Pure Storage FlashArray vs VNX [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Pure Storage FlashArray and VNX [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage.
To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: April 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It has good, reliable, fast storage.""Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model.""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.""The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability.""Pure has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.""The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes.""The solution is scalable.""It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

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"It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time.""They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth.""The stability of Pure Storage is very very good.""The most valuable feature is replication.""The initial setup is very straightforward. You simply plug it in and turn it on.""It's simple, powerful, and ready to use.""The most valuable features are the replication of data and the continuous snapshot that we can take from the disc.""It is fast and reliable. It works."

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"From my point of view, the configuration that I can sell is restricted to the EMC best practices. It is hard to make a mistake in a solution. It means the configuration has good performance and scalability options.""The most valuable feature is the auto-tiering, which helps in the speed of data access.""High availability including non-disruptive updates: We cannot afford downtime windows.""Integration with VMware""FAST (auto-tiering): Doesn't require configuration and is managed by the array itself.""Multi-tiering, positively affects the efficiency of the storage space.""I really value deduplication and compression to save space.""It is very stable even during multiple power failures."

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Cons
"They could add more support for file storage and different types of 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.""There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features.""In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models.""There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product.""Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.""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.""We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

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"They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth.""The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser.""We haven't seen ROI.""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.""We've had it in place for about a year and a half and have had zero complaints, other than that box-to-box replication is not encrypted.""The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release.""The price of the solution can improve.""I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."

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"Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing.""Intel Xeon processors with under 2 GHz processing speeds could be replaced with more recent ones.""The management software used for the VNX is Unicenter. While it is an improvement over Navicenter, used in older EMC SANs, it still feels outdated in comparison to other SAN management software.""It would be very helpful to get an automated report that shows you the size of the checkpoints and get warnings when a checkpoint is reaching either maximum capacity per a file system or hitting the ceiling on the SavVol pool consumption.""There is an easy replication process between distinct data centers via VPLEX and/or RPA. But I hope in the future that EMC/Dell could replicate this with other types of storage.""VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options. It's not possible to add a single HDD to a current array and there are fixed rules to make upgrades.""The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible.""The scalability is average because the storage has some hardware limitations and, obviously, operating system limitations."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
  • "We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
  • "With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
  • "Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
  • "As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
  • "They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
  • "Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
  • "The licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
  • "While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost."
  • "Make sure you understand how the licensing works and that you are getting the right set of licenses if you need array-to-array replication."
  • "Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
  • "Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."
  • "The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"
  • "​Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages​ (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead.​"
  • More VNX [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover… more »
    Top Answer:I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class… more »
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
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    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    VNX
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    With EMC VNX you'll have the right blend of flash, capacity, and application-aware software. Scale up storage for midrange workloads, optimized for virtual applications and cloud environments.

    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Retailer16%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Security Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Real Estate/Law Firm12%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise67%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise53%
    Buyer's Guide
    All-Flash Storage
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Pure Storage and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: April 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews while VNX [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in All-Flash Storage. Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2, while VNX [EOL] is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VNX [EOL] writes "The auto-tiering helps in the speed of data access". Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN, whereas VNX [EOL] is most compared with .

    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.