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 most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are simplicity, ease of use, and dashboard management."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"It's just very easy for general block storage."
"It's easy to use, and the maintenance upgrades to get free controllers work really well."
"It's actually very stable"
"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."
"The ease of use for setting up our basic shares such as NFS and CIFS is valuable. It takes a couple of clicks to set up things like object shares."
"Supports file formatting, the main protocols, and the hot swapping of disks and features."
"Organizations can reduce data storage footprint and lower power and cooling costs, helping to adopt "Green IT.""
"I think that the DR applications are the most valuable, including Snapshots and SnapMirror."
"NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment."
"My favorite part is all-flash solid drives. All of my applications are running on an all-flash array. Before, we used to get too many severity tickets on performance, but as soon as we migrated everything to an all-flash array, our critical applications are at top performance."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."
"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."
"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."
"The benefits are better up-time, better response time."
"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"In the next version of this program, I would like to see increased security, higher encryption, and faster throughput."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"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 system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"Just some nit picky stuff, like allowing servers and volumes to be grouped. Therefore, it would easier to work with them in the GUI."
"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"I want an interface through ONTAP that look more like what it does for the E-Series with Santricity."
"Its integration could be improved."
"The product has size limitations on fax volume. They have increased from 100 to 300, which is still less than other vendors. Or flex groups are not supported."
"In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that."
"In terms of improvement, IO performance could use some enhancement."
"When comparing with Pure for example, with Pure you have no maintenance anymore and with NetApp, you still need maintenance."
"There are no RDMA capabilities in CIFS (SMB) and NFS protocols."
"The user interface should be more user-friendly, and the configuration could be more accessible."
"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."
"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."
"It needs a better management tool."
"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."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."
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NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 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, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series, 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.
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