Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE Alletra Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 22, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Alletra Storage is 9.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Anand Algesan - PeerSpot reviewer
Provisioning and encryption ease improve data storage efficiency
To improve HPE Alletra Storage, it needs to have a true active-active controller; it claims to have an active-active controller from the back end, however, the second node is pretty much sitting there doing nothing. The MV 10000 series, which is the next series, is an improvement to HPE Alletra, and HPE is already doing that. In the next release, I would prefer to see better dedupe features; I know other companies do excellent dedupe, and they have protection group policies, meaning you have immutable data in case of a ransomware attack. If you're on the SAN, it should give you a way to protect that data without being erased. Other vendors have that capability built-in, ensuring that you can't erase the data, so features similar to that would be great.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I appreciate the performance."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"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."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"HPE Alletra Storage enables me to get assistance from senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations."
"Feature-wise, it's pretty simple; just a one-click button to enable it, so implementing it was pretty easy too."
"HPE Alletra Storage provides a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure."
"HPE Alletra Storage comes with zero downtime, which is its best feature. It has real-time replication available, so no additional features need to be bought when purchasing the system."
"It's good for preventing problems before they occur."
"The extended capacity offers a small footprint that's still meeting a large customer demand."
"It took nothing really to set it up. It was all online, and we were able to set it up and start using it within about three hours."
"It is simple to manage and integrate with our virtualization platform. There is also the storage efficiency."
"I work on the infrastructure engineering side. I usually get to install NetApp appliances, and I like how easy the installation is. It seems to be easier than other technologies that we use."
"The most valuable aspect of NetApp AFF is the money it saves our organization."
"It is easy to manage data through the GUI by using Active IQ and the unified manager."
"The most valuable features of this solution are snapshotting and cloning."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"We have never had a failure. We can upgrade as we move along with zero downtime."
"AFF helps us improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics and VMs. We have moved our primary data stores for production over to AFF, and a lot of the problems that might happened have gone away."
"We are spending less time putting out fires, so there's a tangible benefit right there."
 

Cons

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"It is on the expensive side."
"It was fairly difficult to migrate the data from 3PAR over."
"We struggle to gain access to senior support engineers. Typically, we need to escalate via sales."
"We faced many problems with HPE Alletra 6000, and we did not understand whether it was because of some issue with the controllers or the disk."
"In my case, HPE Alletra Storage does not provide a cloud-like operational model on-premises for managing data infrastructure."
"HPE Alletra Storage could be improved with greater compatibility of the HPE KVM or VM hypervisor with our other products, which would allow us to migrate off of VMware."
"We have more than traditional use cases. If they could explore new configurations for data storage, it would be ideal."
"Reducing the price for HPE Alletra Storage would be fantastic."
"My suggestion is that the HPE Alletra Storage or HPE storage portfolio should offer storage models that can accommodate NFS and file shares, and block shares in the same single enclosure or controller."
"I don't like the newest GUI. It needs more options. Some features have been removed. Oversight is not as good in the new GUI compared to the previous version. Though, it might be something that we just need to get used to."
"With some of the larger clusters being able to do a patch upgrade is helping. They still take three, four hours by the time you get the night started, finish things up, do the upgrade."
"I come tech support with difficulty because I installed NetApp for many years I know what to expect when I call. When I don't get their support tech that I'm expecting and I'm trying to get to the right one, it can get very frustrating for me personally, trying to all-flash push my way into the right person. NetApp has the right people, it's just a matter of getting to them."
"I would like to see NetApp improve more of its offline tools and utilities."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"NetApp can help in these endeavours by focusing more on security."
"The graphical interface is still heavy and slow. Needs more improvement in this area."
"The dashboard needs improvement. The dashboard needs some uplift"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Its pricing is very competitive."
"Overall, it was good. It had a good price per gigabyte."
"For us, its price is good."
"The pricing is somewhat high, but when customers choose HPE, they often prioritize the brand value over pricing. The pricing is higher compared to other vendors."
"So far, so good."
"Its price can be optimized."
"HPE was a clear winner on price per terabyte. It was very smooth."
"Its licensing is good. Pricing-wise, there can be a little bit more flexibility. It would help to have different sizes. However, it fits into the budget that we have, so we are happy."
"Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
"It's expensive but we think over time all the prices are going to go down."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever."
"I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us."
"Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%."
"The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit."
"Our TCO decreased significantly because we were paying maintenance on nine different arrays throughout the country. We've condensed those down to three arrays, and our maintenance fees from the IBM product dropped by over a half million dollars a year, saving us $500,000 USD."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
860,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What do you like most about HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
Its price can be optimized. The cost before deployment is significant to customers, but post-deployment cost analysis...
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
The user interface, configuration, and customization could be improved, though the configuration is currently very ea...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra Storage vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.