We performed a comparison between Pure Storage FlashArray and DNN IntelliFlash based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Pure Storage FlashArray came out ahead of DDN IntelliFlash. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found DDN IntelliFlash more difficult to deploy, with more capabilities for improvement, and with less reliable support.
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"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."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."
"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both."
"We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Very efficient storage"
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level."
"It allows engineers to focus on other things rather than doing the more manual tasks. It automates tasks, so the ease of use is extreme. It simplifies the storage."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"The software layer has to improve."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"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."
"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."
"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."
"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups."
"Its price needs improvement. Its price is almost double than any other flash storage solution."
"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."
"Automation could be simplified."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
Earn 20 points
DDN IntelliFlash is ranked 29th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. DDN IntelliFlash is rated 7.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of DDN IntelliFlash writes "Good features with an easy initial setup but technical support is slow ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". DDN IntelliFlash is most compared with VAST Data, NetApp AFF and Tintri VMstore, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN.
See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.
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