Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs Quantum ActiveScale comparison

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Quantum ActiveScale

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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 Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quantum ActiveScale is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

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.

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Frank Lai

Architecture Department at Supermicro Computer

Good performance and reliable but the setup is complex

We would like to see a self-sufficient installation. Nowadays it's open-source, but the installation is still tied to the vendor, which means it is unlikely that it is going to scale. I want them to tap into the broader community. It is really emerging, they have a year over year, 50% annual growth. With a 10-year-old company, it will certainly bring a lot of interest, and will certainly make it more successful, if they tap into that growing customer base. They have to make themselves relevant to the industry. The industry is totally geared to the Cloud, DevOps, and geared for agility. The software with the appliance in my set is already outdated, and it is not that it cannot sell, but it has to be tapping into the emerging and growing sectors to continue with the customers and businesses. This is what the requirement is, to improve their technology. Which means that they have to make themselves relevant to the industry.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."

"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"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 ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"Amazon EFS offers the flexibility of scaling as needed without requiring pre-provisioned storage."

"Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS."

"The solution's technical support is good."

"The first valuable thing is it is scalable."

"The platform is highly scalable."

"We can run code and deploy it whenever we want."

"Amazon EFS is extremely stable, as it is managed by AWS."

"The solution is scalable."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) pros

"The technology is stable which is good."

"Workflow is easy to manage and maintain."

Cons

"Its configuration should be easier."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"It should be simplified. There are people who don't have cloud experience. It should be storage that we are able to just connect to."

"There are challenges related to AWS, such as ensuring proper security measures with IMS code and encryption."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."

"When we faced some issues, the support team took a lot of time to resolve them."

"Its deployment process could be faster while installing the Python package directly into the environment."

"Around 80 percent of the features of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) are available on Linux and not in Windows, making it a major drawback of the product."

"The product's stability has some shortcomings where improvements are required."

"The initial setup requires prior experience and technical skills."

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) cons

"Lacks some ability to integrate with different systems."

"We would like to see a self-sufficient installation."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"I feel that the price could always be lowered."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"The price is a little high."

"Our licensing is renewed annually."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."

"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."

"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."

"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."

"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."

"The solution's price is mid-ranged."

"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."

"Quantum ActiveScale is open-source."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 out...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

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 pe...

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)?

Amazon EFS is more costly compared to other storage options available from AWS.

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

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Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

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Microsoft Azure File Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 53% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon S3 Glacier vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 35% of the time

Dell ECS vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 25% of the time

Qumulo vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 24% of the time

MinIO vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 15% of the time

More Quantum ActiveScale Competitors

Product Reports

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Download Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) product report

File and Object Storage

Download Quantum ActiveScale product report

Also Known As

No data available

ActiveScale, Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage, ActiveScale Object Storage

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

When mounted to Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

It’s designed for high availability and durability, and provides performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

StorNext File System
Increase productivity and reduce time to critical business insights with StorNext® File System. StorNext architecture delivers the necessary performance to get your business moving forward.

Quantum

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend

Information Not Available

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. Quantum ActiveScale