We performed a comparison between NetApp (All Flash FAS) and SolidFire 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 SolidFire. Even though the two products are straightforward to deploy and have good support, SolidFire has fewer valuable features and more areas that require improvement.
"The technical support is very good."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"Performance is the most valuable feature."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power."
"It's easy to use, and the maintenance upgrades to get free controllers work really well."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"I think it is a very stable product."
"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."
"The most valuable aspect of NetApp AFF is the money it saves our organization."
"The performance is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable features of the solution are speed, performance, and reliability."
"We reduced our floor space by reducing 44 racks units to four rack units. It has helped us with our data center economies of scale. It reduces our support costs too, which is great."
"Performance is excellent. In fact, it's so fast that we're not really even taxing it all that much."
"If we get complaints about any kind of performance metric issues, whether it's storage related or something on the virtual side, we use it to pinpoint what the actual issue is."
"SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"Overall performance of the solution."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"Feature-wise, it is a good solution allowing users to monitor and simplify their networks. The solution also provides its users with flexibility by enabling them to utilize its extensions."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."
"The scalability and being able to implement it quickly."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"The price should be lower."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"One thing I'd like to see in a future release is integration between their main storage array and what they call their FlashBlade product; to be able to snapshot directly from the primary array into multiple different backup copies on FlashBlade."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"The ONTAP S3 implementation is not feature-complete as compared to StorageGRID. We had to move our lakeFS instance from ONTAP S3 based on AFF to StorageGRID."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"You have a limit in terms of how much you can expand storage. It sounds like a lot. However, over the years, as you grow, it may be smaller than you think."
"We should be able to manage NetApp AFF as per the desired usage and needs."
"NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications."
"Additional performance, additional data efficiencies, that's what everybody wants right now."
"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."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"SolidFire could improve in terms of hardware robustness."
"I would like to see integration with the cloud, number one. Being able to spin SolidFire in the cloud."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."
"They could make the mNode more user-friendly. Now you need to configure and add nodes by CLI and it’s not really easy to manage. If they created a web interface to do the management of the mNode, that would be great!."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while SolidFire is rated 8.2. 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 SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series, whereas SolidFire is most compared with Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our NetApp AFF vs. SolidFire report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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