We performed a comparison between IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Nasuni and others in NAS."The most valuable feature of the solution is SCM (Storage Class Memory), which has the lowest latency value in the storage industry."
"IBM FlashSystem is a stable solution."
"The performance of IBM FlashSystem is very good. The new technology and high throughput have given us more confidence in the solution. The management of the system has improved and we can control the monitoring system alerts and multiple FlashSystems with the Enterprise Cloud Edition, which is free. The migration of recently stored data to a new flash is much easier. You can move your data because you can utilize it externally."
"The valuable features for us are the extra add-ons, such as the FIM provisioning, the compression, the disaster recovery capabilities, and the storage pooling functions."
"The most valuable feature is reliability."
"Ability to manage third-party arrays and virtualise them: One screen to control multiple arrays. Simplified administration."
"The most valuable features are flexibility and performance."
"When it comes to the interface of the solution we did not encounter any challenges. Additionally, the solution has good documentation."
"vSAN Health is a feature designed to monitor the health and performance of the vSAN environment. It's crucial for us and our customers to frequently check on this to ensure everything is operating smoothly."
"The installation is very easy."
"The valuable features are its scalability and the standardization - one size fits all. It's also intuitive and easy to use because one size fits all. Obviously, it scales out, but it's the same solution at every physical location I manage."
"It's very scalable. I like that. Adding a node is easy. Adding a disk group is easy."
"Technical support is very helpful and very good at resolving issues."
"VMware vSAN is compatible with the legacy hypervisor solutions and most of the features are good."
"vSAN can help customers save on storage system costs, and also save on the human cost."
"The solution fits well with my requirements."
"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 Data Reduction Pools (DRP) support could be better."
"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."
"The generic functionality of IBM FlashSystem, IBM always dismisses using file share or sharing protocols inside their storage hardware, and they only focus on the block-level storage."
"The security features can be improved such that the encryption does not affect performance in any way."
"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."
"The storage capacity of this solution could be improved."
"IBM should improve its data reduction development."
"There's already a concern with VMware with ransomware and security issues. VMware could focus on improving security."
"Hackers are able to manage to leak information or data from the product using some corrupt files, making it an area of major concern where improvements are required."
"The customer service is good but there is a cost for it. It does not come free."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."
"I would like to see some of the more traditional SAN functions that are out the now. I can list them: being able to Snapshot on the back-end, better de-dupe, and better compression. Those are the major ones."
"One area that could be improved is the management feature."
IBM FlashSystem is ranked 4th in NAS with 106 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 226 reviews. IBM FlashSystem is rated 8.2, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM FlashSystem writes "An easy GUI and simple provisioning but our model does not support compression". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". IBM FlashSystem is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Pure Storage FlashArray, Dell Unity XT, NetApp AFF and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell PowerFlex.
We monitor all NAS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
