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HPE Alletra Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

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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
81
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

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"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."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"The feature I appreciate most about HPE Alletra Storage is its simplicity."
"The solution has reduced my data management operation expenses by approximately 20%."
"The feature of HPE Alletra Storage that I appreciate the most is the GreenLake suite one-stop shop; it has benefited my organization by allowing us to reduce our licensing costs from VMware from about 170,000 to about 70,000."
"HPE Alletra Storage's capacity efficiency is notable due to the data reduction we get from it."
"InfoSight is invaluable to me. With it, I can just quickly go out there and see what is going on."
"The cloud-like operational model has affected my operations such as deployment, provisioning, and day-to-day management by making it very easy to navigate and easy to get to everything I need."
"HPE GreenLake AI ops enables us to get assistance from senior support engineers without having to go through support escalations."
"The workload consolidation is very simple to manage."
"I like how easy it is to discover an issue and either resolve that issue or fine-tune that app to premium support to find that resolution."
"Setup was simple and easy."
"The most valuable features of AFF are its speed and the responsive support from NetApp."
"NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is data protection and snapshot technology for backup."
"The most valuable feature of AFF is that it offers better visibility and control over performance, ensuring it meets customer needs effectively."
"Multi-protocol is the most valuable feature for us. It does everything in one system: sifts, EBES, ISCSI, and fiber channel. Other systems don't do all that."
"Over the years, the main features have been great, and the introduction of Snapshot has become really big."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"The software layer has to improve."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"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."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"HPE Alletra does not really provide a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure."
"We have more than traditional use cases. If they could explore new configurations for data storage, it would be ideal."
"They can continue developing their V vaults and peer persistence. They can implement active-active peer persistence so that our organization can use it."
"I have experienced some issues, not necessarily downtime. That said, we had some controller issues at one point; however, since I have redundancy, we really didn't experience any downtime."
"Reducing the price for HPE Alletra Storage would be fantastic."
"Reducing the price for HPE Alletra Storage would be fantastic."
"I would like to see the costs of HPE Alletra Storage go down a little bit. Everybody would want that."
"HPE Alletra does not really provide a cloud-like operational model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. The limitation is that we cannot really downscale HPE Alletra Storage, even if we are running on the GreenLake; that's the nature of the storage."
"On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products."
"When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage."
"The web management interface has fewer options than the on-prem console."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"The upgrade process could be a lot quicker, but it's still good as it is. The failovers and things like that are harder than expected."
"To be more competitive in the industry, they can develop deduplication, compression, and smarter features in the same array instead of all-flash."
"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."
"There are no pNFS with VMware VVOLs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"The product is expensive."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"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 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."
"Its price can be optimized."
"Overall, it was good. It had a good price per gigabyte."
"So far, so good."
"There is a license. HPE Alletra uses a cloud-based model."
"The solution is expensive and can cost around five lakhs."
"For us, its price is good."
"Its pricing is very competitive."
"It is fairly priced. It is in line with industry standard pricing and cost models."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable, particularly with the recent inclusion of features like snap locking and ransomware protection within the ONTAP license instead of having them as separate licenses."
"The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost."
"The total cost of ownership has decreased a great deal. As far as percentages, it's hard to gauge, but we did have quite a few personnel staying up, making sure batches ran well every night. Now, batches are being done by 8:00 in the evening, so we don't have to do that anymore. When you start adding the employee hours that we have for people working in the off-hours, and it is not an issue anymore, I suspect TCO might have gone down 25 percent."
"ATTO bridges add to the total cost of the system."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
"The entry point for potential customers, who are looking at coming onboard for flash systems, it may be a bit expensive. It would be good if the price comes down."
"Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%."
"Planning of all the lifecycle storage with NetApp AFF is part of the solution. While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable, providing options for more users."
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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
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
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.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.