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IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800 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
27th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (13th)
NetApp NVMe AFF A800
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (8th)
 

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.
Helder-Valente - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at affidea
Has improved data efficiency and application performance while supporting encryption and fast access to imaging workloads
We use it quite extensively because with this we have more space and the information can be read without wasting time. We are satisfied with this. The performance is quite good. We don't have any issues regarding the applications that use fat clients. It helps prevent being hacked, and so far we don't have any issues. We can do the encryption of the data. The solution performs quite well. It helps us maintain our systems. Since we have many applications that use images for streaming, it works exceptionally well. We don't have any issues, and this helps us with the service we provide to the hospital.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."
"It is always out of the box, and ready to use."
"Cuts VM deployment down to seconds and cuts latency under MS with amazing performance and very stable operation with no worries about how much it can handle."
"If I want a product which has reliability and high speed, and Pure Storage is the first name that comes out of my mouth."
"It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit."
"If you're interested in using this solution, I recommend that you do the same — see if you like it."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"It is a high-performance product that serves our requests well."
"The product is a game-changer; IBM changed the game architecturally by moving computational resources into the flash media."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"A key feature is that compared to storage systems that we've been familiar with over decades, IBM simply does not fail. The reason is that IBM is the only manufacturer that engineers its own flash module, and there is a key architectural difference from everything else that we have seen in the market. The difference is that the flash module has the computational capability, which allows reliability and capacity enhancements to be uploaded from the main controllers and run in each module. So, each of the flash drives becomes its own little storage system, and that is extremely effective architecture. In this field, with this type of system, IBM has made a statement. They've never had one of these modules cause an outage. So, the failure rates on these things are just in a whole different universe from what we were accustomed to."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is one of the leading storage systems in the world...I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is easy to use and comes with good performance."
"It is a very stable product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten because we did not face any issues in the last three years."
"During the use cases of the solution, its reliability and suitability are the best."
"Over the eight years, we've been using NetApp with ONTAP, we've never lost a bit of data, and we've only experienced a few minutes of downtime in that entire time."
"The product can be scaled vertically as well as horizontally."
"The most valuable features are stability and performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O."
"The solution performs quite well; it helps us maintain our systems, and since we have many applications that use images for streaming, it works exceptionally well, helping us with the service we provide to the hospital."
"We find the product to be very flexible."
"It's a very straightforward installation and implementation."
 

Cons

"It was not proactive communication."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"I would appreciate improvements on daily health checks."
"It was a little costly."
"Automation could be simplified."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"I'd like to be able to connect to tape drives behind the storage device to back up the tape if need be. We have all of our storage running in all-flash, and we make a copy on tape. Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex. We want IBM to add a feature where we could install a tape into the storage so that we can connect it through a single pane of glass. We'd like to have a feature in the IBM flash storage system so that we can connect backup tape drives through the IBM storage system and we can manage the backup tape from the storage system."
"Other vendors have included a block and file system. IBM doesn't include a file system."
"In the future, the limitation is upgrading the same storage by adding a shelf to the desk. There is a limitation in the backend connection between the storage and extended shelf."
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"The pricing should be more competitive."
"Currently, when we want to hook up tape drives, we have to add some extra equipment, which is a little bit complex."
"The solution's compression needs to be improved, as it's not the best."
"IBM's support is not good. I experienced a big problem where I opened the console IBM Storage and would see that something was broken. I called the call centers, and I said, "I have a problem. My drive is not working." They want me to give them the serial number, I gave it to them and they told me "I cannot find your product. Your product is not here.""
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Increasing the RAM, and including physical cords would be beneficial."
"The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better."
"The initial setup should be easier, and more like a plug-and-play approach."
"For NVMe, the reporting and consolidation dashboard could be improved. The dashboard is not user-friendly. It should be more simplified."
"The support can take a few days to have a response. However, the response that we do receive is very informative."
"Stability is an area with a certain shortcoming where the solution needs to improve"
"The initial setup is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"In the beginning, we saw that the price is not very good. When we made some compilations about the deduplication and the compression and what the equipment does, including the differentiation of upper management of the storage, the price was not so bad. However, in the beginning, the price was very difficult to justify."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."
"Compared to other solutions, the cost of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable, with a one-time payment of around $70,000. However, additional support is available for $25,000 for three years. The overall maintenance cost is steep."
"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 NVMele can be considered affordable when taking into account the operating system that is required for it to function properly. This operating system, which is licensed by IBM, may carry a higher cost, but it is worth the investment for larger corporate entities, such as insurance companies, Fortune Five companies, and banks, who make up a significant portion of their target market. The FlashSystems are designed for larger corporations and multinational enterprises, and may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller businesses."
"The solution is priced well."
"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."
"The product has an average cost."
"The solution's price is competitive."
"Considering the requirements and the situation, I don't feel that this is an expensive product."
"There are licenses for the use of this solution, such as commercial licenses."
"The solution is expensive."
"Though NetApp NVMe AFF A800 may seem like a highly-priced product, it is not extremely expensive."
"I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Construction Company
6%
 

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 Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

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 have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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...
What needs improvement with NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
For NVMe, the reporting and consolidation dashboard could be improved. The dashboard is not user-friendly. It should ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
We continue with NetApp NVMe AFF A800. We are the client. It is used for storage and backup. Regarding equipment mode...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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