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Amazon FSx vs NetApp StorageGRID comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Amazon FSx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
File System Software (5th), Cloud Storage (15th), File and Object Storage (15th)
NetApp StorageGRID
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
SB
Senior Design Engineer at Clovertex
Provides seamless research data management with effortless setup
From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS. Sometimes we go with Weka or other solutions due to this need, so it should have more IO capacity when there is a demand. More performance is needed specifically in the IO area.
Michael Lopez - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Systems Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved snapshot management for large data workloads
The advanced features of NetApp StorageGRID which our upper management wouldn't agree to use, include the S3 feature. We are heavy into AWS, and my thoughts were to develop a small dev environment or even a POC environment on-prem. That's still up in the air as we continue on. Currently, AI has taken over everything with a focus on AI. The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present a challenge. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade. The positive aspect is that it didn't take down the entire environment. The environment remained functional on two different versions. The scalability of NetApp StorageGRID has been proven as we've expanded twice. We started with six or seven nodes and have grown to 15 nodes. It does take time for synchronization to complete. From what I've seen, it took a couple of months for it all to sync up once adding nodes. However, it was transparent. It captured the addition and performed effectively, all happening in the background, steadily and surely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"The most valuable feature of the FlashArray is Pure One, which provides a comprehensive overview of our entire storage environment."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"It has a small footprint, as the current system is only four units per rack, it's got good speed for the price as it uses eMLC, an advanced type of SSD, and it's very scalable, and we're not paying for capacity as we get free controllers every three years."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"The technical support is very good."
"FSx operates as an independent service, not tied to any server, which eliminates dependencies between applications for storage."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Amazon FSx a ten."
"I rate the stability of Amazon FSx ten out of ten."
"We used it for disaster recovery perspective behind a number of resources, like batch services and RDS."
"The shared storage capability is highly valuable."
"It helps automate our storage infrastructure and improve our operational efficiency."
"The scalability is very effective for our customers."
"It improves our operational efficiency."
"The feature of StorageGRID that I find most valuable for ensuring data durability and protection is its Information Lifecycle Management functionality."
"The scalability is very effective for our customers."
"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent, and everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."
"The technical support team is reliable and responsive."
"NetApp StorageGRID is a great alternative to AWS S3 buckets. Erasure coding is very valuable."
 

Cons

"There are a lot of things to improve."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile."
"The speed can always be improved."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything."
"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"I've been facing a challenge when doing a failover from FSx side. AWS console does not refresh within a half hour."
"From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for higher IOPS."
"A direct FTP feature would be beneficial instead of relying on transmission services."
"Amazon FSx is more costly compared to other storage solutions like EBS or EFS."
"The user interface of NetApp StorageGRID might need some tweaks, and configuration is maybe a little bit confusing for those who are not so experienced."
"Improvements need to be made in the support area."
"The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade."
"The only real issue that we have run into is, when we are cloning, we cannot do a thin provision clone, it has to be a full clone."
"The redundancy and reliability are great, but I also see room for improvement there. I would like to see more efficiency in the storage and dedupe/compression solutions."
"It has its quirks here and there, but it is an older NetApp system."
"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space. It's not at the same level as the NetApp filer or the real NetApp cluster that runs itself on its architecture, as StorageGRID is a software solution that emulates a RAID level."
"We had issues in a few areas because we couldn't do it from GUI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
"The lowest price I have paid is $370 or $380 per month, while the highest can exceed $3,000 per month."
"Creating your own data stores, backups, or storage grids, helps eliminate all these costs of downloading all the data back after you downloaded to the cloud."
"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."
"Buying the solution is expensive, but it saves you money down the line when you factor in the logistics of not having to buy tapes."
"It is very cost-effective."
"The pricing of StorageGRID falls within the typical range for enterprise-grade solutions and is comparable to other vendors such as Dell, NetApp, and Pure Storage."
"The price is attractive."
"We save money on storage costs from this solution since it allows us to have a source of revenue from customers consuming the service."
"We chose NetApp because of price and performance."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
10%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
What needs improvement with Amazon FSx?
From my experience, there are areas in Amazon FSx where more performance is needed, as they will be looking for highe...
What is your primary use case for Amazon FSx?
Our customers mainly use Amazon FSx for high-performance computing. Our customers are mainly in the Life Science and ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon FSx?
There is an ongoing project where my customers are exploring the FSx solution, but not yet for AI-driven projects; th...
What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?
The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to rest...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?
As an administrator, I was not involved in the pricing of NetApp StorageGRID. From what I understood, it was cheaper ...
What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?
The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node w...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Amazon FSx for Lustre
Storage GRID
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Neiman Marcus, T Mobile, Docxellent, Matrix, Lyell
ASE, DARZ GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon FSx vs. NetApp StorageGRID and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.