Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. IBM FlashSystem

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

A robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee

Ozair Amin

Sales Manager - Infrastructure at Synergy Computers

We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products. Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes. The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings. Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand. I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others. There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers. The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues. The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive. Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service. The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions. In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task. Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

IBM FlashSystem 5300 is offered at a very low cost in Israel, which is advantageous for small companies. However, other features like deduplication and compression do not perform effectively. The price sensitivity makes it a viable option for clients with budgetary constraints, as it allows us to secure deals based on the cost rather than advanced performance.

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"The latency is good."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."

"I appreciate the performance."

"The solution is scalable."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

"The performance is very good."

"The most valuable feature is that you can use it with all deployment models."

"The customer service and support are reasonably good. The environment I work in, there always remains an element of surprise, and there are restrictions. But Hitachi has good technical people."

"This is a good product with high capabilities and high reliability."

"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"We have many different types of replication, such as remote and drop local replication. All these features and licenses are already available. These are basic features available in the current model. Additionally, the performance has been good in our experience."

"Overall, the solution is strong, easy and fast."

"This is one of the most stable, high-end solutions in this area."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pros

"The valuable features of IBM FlashSystem include flash copy mapping, which is a procedure to collect instant point-in-time data for testing real data."

"We are a 100% satisfied with the stability of the solution."

"The power systems are very reliable if you are running 24/7 operations. For ongoing mission-critical applications, it's the best solution."

"The speed, performance, and stability are the best features of IBM FlashSystem."

"IBM FlashSystem is a powerful effective storage solution. Additionally, it is user-friendly, anyone can use it."

"The speed of the unit is its best feature. It performs very well."

"The valuable feature is autoscalling."

"The initial setup was really straightforward. It was not complex. Deployment took one month, due to the data migration duration."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"It is on the expensive side."

"We need better data deduplication."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"It seemed like every time we turned around it was a statement of work and we'd have to pay for something that our previous vendors would not have billed us for."

"One improvement I am hoping for in the next release is unified storage."

"We moved away from this product because we were looking for an all-flash solution, and with our G1500 at the time, perhaps two years ago, they were just proposing more of the same technology."

"The solution is priced higher than its competitors."

"For mission critical issues the performance is low."

"Hitachi Vantara has invested heavily in improving their management interface, however, they still have a way to go to catch up with many of their competitors."

"The user experience is pretty bad in Hitachi. A lot of mandatory tasks take a long time to work through."

"Its usability can be improved. It can have more management features. Its management tools lack features."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform cons

"There is room for improvement in the troubleshooting part, specifically related to IBM Spectrum for Insight."

"Our customers have raised concerns about the limitations of the FlashSystem 5200 and 7300, which only offer a 32-gigabyte connection."

"This product lacks some of the options we wanted. For example, expansion was difficult and it required a lot of patching to be done."

"The interface of this solution could be improved."

"The only issue my team faced was transferring the data from the old system to IBM FlashSystem, which is an area for improvement in the solution."

"This solution needs a management console where we are alerted to issues and can report them, or escalate them through email or another method."

"The solution's infrastructure technology level could be PCI Express 5 instead of PCI Express 4 for the next version."

"The array level RAID does not seem available."

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is very competitive compared to other vendors. It really depends on the type of media we're using, like SaaS, SSP, or NVMe."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"In our company, we only pay towards the licensing charges associated with Forcepoint, as Hitachi is considered to be a third-party product for us."

"The price of the solution is reasonable compared to others, such as Dell EMC."

"It is a little expensive."

"Our main issue with the Hitachi G-Series is what we consider to be an archaic software licensing scheme and high maintenance costs."

"It is expensive as compared to other vendors, but its price is good if you are looking for stability, reliability, performance, and security."

"Hitachi VSP's pricing is good compared to other brands."

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform pricing and cost advice

"My customers got the IBM FlashSystem bundle offer. It was a one-time purchase for three years of service. The price would depend on the storage size and could reach between $25,000 to $55,000."

"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced it would be better."

"The solution requires a license and could be less expensive."

"The price depends of the technology that our customers need. The price can come at a lower cost but this may increase as storage is added."

"I find the pricing of the solution to be very reasonable."

"For a yearly license, it is about $100,000. There are no additional costs. The entire system is included."

"The pricing is competitive in our country."

"I would rate the pricing of this solution a four out of five."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user277539

Vice President, Products and Services with 51-200 employees

Jul 30, 2015

Hybrid storage, all-flash storage, and hyper-converged products offer software capable of running on commodity hardware, providing a better end-user experience at a reduced price.

Originally posted at https://www.freeitdata.com/ Over the last 15 years, the storage industry has primarily been dominated (market share) by six companies, EMC, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), HP and Dell. In 2013, these six companies made up approximately 85% of all storage sold in the…

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or...

What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?

Hitachi should work on unified storage for the SMB market and entry-level NAS storage, similar to what HP or Dell off...

What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem?

Many factors affect purchasing directly from IBM, often involving a multi-step process. Customers, especially in bank...

What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem?

The GUI needs some improvement. An additional function that could be helpful is reducing the time it takes to delete ...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 33% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 13% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 25% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 8% of the time

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform

Download Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform product report

IBM FlashSystem

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series

IBM Storwize

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

RETHINK YOUR DEFINITION OF SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

With adaptive, guaranteed data reduction and a 100% data-availability guarantee, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F series helps you tackle complicated business challenges. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) VSP F series delivers up to 4.8M IOPS with sub-millisecond response times.
Featuring legendary Hitachi reliability, VSP F series arrays are backed by the industries only 100% availability guarantee. For these reasons, 80% of the Fortune 500 choose Hitachi all-flash arrays to accelerate the performance of mission-critical applications like Oracle, SAP, Virtualization, Microsoft apps etc. With over 350 patents in flash technology, Hitachi’s innovative mix of flash hardware and software accelerates ROI with enterprise-class reliability and performance.

Hitachi Vantara

IBM FlashSystem products are enterprise computer data storage systems that store data on flash memory chips. Unlike storage systems that use standard solid-state drives, IBM FlashSystem products incorporate custom hardware based on technology from the 2012 acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. This hardware provides performance, reliability, and efficiency benefits versus competitive offerings.

IBM

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways

Celero, Friedhelm Loh Group, Clarks, Mingkang Natregro Health Food Group, Sofia, Etisalat Fights Fraud, UF Health Shands Hospital, Generali, Elecon Engineering Company Limited, Ventiv , Technology, CPFL Energia, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., SciQuest, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Paddy Power, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Interconnect Services, Severstal IP-Only AB, PVU Group GmbH

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. IBM FlashSystem