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IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs Pure Storage FlashArray comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (7th)
IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
193
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 7.3%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Paul Pearson - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 25, 2022
Works well, is easy to implement, and has upgrade analysis capabilities
Currently, it's our tier-one storage. We use it mostly for our Oracle databases It has drastically improved the performance of our high-end Oracle databases and allows us the ability to replication to a DR location with ease. We love the product. Pure Storage works really well.  The CAT tool and…
Mohamed-Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2023
Steady performance, responsive support, and high availability
I'm depending on IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe for enterprise storage with a high rate of IOPS. We use it for hosting a banking application I have used IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe storage banking and it is currently hosting all of the bank's applications. I have not noticed any decrease in performance…
Alfadel Alharthy - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2022
Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable
When we set up the solution we did not require a lot of support from the teams. The good thing about the support is they can access and upgrade the framework and all other aspects. However, the account managers from Pure Storage are not communicating very well with us. We want to talk to them about what features should be used, use cases, best practices, and other technical discussions. Additionally, we would like to know about the new features, the introduction of new technology in the storage itself. It would be nice if they could communicate this information to us. The support is very good. They always call us for technical upgrades and firmware. If we have any issues they log in and we open a session for them, and they help us. The only issue is the time zone difference between our time zone and their time zone. I would rate the support from Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of five.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"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 standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Its ease of use, performance, and hardware compression is very useful feature."
"The most valuable feature of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is the snapshot. We use it daily for all of the storage units."
"The most valuable feature is the speed."
"The solution is more available for IOPS warehousing, resolving issues, and reporting than other products."
"IBM FlashSystem provides the same software on each box, including virtualized solutions."
"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."
"It's easy to use, has good stability, and many features."
"The solution is very reliable."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"It has good stability for our company."
"Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"The most valuable feature of the FlashArray is Pure One, which provides a comprehensive overview of our entire storage environment."
"It is all-flash. This makes it a lot faster than the rest of what we have, as it is able to drive high I/O loads, which is big for us."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"We need better data deduplication."
"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."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"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."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"The solution's compression feature could be better."
"IBM is currently not offering volume-based encryption or compression, while other brands or IBM's competitors are doing it."
"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."
"I would like to see IBM products become more affordable because they can be quite expensive, which limits their accessibility to a broader customer base."
"There is a tool provided by IBM for repairing batteries which can only be utilized by those who have an IBM technical advisor under service contract. However, for individuals who do not have such a contract, the tool can be difficult to use and requires a zip file copy. I believe that it would be greatly beneficial if the tool were made more user-friendly and accessible for all individuals who need to repair batteries."
"The support could be better."
"The efficacy of the GUI in IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe could be enhanced, and it would be beneficial to include a feature that can prevent ransomware attacks."
"There could be a possibility of not requiring to buy a new box while upgrading to a newer version."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. For example, Cisco's logs provide extensive troubleshooting data, whereas Pure Storage logs offer limited information. We have to contact support to get more information."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"The speed can always be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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 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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"It's a lot less costly than cloud storage. People get surprised by the cost of cloud storage, which is extremely expensive and four or five times the cost of storage on-premises. People don't realize what they're spending on storage until they start getting bills from Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This is a good way to reduce your cloud storage expenses."
"The tool's pricing is competitive."
"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 price of the FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is reasonable."
"There are pricing options from the mid-rand to the high-range, of which the suitability depends upon the requirements."
"The price of IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe is less than Dell. For upgrades, the Dell solutions are more expensive."
"The solution's price is competitive."
"Compared to its competitors, IBM's offering is the most cost-effective."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"Pure came in at a better price point than EMC and performed better than Compellent."
"Our Evergreen Storage subscription is supposed to be good when we go to upgrade."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"There is always room for negotiation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It f...
What do you like most about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
The storage serves the virtual environment. Most of our applications run in the virtual environment, and it serves ne...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
For this technology, FlashCore Model, the price is competitive. In some exercises, it is very competitive.
What needs improvement with IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe?
In the FlashSystem 5200, there were only four ports of 32 fiber channels for the architecture. This has been resolved...
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 do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
IBM FlashSystem 9100, FlashSystem 9100
No data available
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Information Not Available
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM FlashSystem 9100 NVMe vs. Pure Storage FlashArray and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.