IBM Storage FlashSystem vs. NetApp FAS Storage Arrays

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Storage FlashSystem
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
IBM Storage FlashSystem, an all-flash storage array, delivers ~2 PB of effective capacity per single rack unit. Engineered with unique FlashCore Modules, it offloads data services including compression, encryption, deduplication, and ransomware threat detection ensuring optimum performance and resiliency.
$14,200
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
NetApp's FAS series systems offers a storage array system for enterprises.N/A
Pricing
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsEntry-Level IBM Storage FlashSystem: For any organization looking for an all-flash array with features that are both enterprise conducive and budget friendly, the small to entry level offering prices from IBM begin at $18,400. Mid-Range IBM Storage FlashSystem: For businesses wanting to take advantage of an enterprise-quality flash array for critical workloads (such as SQL databases, SAP, ERP, CRM, etc.), list prices start at $104,600. High-Performance IBM Storage FlashSystem: Organizations seeking a storage array with the ability to run multiple instances of critical applications that are both performance intensive and capacity sensitive, can find IBM prices starting at $368,500. Contact IBM for configuration and pricing details.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Considered Both Products
IBM Storage FlashSystem
Chose IBM Storage FlashSystem
IBM Storage FlashSystem outshines Dell EqualLogic PS Series with its high performance, data protection, and energy efficiency. IBM Storage FlashSystem's high-speed all-flash storage ensures faster response time and so lower latency. Its robust security features, including …
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays

