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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.1
Amazon EFS offers scalable, cost-effective storage with minimal maintenance, enhancing productivity and benefiting businesses through pay-as-you-go pricing.
Sentiment score
8.5
Pure Storage FlashBlade boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing efficiencies, increasing VM density, and saving 20%-85% in time.
It does not require much management once you set up correctly, so it saves time, allowing an admin to focus on other work.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Amazon EFS customer service is rated well for responsiveness and effectiveness, with appreciated support plans and documentation.
Sentiment score
7.0
Pure Storage FlashBlade support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for slower responses and occasional language barriers.
While the time to respond was good, the time to resolve was not optimal, as it took more than a week.
Amazon's support model is consistent across services.
Training and support depend on the plan you have, with centralized support being very helpful in case issues arise.
The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years.
I would rate them an eight out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon EFS excels in scalability and auto-scaling, supporting large users but may face connection restoration issues.
Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for scalability, ease of expansion, and support, despite some areas needing improvement.
Its auto-scaling feature is a crucial point, providing high scalability that I would rate at ten out of ten.
Elastic File Systems allow me to scale up or down easily.
It is very cost-effective, and there's no need for initial charges.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon EFS is considered stable and reliable by users, with minor issues that are generally resolved quickly.
Sentiment score
8.8
Pure Storage FlashBlade is praised for its impressive stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistent uptime even during upgrades.
Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS.
While I experienced an EFS mount dropping, it was related to server issues rather than EFS itself.
In case there is any issue with any blade, the data is moved to another.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EFS needs setup simplification, enhanced Windows support, speed improvements, better security, and AI-driven ease for nontechnical users.
Users seek better cloud integration, enhanced deduplication, improved support, protocol enhancements, simpler configuration, and a more intuitive interface.
Enabling AI-driven or automatic features would be beneficial for new or nontechnical users.
In my project, there are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption.
Technical support definitely needs significant improvement.
Its configuration should be easier.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EFS provides flexible pricing based on storage and usage, but monthly costs can be higher than alternatives.
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers high performance and features, justifying its cost with no extra software fees and fixed support costs.
EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage.
It is very cost-effective with no need for initial charges.
Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs.
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EFS provides scalable, flexible storage, seamless EC2 integration, and advanced security, ideal for efficient data processing and cost reduction.
Pure Storage FlashBlade offers fast, scalable, and user-friendly storage with efficient integration, analytics, and versatility for diverse needs.
They help me process data while maintaining low latency, which is crucial for efficient data processing.
Its ease of integration with other AWS services enhances our infrastructure, while the shared storage access improves reliability and processing continuity for our applications.
The AWS service is excellent security-wise, and I have seen some other features besides security, such as automatic scaling that helped us significantly.
The best features of Pure Storage FlashBlade include better throughput and better performance.
We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Ranking in File and Object Storage
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (10th)
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Ranking in File and Object Storage
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (15th), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
File and Object Storage
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-scaling capabilities enhance file management while reducing downtime
The most valuable feature of Amazon EFS is its auto-scaling capability. It's really easy to configure EFS by just creating it and running a command to directly configure it with my servers. It supports unlimited use, and charges are applied based on the file usage at the end of the month. The solution offers reduced downtime and increased durability through its auto-scaling features.
Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to petabytes and deliver consistent low latencies and high levels of throughput. This...
What do you like most about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, as per the configurations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
We don't need to purchase it; we are just using it and paying Amazon as per the utilization. We make direct payments to Amazon based on our usage.
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensure...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the past, but one benefit is that they have built-in ransomware protection. Approximate...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bit complex to understand. You have to understand it more deeply because it's hard...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.