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."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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 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."
"One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time. Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love."
"The ability to do SnapMirror or SnapVault for data resiliency and backup."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its simplicity. It is easy to use."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important."
"It has improved performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs. These improvements are a result of all-flash, throughput, reliability, compression, etc."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"The amount of data that I have moved to it from legacy storage has enabled us to retire units that are three or four times the physical size."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The scalability is good."
"I find two features of Pure Storage most valuable. The first is the "safe mode" function, and the second is its simplicity."
"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases. The scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"The performance is very good."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"We need better data deduplication."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"We have had trouble with restoring applications, and if there is more support for application-aware backups then that would be great."
"NetApp AFF needs to focus more on block storage. It has to focus on high-end, performance-driven applications."
"There is no direct storage attachment available. Most configurations require additional switches for data access."
"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"The price of NVMe storage is very expensive."
"Implementation needs to be improved."
"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."
"In the next version of this program, I would like to see increased security, higher encryption, and faster throughput."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"Automation could be simplified."
"The internal garbage collection process has been fixed recently in some OS updates so it is more efficient but that could be just a little better."
"The connectivity needs improvement. You do not have the possibility to have a file and block connectivity at the same time on the same machine. It has limited ability to do so."
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 NetApp FAS Series, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN and Dell Unity XT. 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.