We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) vs Pure Storage FlashArray
based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Pure Storage FlashArray has a slight edge in this comparison because users were happier with its ease of deployment and features.
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"The solution is scalable."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."
"Storage is very reliable. You don't have to do much maintenance."
"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."
"Tech support has been absolutely amazing. I think on the technical aspects as well, my staff is able to get great support from the NetApp technical support resources that we have. What I love about NetApp is they have a health care division. At times, it's such an amazing thing because if we have a healthcare-related issue, there's no one better than having prior CIOs from health care organizations that NetApp has hired, and that are part of the health care team, to help out with any of those initiatives and support problems. Support has been absolutely phenomenal."
"It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."
"Snapshots, snap clones, backups, flexibility, and agility are valuable features. I like that NetApp AFF is easy to use. We can automate everything for our backups and use cases. It's fast and simple, and provides storage to all of our VMware ESX hosts. It expands easily as well."
"NetApp tech support is so good. Their tech support has always been so stable and the people are so good in case of any failure or any good feature that needs to be updated or features that supposedly can help with performance to improve some performance. NetApp support is one of the best that I deal with."
"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."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"The simplicity of it. The performance is good, but the simplicity is the best thing. Storage management is quite complex, but Pure Storage is easy to manage."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. You simply plug it in and turn it on."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"Non-disruptive upgrades: You can upgrade at anytime without worry."
"The predictive performance analytics are good."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"The software layer has to improve."
"It is on the expensive side."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"In future releases, I would like to see the ability to automatically mount SMB shares and file systems."
"The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected."
"Migrating from a public cloud to on-prem or on-prem to a cloud can be a bit complicated. They have their own solution, but it should be easy to use."
"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."
"Their backup software could be improved."
"I would like to see an improvement in the high availability of the NFS and CIFS sharing during upgrade and patching; this would help to avoid downtime."
"A lot of the tools that are built into the stock, ONTAP operating system, instead of having to buy the add-ons and things."
"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."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"Automation could be simplified."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"What it needs to do is work a little closer with solutions, like VMware, so it understands the particular workloads that are on it. Today, it does not understand the applications which are running against it."
"We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups."
"I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 43 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 22 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "It has simplified our operational model by making routine processes easier and less prone to error". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Reasonably priced with excellent rates of deduplication and compression". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and VAST Data, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.