"It is simple, powerful, and a beautiful solution."
"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."
"The intuitive way of managing storage is what I appreciate about Pure Storage FlashArray, along with the clever use of flash modules, and absolutely the data reduction, because they are using that in a very clever way to do compression and deduplication."
"The administration is very easy and quite minimal, the performance is very good, the installation is pretty straightforward, and technical support is good."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"The most valuable feature I like is when you connect it via CLI plug-in...It is a stable solution."
"IBM Cloud Object Storage integrates well."
"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity. This is one of the main advantages if you don't want to use your own storage. You also have the ability to write only, write once, and read many. It's like tape storage but software-based. This feature is essential for financial institutions that require that kind of protection if you write backup or data there."
"IBM has the most number of additional services, this is the main advantage."
"The capability to replicate data in different locations is valuable since it enables customers to have a cluster over various sites."
"The standout feature of IBM Cloud Object Storage is its top-notch security, making it ideal for sensitive applications like mobile financial transactions."
"One of Cloud Object Storage's best features is infinite capacity."
"Overall, I rate IBM Cloud Object Storage a ten out of ten."
"The stability of the product is very good."
"Have a look at the simplicity of vSAN and how it easily integrates into the existing management tools."
"In my opinion, vSAN is the most natural way to migrate to a fully hyperconverged solution. If a customer needs a more scalable solution with consolidated management, vSAN is excellent."
"The solution's unified administration is its most valuable aspect."
"I like that we could choose whatever hardware we wanted, rather than having to use one particular vendor."
"All-flash gives improved performance over hybrid, and competes with other solutions"
"It is simple to manage, very easy to implement and troubleshoot in case of any failures."
"The valuable features are: The integration into the web client (health, component compatibility checks such as controller drivers and re-sync), integration with storage profiles, simple patching process, and integration into the VMkernel."
 

Cons

"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."
"As long as they always improve on IOPS speed, that's all we're really looking for. The faster the storage can be the more we can do speed of application and speed of use."
"I would like to see a Nagios monitoring plugin which watches the health and performance of the system. The only one available just checks volume capacity."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"IBM Cloud storage is not cheap, but it could be."
"If I had to choose one area, it would be making the consoles more intuitive would be helpful. Sometimes, they can be a little complicated if you're not familiar with them."
"Room for improvement depends on customer needs. Some customers prefer pure Object Storage using the S3 protocol, while others use a gateway in front of the storage grid to enable CIFS or NFS."
"The performance could be better. It isn't bad, but everything is network-based, so you have a performance penalty on the network. You can never achieve the same performance as hardware. That's the disadvantage of cloud storage solutions in general. Cloud performance is one of the main issues clients have."
"One area where IBM Cloud Object Storage could potentially improve is in modernizing its underlying codebase."
"IBM has limited cloud storage."
"One improvement could be incorporating a feature similar to Dropbox's version history. This would allow users to track modifications made to files over time, which is particularly important for maintaining a record of changes. While the free version might not include this feature, it could be included in the paid version to provide added value to clients. Additionally, having a version history feature that allows users to access modifications made to files over the past three months could be beneficial."
"Sometimes technical support lacks a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution, only focusing on the product they support."
"Disaster recovery needs to be improved, when there is a crisis, there is a problem with what is the quickest way to get out of it."
"I would like to see faster re-sync and recovery times after a host failure. It’s so difficult to restore a normal situation after a failure."
"I tried to install it on one cluster and the host got stuck."
"Its integration with a hybrid cloud can be improved. Its scalability can also be improved so that it can be integrated with more than 32 nodes."
"The upgrading process could be simplified."
"It would help if the cost of the solution was reduced for smaller sized companies."
"I hear a lot of issues of stability whenever you go to maintenance, but people who are having spectacular experiences are not speaking the loudest so it can be hard to tell."
"The vSAN Hardware Compatibility List Checker needs to improve, since currently it is a sore point for vSAN."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is always room for negotiation."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved."
"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"IBM Cloud is cheaper than AWS. If you want to scale your cloud infrastructure, it can be bought at almost the same price."
"Like most cloud providers, IBM likely charges based on storage capacity, typically per gigabyte or terabyte. Their pricing is competitive when compared to AWS or Microsoft."
"Pricing is not cheap."
"You have the option of a monthly or yearly license. Most customers choose the monthly option. I understand what you would like to say. IBM also lets you choose among four types of Cloud Object Storage. The difference is usage, performance, etc. Of course, high-performance storage is more expensive, while low-performance storage is for cold data, and it's really cheap."
"This solution requires the purchase of a license."
"Enterprise customers can customize their licenses according to their own needs and budget."
"What made us go with this solution was price point. When you can utilize existing storage infrastructure, and not have to continually purchase new SAN products out there that are going up in price as time goes by, then it's a wonderful thing."
"I would rate the licensing model a three out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."
"The product's price is not high. The tool is available at a normal price."
"VMware vSAN is an expensive platform. We purchase its yearly license."
"The cost of VMware vSAN is reasonable."
"It is expensive, but you get what you pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business102
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise137
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Object Storage?
The interface can feel clunky and outdated compared to AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage. While scalable, latency can be...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Object Storage?
I do not use IBM Cloud Object Storage directly, but I was part of a consultancy company that managed it. During my pr...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an e...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We resea...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is bes...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Cleversafe
vSAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Bitly, Dreamstime, Prime Research
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