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."The performance is very good."
"I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support."
"The technical support is very good."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time. I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes. Now, it takes thirty seconds."
"We've had to use tech support on a number of occasions. They did everything remotely and talked us all the way through. They fixed the issue within 30 minutes. Every single time we contact them, they're perfect. I would give their technical support a ten out of ten."
"The solution’s thin provisioning has allowed us to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning for everything. We use the deduplication compression functionality for all of our NetApps. If we weren't using thin provisioning, we'd probably have two to times more storage on our floor right now than we do today."
"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."
"NetApp AFF's flash technology offers great performance. This feature has been my go-to for managing data and ensuring speed and reliability."
"The most valuable features are the speed and performance for our transactional workloads for our databases."
"The initial setup was very straightforward. It was intuitive to set up storage volumes and get the networking functioning. Their engineer was very helpful. We got the current array on our production site the very same day it was shipped in. We had it up on the network and started to put some storage on it."
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"Storage is very reliable. You don't have to do much maintenance."
"Setting up storage for an application (storage provisioning) is quick and easy. Maybe a quarter of the time is now spent getting the application up and running, or even less."
"High availability including non-disruptive updates: We cannot afford downtime windows."
"Integration with VMware"
"Multi-tiering, positively affects the efficiency of the storage space."
"From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is hard to make a mistake in a solution. It means the configuration has good performance and scalability options."
"The replication feature provides another functionality to protect your data."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access."
"Good performance for VM environments"
"The most valuable feature is the tight VMware integration, due to the migration from bare metal to virtualized environments and then on to the cloud."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"I would like to see data tiering to AWS."
"The user interface should be more user-friendly, and the configuration could be more accessible."
"We don't have many issues related to the appliance itself. In terms of the OS, we do get some hiccups here and there."
"There are no RDMA capabilities in CIFS (SMB) and NFS protocols."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"In terms of improvement, the support could be a little better."
"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."
"A lot of the tools that are built into the stock, ONTAP operating system, instead of having to buy the add-ons and things."
"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."
"The management software used for the VNX is Unicenter. While it is an improvement over Navicenter, used in older EMC SANs, it still feels outdated in comparison to other SAN management software."
"Poor connection to FC."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSD and the Next Generation EMC Unity does this."
"The scalability is average because the storage has some hardware limitations and, obviously, operating system limitations."
"The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible."
"If the VNX had embedded encryption, that would be great."
"The CLI could be better documented, like with VMAX."
"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."
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 PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series, whereas VNX [EOL] is most compared with .
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