We performed a comparison between NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and SolidFire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I never have to worry about its performance or if it is the root cause of an issue."
"The most valuable feature of the Pure Storage Flash Array is the blazing fast monitoring."
"The job of support for the storage engineers dramatically changed. We know more quickly the automation of the provisioning. We can now focus on things that bring more value to the company than just managing storage."
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions."
"The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."
"The speed is the most valuable feature."
"The replication and mirroring features are very good."
"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."
"The management software is very good."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."
"It is very easy to scale up SolidFire."
"Templates are already predefined for it. If you're coding it up, it will take two days. You can pick up a template right there from the API, and it just works for you. Implementation done in 10 minutes."
"It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."
"Being able to provide quality of service as promised."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that."
"SolidFire provides seamless performance across your storage system when you need to scale up. Other storage systems do not do that."
"Overall performance of the solution."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve."
"The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in."
"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."
"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."
"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."
"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."
"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate data between All Flash and other NetApp storage systems."
"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."
"The upgrade process could be better."
"The inclusion of more protocols and interfaces would make it easier to integrate with other products."
"They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is."
"The user interface needs to be improved. Much of the client feedback involves comments such as "Oh, it's hard to navigate through.""
"Though it is a stable solution, its users may face some security issues at times...The security provided by the solution is one area that can be improved."
"The tool should improve its initial cost which is expensive compared to other products."
"It would be good to provide administrative access at the root level to be able to do things with the system, if need be."
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NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews while SolidFire is ranked 19th in All-Flash Storage with 33 reviews. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6, while SolidFire is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolidFire writes "A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance". NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Primera, whereas SolidFire is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore and VMware vSAN. See our NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. SolidFire report.
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