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.
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The solution is scalable."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"It has improved my organization because now have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."
"I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"We put a fair amount of stress on it because we run sequel workloads and we run web applications where the same web files are hit over and over. We have had almost zero stability issues with that SAN, that has been really great for us."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the most comfortable pricing, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"The solution provides many controllers."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."
"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"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 tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
"As long as they always improve on IOPS speed, that's all we're really looking for. The faster the storage can be the more we can do speed of application and speed of use."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"I would like to see active replication. I know that it's available now but I haven't tried it yet. I hope that it works."
"I would like to get a weekly report of how our storage has been used, and if there is any storage sitting there not being used."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."
"I would like to see more VM-Aware features in the next release of this solution."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"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."
"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."
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, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell ECS. See our Pure Storage FlashArray vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.
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