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."Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"Their support system has insight into errors on our SAN fabric that we can't see. They've brought attention to and raised awareness for us about things that we couldn't see, when we were experiencing problems."
"The connections are a lot faster than what we had in the past. One InfiniBand does what we did on all of our Fibre Channels."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"The most valuable aspect of NetApp AFF is the money it saves our organization."
"Its consistent stability is one of the things that I like, and the performance is also very good."
"We have SQL clusters across the United States. It has sped up our IOPS and made it a lot easier for users."
"The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more."
"It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment."
"The file-based protocol supports NFS and CIFS."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"ActiveIQ is the most valuable feature. It's a central point for me to be able to kick into everything every day. I log in first thing and make sure there are no issues, and it helps me with my day-to-day."
"Good performance for VM environments"
"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."
"I really value deduplication and compression to save space."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access."
"It is very stable even during multiple power failures."
"High availability including non-disruptive updates: We cannot afford downtime windows."
"The implementation of both block and file system storage in a single GUI provides is better situated than most other storages."
"Integration with VMware"
"Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform."
"I have experienced slow responses several times, if the ticket has only been opened in portal."
"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."
"They should provide easier integration with multiple systems."
"NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications."
"Its technical support could be better."
"When comparing with Pure for example, with Pure you have no maintenance anymore and with NetApp, you still need maintenance."
"VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options. It's not possible to add a single HDD to a current array and there are fixed rules to make upgrades."
"If the VNX had embedded encryption, that would be great."
"The CLI could be better documented, like with VMAX."
"Intel Xeon processors with under 2 GHz processing speeds could be replaced with more recent ones."
"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."
"Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing."
"The scalability is average because the storage has some hardware limitations and, obviously, operating system limitations."
"Poor connection to FC."
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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