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IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (11th)
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 6.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray6.7%
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe1.2%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.4%
Other90.7%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Yacine Bouakttaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer North Africa at Huawei
High-speed data processing has improved billing cycles but performance headroom still needs growth
In terms of improvement regarding IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, I can compare with other competitors, especially regarding solution architecture. Data resiliency can be a concern because IBM can reach up to only four controllers, while others like Dell EMC can support up to eight controllers with better resiliency without service staff. Additionally, the SBC one benchmark is a storage performance console that stresses different storage solutions like Dell EMC and NetApp. It generates metrics of IOPS and latency, showing that the competition can have two million IOPS, significantly outperforming IBM's capabilities. As for the capability of scaling, we can see the limitations in reaching such high-performance levels.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everpure FlashArray is probably not cheap storage, but it provides great performance, scalability, and everything a customer needs."
"The most valuable features would be its performance, retrieval, recovery, and backup, and it meets the customer's expectations."
"One of the lesser sung advantages was when we started running our interface engine on Pure Storage. The ability to process messages and pass them through in our organization skyrocketed purely because of a disk that I owned which we were getting out of Pure Storage."
"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
"We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"We transferred our old architecture from hyper storage to all-flash storage, which made our business faster and more connected to our customers."
"Remote assist is a valuable feature that supports customers and engineers in troubleshooting and resolving issues, allowing for easy problem identification and repair."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its upgrades, as we don't have to do much homework because of its different controllers."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."
"The high performance and high availability improved our overall processes."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."
"You can't beat it for the price."
"When you are dealing with a virtual machine or on-premise, one of the in-demand storage is NetApp."
"The solution is very good; it offers very good performance and very good data services to customers."
"The hardware and software of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy for us to use."
"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."
"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."
"Being able to partition different virtual volumes of storage is really valuable for us."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"The best way to improve Pure Storage FlashArray is the active DR because that can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to test a failover and replicate back; better instructions on how to do that would help because we actually lost an entire volume when we were testing out some stuff as the fingerprint got reinitialized, and when you replicated back, it didn't know about that volume, causing a failure in that process."
"I would recommend improvements in the graphical user interface, specifically a detailed hardware view that would allow us to see the individual drives and individual controllers more easily, as currently, they are presenting only a higher-level view."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration."
"Going forward, don't complicate things for the customers."
"In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server."
"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"The ZIO interface could be improved."
"I would like to see IBM products become more affordable because they can be quite expensive, which limits their accessibility to a broader customer base."
"The tool's architecture is complex. It also needs to add data utilization reports."
"The support could be better."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system. And yet, it's very necessary for all organizations' networks to have file systems. We have other systems for the file system, however, ideally, we would like to have one system with these features."
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"This solution has limited storage."
"There could be an improvement when it comes to SLA support, it could be faster."
"For us, in our country, the solution is a bit expensive."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is not expensive."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing."
"The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions."
"Price-wise, the solution offers excellent pricing to its users. In short, the prices offered by the solution are competitive compared to similar solutions."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is less than Dell. For upgrades, the Dell solutions are more expensive."
"The tool's pricing is competitive."
"The solution is priced well."
"The solution's price is competitive."
"The price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."
"It's a lot less costly than cloud storage. People get surprised by the cost of cloud storage, which is extremely expensive and four or five times the cost of storage on-premises. People don't realize what they're spending on storage until they start getting bills from Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This is a good way to reduce your cloud storage expenses."
"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."
"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

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?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
The licensing cost for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe can be seen as a bit expensive compared to competitors. You can eith...
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
In terms of improvement regarding IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe, I can compare with other competitors, especially regardi...
What is your primary use case for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
There are many advantages that we have with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe against, for example, IBM full flash systems an...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.