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 FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"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 solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The latency is good."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp."
"Regarding features, SnapMirror is one we depend on right now. It helps us provide snapshots to the customers on request. There are many scenarios in which we might take snapshots in various daily use cases. We trigger the snapshots, which gives us a sense of security because we know we have this technology in place if something happens."
"It's pretty scalable. It can scale up to 24 nodes."
"There are two compression technologies available within it, and they are valuable because they allow for significantly higher data storage capacity and the retention of a larger number of snapshots on the system."
"I like some basic features like Snapshot, FlexClone, and advanced features such as SnapMirror, and SnapVault. They also recently enhanced the market with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. I think that NetApp is a very good product."
"NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage."
"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"Our architecture has historically relied on RDMs, so AFF has enabled us to easily migrate from our old EMC PowerMax to the new NetApp. It's been pretty smooth. We have a lot of SAP servers in our environment, so performance is critical for us."
"The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the management view of the solutions, ease of provision, and deprovision, it is fantastic."
"It's simple, powerful, and ready to use."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"You have a limit in terms of how much you can expand storage. It sounds like a lot. However, over the years, as you grow, it may be smaller than you think."
"We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years."
"NetApp could focus even more on the configuration."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"The graphical interface is still heavy and slow. Needs more improvement in this area."
"The price of NVMe storage is very expensive."
"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."
"We have had customers asking about S3 support for a while now. I heard that is coming in one of the next versions. So, I would like to see S3 targeted support on the FAS system."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"The problem is that we can only make a few groups, around five or six groups. I like groups and we need a lot of them. We had to put all the information in only a few groups and cannot make a more detailed separation of them."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
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.
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