HPE Primera vs IBM FlashSystem comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.1, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.3. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 4.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to IBM’s 6.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

IBM FlashSystem and HPE Primera represent two leading competitors in enterprise storage solutions. IBM FlashSystem seems to have the advantage in terms of pricing and support, while HPE Primera’s features make it a superior choice for many users who find it worth the higher cost.

Features: Users notice the performance and scalability of IBM FlashSystem, highlighting its ability to handle high workloads efficiently. HPE Primera is appreciated for its robust reliability and advanced data protection features, making it a preferred choice despite its higher price. Both products are highly effective with HPE Primera standing out for those who prioritize advanced functionality over cost efficiency.

Room for Improvement: IBM FlashSystem reviews often mention the need for enhanced analytics and better integration capabilities. HPE Primera users note a steep learning curve and express a desire for more comprehensive support documentation. IBM FlashSystem users seek more advanced technical enhancements, while HPE Primera’s areas for improvement generally relate to user onboarding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM FlashSystem is generally easier to deploy, with straightforward setup processes and responsive support. HPE Primera, while offering extensive features, can require more effort and time to deploy correctly. IBM FlashSystem users report quicker resolutions and more effective support interactions compared to HPE Primera.

Pricing and ROI: IBM FlashSystem is noted for its competitive pricing and quicker return on investment (ROI), making it a cost-effective choice for many organizations. HPE Primera commands a higher setup cost, but users feel the long-term ROI justifies the initial investment due to superior performance and functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem

January 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 4.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem is 6.7%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

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.

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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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Raanan Sitton

Vice President Sales at BELOCAL LTD

Offers cost-effective storage for small companies with budget constraints

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

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

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

"The latency is good."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"There has been a lot of changes in HPE Primera OS, and most of the time any package related to it is simple to upgrade. It does not require any support for the operation. The customer can easily deploy any code directly from the GUI which is very good. Additionally, we have individual storage we can allocate and easily manage."

"The most valuable feature is an all-flash system, which means the data access speed is amazing while the latency is almost nothing, and it can deliver IOPS up to 16,000."

"When taking into account the price, maintenance required, and performance of HPE Primera, it is an effective solution."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The most important thing that we had found when we purchased this product around six months back was its 100% availability and uptime."

"In my opinion, HPE is making good progress and moving ahead with InfoSight, which is predictive analytics and artificial intelligence."

"The product has better replication features than the previous products."

"The initial setup is simple."

More HPE Primera pros

"Most of the features for the reduction in data compression are useful. It is also very easy to use and administer. Its performance is also good."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is replication...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"Data deduplication is one of the most valuable features of this solution."

"The installation is nice and easy."

"I like most of the features. Its speed, performance, and availability are valuable. We are implementing the data reduction technology the most."

"They have a virtualization feature and, even if you do not want to buy that feature, you can have it as a trial for two to three months. If you have another brand of storage from another company, you can use this tool to transfer all your data from the old system to the new Storwize system, which really shortens the migration time."

"The initial setup is straightforward and can be done in an hour and a half by one person."

"Stability-wise, this solution is fine."

More IBM FlashSystem pros

Cons

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

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

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"We face challenges with false alarms, particularly daily alerts related to replication link breaks. I'm not happy with the customer service and support."

"Like most storage, we want to see flash become more and more stable. Like any flash that uses MLC or TLC techniques, over time, the more writes you have, the less usable the storage becomes. They try to plan for this and have a lot of extra space in the arrays, but over time, their performance does degrade. This is true for any flash storage."

"The solution has good performance but it could improve further."

"We used to receive hardware errors a lot of times. The ambient temperatures rise rate was approximately 35 to 55 degrees, but when it was approximately 27 or 28, we used to get errors a lot."

"The pricing is very high."

"Price is always important in Turkey, so HPE could lower the price to keep it competitive. It's not as competitive as other solutions in this market."

"They could work to make scalability easier."

"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."

More HPE Primera cons

"The interface could improve in IBM FlashSystem."

"IBM FlashSystems is lagging in optimizing storage technologies."

"In IBM FlashSystem, data reduction is an area with shortcomings where improvements can be made in the future."

"The initial setup is complex."

"The solution is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of time to study the product and it's a little complicated in general."

"With regards to the IBM V7000 storage system, where we have multiple tiers of storage, a heat map would show I/O distribution across the tiers of storage."

"I think the only thing the developers can look at, is that it is limited to 25 gigabytes currently. In the next release they might want to increase that."

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

More IBM FlashSystem cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

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

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

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

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis and the cost of GreenLake service is included."

"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"I believe HPE Primera and Pure Storage are similar in price."

"The license for HPE Primera is all-inclusive."

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."

"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."

"The solution is quite cost-effective."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

"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."

"This solution is expensive compared to other solutions."

"Our customers would like IMB FlashSystem to be less expensive."

"The pricing has been very competitive for the last few years. IBM got to the point where they changed the pricing model and we feel very comfortable with the pricing. It's very competitive. Over the last two years, IBM has been coming up with all kinds of interesting promos, especially for the SMB systems. That makes it very competitive price-wise and in terms of performance..."

"They've been much more aggressive in the last five, six years than they were before that."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The pricing may be a bit higher than other brands. If you compare the IBM FlashSystems in midrange with Dell EMC in midrange, IBM costs a bit more, but I prefer IBM because it has more specs that I can benefit from."

"Overall the price of the solution is expensive and this includes the license."

More IBM FlashSystem pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Educational Organization

46%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

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

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

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What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

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What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

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What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem?

It is simple to make an update.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 33% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 17% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs HPE Primera

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Primera 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

HPE Nimble Storage vs IBM FlashSystem

Compared 1% of the time

More IBM FlashSystem Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

February 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

February 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM FlashSystem

February 2025

Download IBM FlashSystem product report

Also Known As

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

Primera

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

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem

January 2025

Free Report: HPE Primera vs. IBM FlashSystem

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