We performed a comparison between Pure Storage FlashArray and Pure Storage FlashBlade based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Pure Storage FlashBlade came out ahead of Pure Storage FlashArray. Although both products are easy to deploy, with good support, and have brought positive ROI, our reviewers found Pure Storage FlashArray more expensive than its competitors and with more areas that need improvement.
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"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 most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"The solution is easy to scale. I'm running two environments right now, so I need to scale. I'm running a part technology. I've got an A-side and a B-side."
"It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"The simplicity of it. The performance is good, but the simplicity is the best thing. Storage management is quite complex, but Pure Storage is easy to manage."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad."
"Pure Storage technology allowed us to automate tasks, reducing something which started as a 12-hour turnaround down to about 15 minutes."
"It is pretty much just plug and play. There is not that much to do with it. It is very easy to use."
"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."
"The main feature I have found to be product replication."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."
"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."
"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."
"The initial setup is pretty easy and simple."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"The software layer has to improve."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."
"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."
Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 31 reviews. Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VAST Data, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO and Red Hat Ceph Storage. See our Pure Storage FlashArray vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.
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