FreeNAS vs. IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

FreeNAS

FreeNAS

24 Reviews and Ratings

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

32 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
FreeNAS	Score 5.4 out of 10	N/A	FreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.	N/A
IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)	Score 7.0 out of 10	N/A	IBM Storwize is a family of recognized all-flash and hybrid storage solutions designed to support the virtualization needs and application workloads of mid-sized enterprises.	N/A

Pricing

FreeNAS

IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
FreeNAS	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	FreeNAS	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Considered Both Products	FreeNAS Verified User Anonymous Chose FreeNAS Before swapping to FreeNAS, we'd been using plan old Linux servers running Samba and NFS with ZFS storage underneath. This worked really well for our requirements at the time but required a lot of administration when new versions came along, or new users had to be added or … Incentivized Helpful? eldhose k shibu Chief Technology Officer (Consulting) Chose FreeNAS FreeNAS effectively uses all resources really well and it is highly recommended for in premises NAS. It has unlimited ROI as it is really free and open-source. The only payment we need to pay is when we need any support from those guys. FreeNAS helps us to effectively do our … Incentivized Helpful? PJ Pranay Jain Senior Consultant Chose FreeNAS OpenMediaVault, XigmaNAS Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose FreeNAS We were recommended to use FreeNAS by our peers because of its cost effectiveness and better GUI. We later moved on from it as the scope of the server changed from being a simple file server to a Configuration Management repository. As far as issues, there were issues with … Incentivized Helpful? CT Chris Thibeau Technical Support Analyst Chose FreeNAS Nas4Free, Windows File share, Unaid, OpenFiler Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose FreeNAS One alternative to FreeNAS is NAS4Free. FreeNAS tends to be a bit more cutting-edge, which is good for us technical enthusiasts. By contrast, NAS4Free sticks with the core NAS functionality and doesn't provide a fancy interface. NAS4Free is opensource, but enterprise support … Incentivized Helpful? Tommy Boucher IT Director Chose FreeNAS If you are ready to build it yourself, FreeNAS is the best. I tried so many alternatives, including paid versions, and nothing compares to the power of FreeNAS. If you need an enterprise-grade NAS, you would go with an HPE or Dell because of the support, not the features. If … Incentivized Helpful?	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) UK Utkarsh Khandelwal System Administrator Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Dell EMC Unity Incentivized Helpful? BS Bhawani Shankar Satapathy AIX Administrator Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM FlashSystem Incentivized Helpful? MK Mushtaqu Khan Regional Business Manager Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM Storewize is the best among other products available in the market. Many features such as scalability, data configuration, and data security show this system are best for our business. We can't compare it with others. Incentivized Helpful? SS Srishti Shukla Territory Business Manager Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Dell EMC Unity and IBM FlashSystem Incentivized Helpful? DB Debopriya Bhattacharya AIX Administrator Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM FlashSystem Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Simpler to use. Storwize is reliable and is using IBM technology and not some unknown application. Proven performance and easy to stack and configure. Sizing is simple and the options are more than I need for my business. Rack compatibility is something you may not realize … Incentivized Helpful? TC Tom Corrado Storage Specialist Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Storwize does not have the performance of FlashSystem, but it’s low cost and high capacity options make it competitive as an option for point-in-time copies and backups. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) We prefer IBM over other solutions because IBM just seems to be more resilient, easy to use, and simple to deploy. Other products may have a steep learning curve, or may be start ups with not so much reliability. Incentivized Helpful? FG fredy garcia Presale Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM Storwize is a part of a family that is complemented by the products listed. In many negotiations, involving storage is our workhorse to ensure several businesses thanks to its balanced cost and all the benefits that we offer. Incentivized Helpful? Kenneth Ditmar Hansen Senior Storage Specialist Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) We are using IBM Storwize storage arrays underneath IBM Spectrum Scale, they are easy to interact together, and can scale to our requirement. Easy administration as the GUI are designed equally so it's easy to find administrative features and the easy single pane of glass GUI … Incentivized Helpful? Peter Sachs Storage Infrastructure Engineer Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) More choice and better price. Incentivized Helpful? Rusty Beard Storage Architect Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) HPE and Hitachi. I recommend IBM Storwize to my customers because it's an industry-proven, flexible platform with award-winning ease-of-use and high performance. Incentivized Helpful? Bill Raines Technology Sales Specialist Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) With the latest announcements of v5K and v7K, IBM is on target with the competition out there on the market. The only [thing] missing is a great marketing campaign to sustain a 12-24 month period to whet the client's appetite. We as a partner are doing what we can to educate … Incentivized Helpful? Keith Thuerk Storage Engineer Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM SVC (ran for several years) ESS E & F models (yeah those are old) Since Storwize is based upon SVC it was a no brainer and saved us $$$$. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) We use both frequently. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) IBM Storwize is a solid product, and we will continue to use it. Incentivized Helpful? RE Roberto Etcheverry Solution Architect Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) We used the old DS4xxxx series of storages and have worked with most brands of storage and I will always pick Storwize over the rest. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) It is an alternate platform, so having multiple vendors reduces risk. Incentivized Helpful?

