We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS) vs Pure Storage FlashArray
based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Pure Storage FlashArray has a slight edge in this comparison because users were happier with its ease of deployment and features.
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The latency is good."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"The solution is scalable."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Its efficiency and scalability are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"It's pretty scalable. It can scale up to 24 nodes."
"The most valuable features are the speed and performance for our transactional workloads for our databases."
"We are a large-scale company, and our growth has been pretty significant over the last five or six years. We like the scale, and the way NetApp grows, so that's why we use it. It's mostly for block storage."
"Easier to manage with the clustered system and everything with the newest ONTAP 9."
"If the AutoSupport is well configured, then you need not to do a monitoring. You will get call and mail when any issue is completed."
"The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
"Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."
"It simplifies building out the storage."
"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K. The product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"We need better data deduplication."
"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."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"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."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"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."
"Higher communication: I love the professional services and I love everything that everyone's able to offer us, but I find sometimes we're not aware of all the things that NetApp can do."
"NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology."
"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."
"In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that."
"We have had customers asking about S3 support for a while now. I heard that is coming in one of the next versions. So, I would like to see S3 targeted support on the FAS system."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"Going forward, I would like improvement in the response latencies, capacity size, cache, and controller size."
"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."
"As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"I want to learn more about command line usage which I have not explored much yet. However, there are many automated solutions for repetitive tasks. I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring of alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds in the next release."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"A three wave application or multi wave application synchronization would be an improvement."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"I had to contact customer support when a drive failed as I was doing a couple of OS upgrades."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 43 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 22 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "It has simplified our operational model by making routine processes easier and less prone to error". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Reasonably priced with excellent rates of deduplication and compression". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell Unity XT, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and VAST Data, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, VMware vSAN and Pure Storage FlashBlade. See our NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashArray report.
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.