We used to use a Dell EMC VMAX. We upgraded from that product due to high costs, and little flexibility. This solution also offers specialized Oracle tools.

We switched from our previous storage solutions because of speed. At the time, Pure was a lot faster. It was flash, and we were on spinning disks at the time.

We were running on very old hardware that was all spindle-based sand solutions. Large-sized equipment with too much power consumption. We looked at other solutions like Kaminario, Nimble, Nimbus, 3PAR, and Tintri, but choosing Pure Storage was a no-brainer. We saw the solution, we were skeptical upfront, but when we did our research, it was very quickly recognized that Pure Storage was the right solution. We were able to save a ton of data center space with density ratios we've never seen before with hardware. 

With Pure, we immediately saw value in the density ratios that we would be able to achieve. We saw value in the performance, in the scalability, and with the support. In the past, we've had trouble with support with all the other major vendors. So that was something that we took a risk on. Thankfully we did because it worked out.

We switched to Pure FlashArray X NVMe from Hitachi because it is easier to use, offers better visibility, and has automated reports. The user-friendly interface allows us to extend volumes in seconds, a huge improvement compared to our previous experience with Hitachi, which took five to ten minutes for the same task. The simplicity and efficiency of Pure FlashArray made it the better choice for us.

If you're looking at it from a database perspective, you obviously want to make sure that you can scale your workloads without a degradation in performance. What we've seen on the X’s, and the Pure’s in general, is that we can scale beyond what we need without any degradation in performance. The real-time monitoring I’ve seen via your phone is a differentiator alone – to get a heat map in the past was a big process and took place after the event.

In terms of the Predictive Performance Analytics, I haven't seen it myself. I know that the guys have just recently started looking at a lot of analytics.

Although I don't admin the solution, I would give it a ten out of ten - from the vendor technical expertise and helpfulness, it's simple, reliable, quick and predictable at the same time I’m expecting lower costs for us once we fully migrated.

We used DataCore before. It was a Windows-based solution. We had to restart the servers every month because of Windows updates. Every month, we had to restart the servers manually. It was not very pleasant. Pure Storage is a Linux-based system, and there are not many security issues. We only have two updates about every six months. It is much more reliable.

Over the last four years, we have displaced the majority of other storage solutions in our data centers with Pure Storage.

We considered getting an offer to upgrade our current PowerMAX to the next version. But, that version was very expensive. We knew what we were going to get, and we knew that we would have to send more people for training so they could understand the product.

We have some knowledge of other regions here in Sweden– other healthcare organizations and governments that are using PowerMAX and are satisfied with the product, even though it is very expensive. 

So, if we had a lot of money and people who could go to the training and learn everything, we probably would have stayed with PowerMAX. But because of the price, the enterprise-grade quality, and the ease of use, we wanted to change. We wanted to do something different. That's why we chose Pure Storage.

I'm familiar with SolidFire.

We knew that we needed to switch because our system wasn't performing so we knew we had to buy something. We liked Pure because it had a good pitch.

We were using Compellent from Dell. We switched because the Dell technology was at least one generation before in the type of SSD drives that they were using. Pure FlashArray X NVMe had the latest versions of the EV disks, which Dell did not have on their systems. They were about to bring it into the market, but we would have had to wait for another three months, and it would have been a new product that wasn't yet tested. 

The infrastructure or the technology for Pure was built specifically for flash arrays, whereas Dell came from spinning disks and then moved into flash arrays. So, the controllers were not built specifically for SSD drives or flash. Even if you have flash, you still run into delays because the controllers were not designed to run just purely flash, whereas Pure was designed for flash from the beginning. They never had any spinning disks in their boxes, and that makes a huge difference. 

The thing that makes these boxes powerful is the algorithm that they use to decide where to put the data and how often they read it. Because SSD drives have a finite life, if you do the algorithms correctly, you maximize not just the performance but also the longevity. Pure is doing a very good job. I'm not fully a mathematician in the longevity piece of it, but I'm expecting that this box is going to give me three to five years of use with good performance. A Dell box would have to be replaced in three years for sure. 

I had worked at a different company and we switched from EMC's XtremIO flash array to Pure and we were actually one of Pure's first customers when we did that. Their simplified support model and then their Evergreen program where they upgrade controllers as they come out was pretty phenomenal. I carried that over into the company I work for now. I kind of suggested that as a route to go in.

We used VNX, which we still have. I think one of the main driving points at the time was that we were running out of space on the VNX and the flash pool, and we could have added additional space, but the cost comparison between getting a Pure array and adding a new shelf to the VNX was about the same. I felt like we would get more bang for our buck going to Pure, which we have.

We did not switch from a previous solution. We brought this in as a way to improve operational efficiency, which is something that we're always looking for.