We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF and VNX [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage."It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"It simplifies storage."
"The most valuable feature of the Pure Storage Flash Array is the blazing fast monitoring."
"The technical support is very good."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"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 like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates."
"The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability."
"It is easy to manage data through the GUI by using Active IQ and the unified manager."
"I like NetApp AFF's deduplication."
"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."
"I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution."
"It's pretty scalable. It can scale up to 24 nodes."
"Over the past 18 years, it has been extremely easy to upgrade to newer products and technology. We can upgrade as we move along. So, we have been able to keep up with the newest technology with zero downtime."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"It is very stable even during multiple power failures."
"Good performance for VM environments"
"FAST (auto-tiering): Doesn't require configuration and is managed by the array itself."
"One of the best features of the VNX is the ability to combine drives of different types into a virtual Storage Pool. By combining small but fast flash drives, SAS drives, and high-capacity but slower NL-SAS drives, the VNX can intelligently move data to the different tiers of storage based on usage."
"Integration with VMware"
"The replication feature provides another functionality to protect your data."
"I really value deduplication and compression to save space."
"It is very stable, even during multiple power failures."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"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."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"The primary drawback is the cost, which can be prohibitive for small configurations."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"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."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"I really don't have anything to ask for in this regard, because we're not really pushing the envelope on any of our use cases. NetApp is really staying out ahead of all of our needs. I believe that there were firmware issues. I think it was just a mismatch of things that were going on. It could have possibly been something in the deployment process that wasn't done exactly right."
"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes."
"There are little things that need improvement. For example, if you are setting up a SnapMirror through the GUI, you are forced to change the destination name of the volume, and we like to keep the volume names the same."
"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."
"I've had a few cases where support wasn't able to answer the question or they took quite a while."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSD and the Next Generation EMC Unity does this."
"There is an easy replication process between distinct data centers via VPLEX and/or RPA. But I hope in the future that EMC/Dell could replicate this with other types of storage."
"There is no easy way to defrag a RAID group. It would be nice to be able to reduce the size of a storage pool if the storage is not needed anymore."
"It would be very helpful to get an automated report that shows you the size of the checkpoints and get warnings when a checkpoint is reaching either maximum capacity per a file system or hitting the ceiling on the SavVol pool consumption."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSDs. Next generation EMC Unity will do this."
"The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible."
"The CLI could be better documented, like with VMAX."
"If the VNX had embedded encryption, that would be great."
Earn 20 points
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews while VNX [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in All-Flash Storage. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while VNX [EOL] is rated 8.0. 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 VNX [EOL] writes "The auto-tiering helps in the speed of data access". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series, whereas VNX [EOL] is most compared with .
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