No answer on this topic

Features
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
IBM Storage FlashSystem
8.8
151 Ratings
2% below category average
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
-
Ratings
Flash Array Performance9.4147 Ratings00 Ratings
Flash Array Integration8.5143 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Compression8.5146 Ratings00 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades9.5139 Ratings00 Ratings
Simplicity8.3148 Ratings00 Ratings
Power Savings8.4141 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 8.5 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 8.5 out of 10
NetApp AFF A-Series
NetApp AFF A-Series
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(150 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.6
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(22 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.4
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.1
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Storage FlashSystemNetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Top choice for IBMi integration. In general, it's a very good solution for quite a lot of customers. If you need a 3 site replication solution (HA + DR) maybe it's not the best solution, unless you use SVC. FlashCore Modules have very powerful compression rate, while mantaining good performance: high IOPS rate and really low latency
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NetApp
It is very easy to use with NFS. Creating new volumes and mounting to servers such as ESXi or Linux is a breeze. It does also support CIFS but it is far less intuitive and requires much more effort. Replicated data is also very simple and robust in the form of SnapVaults or SnapMirrors. This data is either immediately or periodically replicated to a peer FAS in the cluster for retention.
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Pros
IBM
  • Extremely fast storage
  • Scales up as needed. Add flash core modules easily and increase volumes very quickly.
  • Applying firmware updates to IBM Storage FlashSystem is very easy to do and can be done without any downtime.
  • Replication policies are very versatile and also easy to setup.
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NetApp
  • The selling point for NetApp FAS is the application and data protection integration capabilities they provide.
  • We have been able to use NetApp FAS in a variety of use cases with a standard set of management tools.
  • NetApp FAS has evolved over the years from just NAS to also include block protocols. At this time they support almost all industry standard protocols.
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Cons
IBM
  • Definitely we need to be able to extend a volume that is part of a mirror pair or Policy-Based Replication(PBO) on the fly.
  • Expansion of mirrored volumes/volume groups should resynchronise only the changed data (Almost like making use of change-volumes) and not trigger a full resync.
  • Please allow us to select downloading drive microcode also from Fix Central directly onto the flashsystem like with updates.
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NetApp
  • Deduplication job runs at certain times and creates a large CPU overhead for the system
  • Management of a volumes, disk groups, LUNs, etc. is a burden to manage and is not efficient with storage capacity
  • Upgrades are complicated and not "non-disruptive"
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
As flash technology evolves rapidly, vendors should [adapt] to the changes and onboard them in their products. IBM is a bit slow in adopting advanced technology in [its] portfolio. Even though the current product is good, my decision is purely based on how the transformation of the product [is] being produced and supplied to [the] end-user.
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NetApp
It just works! We've used NetApp FAS Storage Arrays systems since 2011 and have had fantastic results, in particular since 2016 as performance has drastically improved. Tools are great/user friendly, command line capabilities are very strong ... it is simply very effective at what it does!
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Usability
IBM
The integration into our SVC and the midrange systems are very well working. We do use cross site replication and global mirror which in turn is easy setup and the consistency groups are well maintained. The storage does global mirroring but also internal cross room replication as well. The integration of cloud object storage also helps in tiering the overall system.
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NetApp
It does have a really nice and easy to use web interface to do pretty much anything you need with it. It was very simple to configure our volumes and luns and connect them to our VMWare environment using the interface. It has options to rename, shrink, grow, and other things with our luns and volumes. It was nice and easy to read graphs to see where you stand on your storage usage at a glance.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
IBM Flashsystems is always available for me, it is fiberchannel storage without the fuzz of what iscsi brings. It is a very reliable storage system, I have almost never issues with this system. The only things which go wrong are the updates because the old updates which have been staged on the disks are not properly cleaned in my opinion.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
Latency and throughput have been excellent. The compression is done natively on the NVME modules so we do not see an impact there. the distributed parity does not seem to impact write speeds at all. We have found database performace has increased quite a bit over our old hybrid storage solution.
Having a single tier of performance makes it easy to set up SLAs for workloads.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
Sometimes the knowledge of the support agent is quite limited and the support always has to route through the level 1 agent to screen all the informtion provided. Then its esclated to the next level support with the all collected data . The logs are always uploaded along wiht the case but still its reviewed at the lower level and then escalated / handed over to the next level if its complex issue to solve.
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NetApp
NetApp support in Brazil is managed by its partners. We know in other countries, such as the US and NO, they have support directly from Netapp. We have a very good NetApp partner working with us since the beginning, on both the implementation and daily support. Very few cases needed to be escalated to NetApp support, most of the cases are handled and satisfyingly closed by the partner.
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Online Training
IBM
THe training is often selfpaced and easy to follow if you have worked previously with other storage products. The content is clear and contains all the information needed for an admin to learn. However the troubleshooting part is not always included and this is dependent on forums or other sources where the information is not accessible very easily.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
I was amazed by the way IBM Flash storage provides a huge amount of storage within the limited footprint, it helped us to replace big fat storage arrays, which aided in the process of moving towards lower hardware, carbon, and energy consumption footprint. We can comfortably say that Flash helped us to host applications fast with a blazing speed and user transactions are quite quick.
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NetApp
Our initial deployment was handled by pro services. Most later deployments were handled in-house. All went very smoothly. Documentation made it relatively easy to set up new systems which allowed us to do it in-house. When using pro services they were professional and comprehensive.
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
For the past six months, we have been utilizing this technology in our projects to manage a massive workload and produce swift business outcomes on a crucial production database. The IBM FlashSystem 7200, which offers high performance and compression, has so far been a great experience for us. The results and functionality of this product have delighted our consumers.
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NetApp
NetApp stacked nicely and gave enterprise-level usability for snapshot-based backups. Our previous RPO was several hours. It was selected prior to me arriving at the company, but It was selected for the hardware refreshes due to its compatibility with several other vendors, like CommVault and VMware.
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Scalability
IBM
We have been able to scale this storage system whenever there has been requirement for additional capacity and performance. with the help of deduplication we have been able to build quite a robust environment.
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NetApp
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • the compression in line means the IBM flashcore allow us to store much more information with less capacity, we can store much more with fewer disks
  • virtualization allows us to extend the useful life of old equipment that we already had separated, as I said, I use them as a repository for backups
  • With the implementation of the new functionality of immutable copies with SafeGuarded Copies, the information is much more secure for possible attacks
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NetApp
  • The speed of file recovery is the biggest positive impact. Recovering from a ransomware attack in minutes is something you can certainly brag about.
  • Integration with products like Exchange and SQL can certainly speed up normal day to day processes. Not just in backup recovery situations either.
  • Redundant paths make migrations and updates very easy with no downtime.
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ScreenShots

IBM Storage FlashSystem Screenshots

Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 5300Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 9500Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 7300Screenshot of IBM FlashSystem 5000