We performed a comparison between NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) came out ahead of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. The two solutions have similar deployment difficulty, price range, and support quality, but NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays has fewer valuable features, according to its users.
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The latency is good."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"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."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"Most of our business-critical systems are provisioned from the NetApp AFF system. Compared to others, we have a minimal latency. Configuring the DR for high availability or migrating the volumes from one box to another is pretty easy with NetApp AFF."
"It is a stable solution."
"This solution has reduced our data center costs because when we went from the 8000 and 3200 series that took us from 20 racks of storage down to two."
"The performance of NetApp AFF allows our developers and researches to run models and their tests within a single workday instead of spreading out across multiple workdays."
"Our AFF 8040 is currently helping us in terms of response time and speed because it is a flash system. Most importantly, it enables our SQL Cluster to respond to database queries and things a lot faster. It minimizes latency."
"When we move to all-flash, our response times were reduced to microseconds."
"It is stable. In my three years working with the storage, I haven't seen any issues with our NetApp product."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"The speed is the most valuable feature."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."
"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The management software is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."
"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 would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"I have experienced slow responses several times, if the ticket has only been opened in portal."
"We have had issues with CIFS presentations and outages, so if that was removed, we could do seamless upgrades without affecting CIFS presentations. That would be an advantage. That's about the only improvement I can think of."
"FC and ATTO bridges are still needed for cross datacenter replication."
"They should provide easier integration with multiple systems."
"I would like to see more frequent updates at a faster pace."
"To be more competitive in the industry, they can develop deduplication, compression, and smarter features in the same array instead of all-flash."
"Cleaning up false positives on alerts. We get a lot of those."
"Sometimes, NetApp support could be better. When the customers escalate, it can feel like everything's starting from scratch. These are rare cases. I'm not directly involved in support, but that's what I hear when something doesn't work."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"It needs a better management tool."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."
"It was difficult to implement and lacks some additional features that would be useful, but as a solution fits a particular need for our organization."
"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."
"This solution has limited storage."
More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Pricing and Cost Advice →
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 281 reviews while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN, whereas NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado, HPE Primera and IBM FlashSystem. See our NetApp AFF vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage 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.
