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 reliability."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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 solution is scalable."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"Technical support has been okay."
"The stability is solid. It doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want. We are in a critical business that we can't have any percentage of downtime."
"Replication would be one of the most valuable features."
"The features that I found most valuable are SnapMirror and SnapVault; these provide DR and backup for data redundancy."
"It supports our virtualization, our VMware environment."
"NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure."
"Supports file formatting, the main protocols, and the hot swapping of disks and features."
"The most valuable features are the performance and the storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication... The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"At this point, I don't know anything that they could provide in a better way."
"It worked flawlessly."
"The connections are a lot faster than what we had in the past. One InfiniBand does what we did on all of our Fibre Channels."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance."
"It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"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."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"It is on the expensive side."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Something I've talked to NetApp about in the past is going more to a node-based architecture, like the hyper-converged solutions that we are doing nowadays. Because the days of having to buy massive quantities of storage all at one time, have changed to being able to grow in smaller increments from a budgetary standpoint. This change would be great for our business. This is what my leadership would like to see in a lot of things that they purchase now. I would like to see that architecture continue to evolve in that clustered environment."
"We only had a few upgrade issues."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
"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."
"We don't have many issues related to the appliance itself. In terms of the OS, we do get some hiccups here and there."
"The size of NetApp could be better. They're always about 40 pounds without the hard drives in them, so it would be great if there's a way to make them smaller yet keep the functionality. That would reduce the physical footprint."
"In terms of what needs improvement, I would like to see more consistency with the UI. It seems to change every few versions. The menus can be in a completely different place."
"The ONTAP APIs are good, but little things here and there are slightly different, so I had to program something to catch a different error case or something like that. That adds a little work on my end, but it's ultimately been pretty easy to work with. It's just the consistency of the REST API. About, 95 percent of the operations working with the REST API are great, but then you have about 5 percent of things that are slightly different."
"In terms of the future, I have been excited by some of the copy data management stuff that they're talking about building into the environment. There are feature sets where I've done a lot of automation work. So, I am always looking forward to extensions of their API. They're also talking about a phone home centralized analytics database being used as a centralized management console with a list of new cloud features, but this doesn't seem finalized."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"The initial setup of the product is complex."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"Most of our upgrades have not been as smooth as they should have been."
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.
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