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 solution is scalable."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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."
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"It is fast and reliable. It works."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"Performance, dedupe, and that it works well with database workloads are its most valuable features."
"The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it."
"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 product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."
"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."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"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."
"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."
"It is a bit expensive."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."
"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
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.
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.