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.
"Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The Active IQ feature is a productive mechanism that automatically collects reports and users' statuses."
"It is stable. In my three years working with the storage, I haven't seen any issues with our NetApp product."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important."
"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."
"High availability"
"It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment."
"Batch times went from approximately seven hours down to about two and a half. Functionality during the day, such as taking or removing snapshots and cloning instances, is higher than it has ever been."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
"It has good stability for our company."
"The performance is very good."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"The software layer has to improve."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"We should be able to manage NetApp AFF as per the desired usage and needs."
"ZAPI is kind of difficult to use. You know, it's SOAP-like, it's not really SOAP. I would like to see it more of a REST-based JSON, instead of XML."
"Its technical support could be better."
"One minor improvement could be making scale-up solutions with AFF more cost-effective compared to scale-out options."
"It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that."
"The Bezels need improvement."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. 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 Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". 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.