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Cohesity SmartFiles vs NetApp StorageGRID comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Cohesity SmartFiles
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (20th)
NetApp StorageGRID
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (11th)
 

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.
SM
Evangelist / CTO at fgnext
Enables effective data management with reliable backup and recovery
Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents. The architecture supports backup, ransomware awareness, and data management on a converged platform, offering triple-protocol access (NFS, CIFS, and S3) while facilitating gradual improvements in access rights management. It allows for redundant setups, with automated backup and recovery options in a cloud environment.
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

"Access speed and power consumption are most valuable."
"It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit."
"It's simple, powerful, and ready to use."
"Once it's set up, it just runs on its own and only requires the occasional checkup."
"This solution has improved our organization. In the past, we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour. The end users saw an immediate performance gain."
"The scalability is good."
"After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"Cohesity SmartFiles aids in data management with features like full-text search through indexed documents."
"We definitely saw the benefits of NetApp StorageGRID immediately as our growth of snapshots and our internal customers, including Kelly Blue Book, AutoTrader, and HomeNet, required long-term snapshots, and we saw the results of having NetApp StorageGRID saving us on SSD space."
"The implementation with NetApp went smoothly. It is a 'setup and forget' type of appliance."
"For StorageGRID, the duplication and interface are good and the manageability of StorageGRID is pretty good."
"I would highly recommend this solution for video storage because of all the benefits it has given us."
"It has awesome scalability, as we consume it with storage appliance nodes, then we just plug and play as we need more."
"The backup features are valuable. I've heard from our backup and data protection people that our clients are very satisfied with the performance in junction with the backup, which they archive on this type of object storage."
"It has enabled us to save money on storage costs. We removed our tape library."
"The features or capabilities of NetApp StorageGRID that I have found the most valuable include scalability, interoperability, and integration options."
 

Cons

"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"Pure Storage had operational challenges between 2016 to 2018, impacting perceived reliability."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can save their investment."
"Part of our company works on Dell EMC because Pure Storage did not have synchronous applications when we were purchasing our products."
"I would recommend improvements in the graphical user interface, specifically a detailed hardware view that would allow us to see the individual drives and individual controllers more easily, as currently, they are presenting only a higher-level view."
"We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that."
"They could improve the price."
"Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platform failure. It's not suitable for applications needing high I/O or low latency."
"The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade."
"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."
"The price is something that NetApp could improve, as with most companies."
"If I could change anything in NetApp StorageGRID, that would be pricing."
"Beyond the initial setup, this product is a little bit difficult to configure."
"It's quite complex, which is a disadvantage; it's enterprise-level, it's complicated to set up, and you need external support."
"It has its quirks here and there, but it is an older NetApp system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
Information not available
"We save money on storage costs from this solution since it allows us to have a source of revenue from customers consuming the service."
"I rate the product pricing around five out of ten—it's negotiable, depending on the circumstances."
"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."
"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."
"The price is attractive."
"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."
"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."
"We pay for a license annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Construction Company
14%
University
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
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 find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity SmartFiles?
SmartFiles is an economical solution, priced per terabyte on the backend. Initial setup and licensing costs align wit...
What needs improvement with Cohesity SmartFiles?
Users must remember that running DataProtect and files on the same cluster could threaten access if there is a platfo...
What is your primary use case for Cohesity SmartFiles?
Our customers use Cohesity SmartFiles ( /products/cohesity-smartfiles-reviews ) in conjunction with Cohesity SpanFS (...
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...
What is your primary use case for NetApp StorageGRID?
It started back when we first got NetApp StorageGRID at Cox Automotive, approximately seven years ago. We first got i...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
Storage GRID
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
1. Acer 2. Adobe 3. AIG 4. Airbus 5. Allstate 6. Amazon 7. American Express 8. Aon 9. Apple 10. ATT 11. Autodesk 12. Bank of America 13. Barclay's 14. Bayer 15. BlackRock 16. Boeing 17. BNP Paribas 18. Cisco 19. Coca-Cola 20. Comcast 21. Dell 22. Deutsche Bank 23. Equinix 24. ExxonMobil 25. Ford 26. GE 27. Google 28. HP 29. IBM 30. Intel 31. JPMorgan Chase 32. Kroger
ASE, DARZ GmbH
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