We performed a comparison between Cisco MDS Series and Pure Storage FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Enterprise SAN."SAN switches in Cisco MDS Series are a valuable feature of the solution for our company."
"The most valuable feature of the Cisco MDS Series is its reliability, support, and scalability."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the devices, databases, and zoning."
"The most valuable feature of the Cisco MDS Series is security."
"The product is easy to use."
"The issues with these switches are extremely rare, and the whole product line is very predictable and stable."
"The features I found most valuable are the ease of deployment, it's easy to upgrade, easy to configure and easy to administer. There is no need for vendor professional services which saves project cost. The usage of WebUI for all primary features like hostname, IP address, SNMP traps, zone sets, addition and deletion of zone members or zone sets, backup of switch DB is very simple."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."
"For us, the most valuable feature is the compression and deduplication. Being able to deploy a three to one ratio for storage is absolutely critical in today's world with the growing need for storage and the growing need for more space."
"The tool is simple and easy to use. It has neat features like protection from device removal. Moreover, you can undo the deletes. The solution is easy to work with and not as complicated as CAC"
"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"The solution's management interface and GUI need improvement."
"Cisco MDS Series can improve by having API functionality for automation and programming."
"It is quite a stable product. It should be shipped with the latest firmware to avoid download and upload schema at the beginning of the initial setup. There should also be the possibility of downgrading the firmware when required. WebUI needs DCNM instead a web-based GUI should be made available like Brocade san switch."
"The GUI client is Java-based and we know that Java is not secure, so everyone disables it."
"The product is very expensive."
"Cisco MDS Series could improve by adding more gigahertz. However, they are doing this over time."
"The licensing model could be less complicated."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"It is a bit expensive."
"We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"I would like to have support available in Spanish."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
Cisco MDS Series is ranked 1st in Enterprise SAN with 8 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. Cisco MDS Series is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Cisco MDS Series writes "Simple deployment, reliable, and scales well". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". Cisco MDS Series is most compared with Dell Connectrix, HPE SN6000, IBM SAN384B and Dell PowerVault, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN.
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