Best Alternatives
	FreeNAS	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Small Businesses	DiskStation Score 8.8 out of 10	DiskStation Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Dell Unity XT Unified Storage Score 8.6 out of 10	Dell Unity XT Unified Storage Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises	Dell Unity XT Unified Storage Score 8.6 out of 10	Dell Unity XT Unified Storage Score 8.6 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	FreeNAS	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Likelihood to Recommend	9.0 (0 ratings)	9.9 (0 ratings)
Support Rating	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	FreeNAS	IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Likelihood to Recommend	FreeNAS suited really well in managing our legacy systems and it handled all our network flows really well, less maintenance is required on our part. FreeNAS also gave the option to switch to TrueNAS for free as now its support is limited. The major issue that we faced was with the installation as it is really complex and required lots of time. Rest all is good and FreeNAS still works well on our systems. Incentivized Eldhose K Shibu Chief Technology Officer (Consulting) Read full review	IBM Storewize is widely used in organizations for on-premises with a lot of facilities that are given by this IBM Storewize. Data accessibility is very good and fast in this system. This system is available with different data services such as scalability and flexibility in data even providing security to our data. Incentivized MK Mushtaqu Khan Regional Business Manager Read full review
Pros	The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy. The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance. Incentivized CT Chris Thibeau Technical Support Analyst Read full review	Data processing and IO. The Storwize devices are very resilient in how they process data and do not have a drop in IO when errors occur (common errors such as disk failures and lost paths). Storage efficiency management. We are able to use multiple efficiency techniques such as thin provisioning and data reduction to reduce our budget footprint. Easy to use interfaces. Creating a volume and mapping to a host has proven to be a very easy process and makes onboarding less stressful for our team. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage. Most of the good and required features are not available in free version. Incentivized PJ Pranay J Senior Consultant Read full review	As a business partner looking to provide services to keep the uptime of the Storwize, I would like to have the capability to pull reports from IBM Storage Insights to assist my clients in managing their system through it's lifecycle. More knowledge out there for partners to best integrate IBM Storwize with IBM Power i. This seems to be lacking in communication from IBM. Incentivized Bill Raines Technology Sales Specialist Read full review
Support Rating	There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Before swapping to FreeNAS, we'd been using plan old Linux servers running Samba and NFS with ZFS storage underneath. This worked really well for our requirements at the time but required a lot of administration when new versions came along, or new users had to be added or drives needed replacing, and so on. FreeNAS did away with 95% of that work and does a much better job too. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Simpler to use. Storwize is reliable and is using IBM technology and not some unknown application. Proven performance and easy to stack and configure. Sizing is simple and the options are more than I need for my business. Rack compatibility is something you may not realize until you install one or more of the units. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Return on Investment	Low-Cost Network Attached Storage Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	I would like to highlight the most positive aspect I have seen in the products of the IBM Storwize family, and it is the ROI that we can choose when we offer real-time compression with the IBM V7000 family. In truth, this feature is excellent, and we have seen how customers save storage resources, rack space, power and management. Incentivized FG fredy garcia Presale Read full review
ScreenShots		IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems) Screenshots