IBM FlashSystem vs Pavilion HyperParallel Flash Array comparison

"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 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."

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

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

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

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"High availability and enhanced security; Proven dependability; Data compression with hardware acceleration; Advanced copy services features are all in this product."

"The most valuable features are flexibility and performance."

"The FlashSystem 900 consistently delivers performance below 1ms for read/write. This performance is essential for an effective SVC stretch-cluster configuration across two datacenters, and presenting active-active storage to the customer."

"It's very easy to manage."

"Installing FlashSystem is very easy. It takes less than half an hour, and I can handle it all myself."

"At the FlashSystem level, customers are especially fond of multi-tier and distributed rate systems, particularly the dynamic rate six arrays."

"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 performance of the solution is noteworthy."

"The high performance is very valuable, as well as the enterprise reliability features."

"We have been able to consolidate storage into Pavilion. Pavilions are our only SANs because it is a bring your own disk solution. When new drives come out, we are able to take out half of the drives in the system, put in new drives, move our VMs over to the new drives, take the other drives out, and populate those with new drives. Then, we are suddenly twice as dense as we were before. NVMe flash is only going to get denser and cheaper so we can make use of that every couple of years by just throwing newer disks into it at a fraction of the cost of a new SAN."

"There's lots of flexibility in how we use the resources while also maintaining a small footprint."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"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."

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

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

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"The solution has a low number of NVME host attachments at 16 per IO group over the fiber channel."

"The support could improve by allowing you to speak to someone when you call rather than them calling you back. However, once we do have contact with one of their technicians they are excellent."

"If you want to expand, you cannot expand the disc enclosure. You have to buy a total individual node. Sometimes, this is difficult because we are just looking for capacity and not a node."

"They can include Amazon file system S3 protocol in the upcoming releases. It is a cloud file system. IBM FlashSystem doesn't have this feature in the box for high-end or mid-range. We have got requests for this from customers because we need to use S3 for EDI application storage. At the beginning of every year, IBM releases firmware. When I find any bugs in the firmware during the year, I am unable to find any information from IBM regarding the bug. I need to open a ticket, and the IBM engineering team makes a patch only for me. This patch is not public. By creating a customized patch for a client, they don't really solve the issue for everyone. If multiple users have the same bug, IBM should upload the patch on the official website so that we can download it. IBM FlashSystem has a monitoring tool in the box, but it is not advanced. I need a more advanced tool for more advanced equations and monitoring. All top three storage vendors, that is, EMC, IBM, and Pure Storage, don't have a powerful monitoring tool. To monitor our box to show the statistics for I/Os and latency, I need to pay for extra software. The built-in monitoring storage is not mature enough to handle all requests and generate all reports that I need. They can include the functionality to stretch a cluster natively without using any additional boxes. In addition, there are some features that EMC has integrated with the box. These features are not available in IBM FlashSystem."

"There could be some extra features added."

"The design is a little old-fashioned and could be updated. The rack is very primitive and designed in an older style."

"Their technical support needs improvement in terms of reachability for the clients and response times. They should be more responsive and have more online platforms for support. They should make more technical information available online. There could be some kind of documentation community."

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

"I would like to see the management layer improved."

"In our current configuration, we can only run the line controllers in high availability, active-standby mode, whereas we would like to see active-active implemented."

"The rail system that Pavilion uses to mount up into a standard Dell or APC cabinet extends further back than normal rails, and they cover up the zero PDU slot. So, I don't like the rail system that comes with the device. That is my biggest complaint."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"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."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

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

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

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

"The cost is pretty high in terms of licensing. We pay at least $100,000 USD in licensing fees for the storage."

"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..."

"The tool is cost-efficient."

"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."

"There are no licensing fees, it is a one-time purchase of the IBM FlashSystem."

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

"We have no issues with the price as it is very competitive."

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

"The licensing fees are very reasonable."

"This is hardware. They have a singular array that you can populate with your own disk, or you can buy the disks through them. For controllers, you pay for the components inside of the SAN, but there is only one chassis that they work with."