DDN IntelliFlash vs Hitachi VSP E Series comparison

DataDirect Networks and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.2. DataDirect Networks holds a 1.2% mindshare in N, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Hitachi VSP E Series are competing products in the data storage solutions space. Hitachi VSP E Series appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features that many buyers find worth the cost.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash is known for hybrid storage solutions, scalable architecture, and high-performance capabilities. Hitachi VSP E Series offers comprehensive storage virtualization, robust data management tools, and superior data protection features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash has straightforward deployment processes and a highly rated customer service team. Hitachi VSP E Series provides effective customer service but involves a more complex deployment model, requiring detailed planning and technical support.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash offers competitive setup costs and notable ROI potential with efficient storage solutions and solid support. Hitachi VSP E Series may require a higher initial investment but delivers substantial long-term value through its advanced technology.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Hitachi VSP E Series Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Hitachi VSP E Series

September 2025

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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 FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 3.2%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi VSP E Series is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	3.2%
Hitachi VSP E Series	2.4%
DDN IntelliFlash	1.2%
Other	93.2%

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments

It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.

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Paolo Brega

Business Developer Manager & Marketing Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Rated highly for robust integration and diverse features

Currently, we are not approaching the virtual storage. We are working with Hitachi and Pure Storage; in some cases, we work with NetApp. We work with more or less all the stack of Hitachi products, starting from the small machine up to the VSP, the big family, the high-end, depending on the customer, the end user. We have very poor experience with Hitachi VSP E Series because we don't have big customers, just a couple. We had experience with VSP, specifically the E Series. We don't take care of data protection features from Hitachi because our customers do not generally involve us in this area as it is not our focus. Integrating Hitachi VSP with a hybrid cloud environment is not particularly complex. The automation process is handled by our storage administrator; I support them in the choice but don't work directly with that. I would rate Hitachi's pricing around a three, stability an eight, and Hitachi VSP's scalability a 10, as you can scale whenever you want. Hitachi VSP can compete absolutely on the market. When comparing solutions, Hitachi VSP is the best for me. I have rated this solution 9 out of 10.

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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

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."

"The latency is good."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."

"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."

"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

"Data Compression: Up to 80% space reduction in the database"

"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."

"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"The most valuable features of Hitachi VSP series include its high performance and availability."

"It offers good file sharing."

"I rate Hitachi VSP series nine out of ten for a transactional workload requiring no compromise on availability and performance."

"Its user-friendly configuration and maintenance processes contribute to its reputation for being straightforward and easily manageable."

"The product is generally quite stable."

"We are using the Hitachi VSP E Series for high IOPS."

Cons

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"We need better data deduplication."

"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"It is on the expensive side."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."

"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."

"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."

"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."

"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."

"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."

"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."

"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"There is room for improvement in simplifying the overall complexity of the environment."

"Hitachi is quite expensive, and small to medium-sized organizations usually do not purchase it."

"Hitachi should work on unified storage platforms."

"The solution's support duration or end-of-support life is very short."

"The graphical user interface is somewhat outdated, lacking some of the modern features found in other solutions."

"Hitachi should work on unified storage platforms."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The product is expensive."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"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."

"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."

"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 support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."

"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."

"Hitachi VSP E Series is an expensive solution."

"The pricing is fair, with additional costs for support services."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?

It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IntelliFlash?

DDN IntelliFlash should improve in terms of sales. In future releases, I look forward to more features about AI and M...

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What is your primary use case for IntelliFlash?

We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways. They have large scalability and use more th...

See all answers

What do you like most about Hitachi VSP E Series?

Its user-friendly configuration and maintenance processes contribute to its reputation for being straightforward and ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi VSP E Series?

The solution is expensive, which can be considered a con.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Hitachi VSP E Series?

Hitachi needs to work on the marketing side because communication is a problem, as many customers do not know what th...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 23% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

VAST Data vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 48% of the time

NetApp AFF vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 19% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 12% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 11% of the time

Tintri VMstore T7000 vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 10% of the time

More DDN IntelliFlash Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Hitachi VSP E Series

Compared 40% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs Hitachi VSP E Series

Compared 34% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Hitachi VSP E Series

Compared 13% of the time

NetApp ASA vs Hitachi VSP E Series

Compared 13% of the time

More Hitachi VSP E Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

October 2025

Download DDN IntelliFlash product report

Buyer's Guide

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

October 2025

Download Hitachi VSP E Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

DataDirect Networks

Hitachi VSP E Series offers an advanced storage solution designed for enterprises seeking scalability and performance. It is suitable for a range of applications, providing reliability and efficiency to meet demanding IT environments.

Hitachi VSP E Series is designed to enhance storage capabilities with robust features catering to needs such as data management, storage optimization, and system versatility. This series integrates seamlessly within IT infrastructures, offering improved data protection and resource management. Its enhanced storage architecture ensures data integrity while supporting high data loads efficiently, making it a go-to choice for enterprises requiring high-performance storage systems.

What are the most valuable features of Hitachi VSP E Series?

Scalability: Enables seamless expansion as data requirements grow, ensuring continued performance without disruption.
Reliability: Provides consistent uptime and data protection, minimizing risks associated with data loss.
High Performance: Delivers fast data processing speeds to support demanding applications.
Data Management: Offers advanced data management tools for streamlined operations and efficiency.
Energy Efficiency: Designed to reduce power consumption while maintaining optimal performance.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Cost-Effectiveness: Benefits from lower operational costs due to efficient data handling and energy use.
Operational Efficiency: Enhances work productivity by optimizing data processes, leading to better resource allocation.
Flexibility: Supports various deployment scenarios, allowing adaptation to different business needs.
Data Security: Enhances data protection mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.

Hitachi VSP E Series is widely implemented in industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, where data integrity and speed are crucial. Its ability to integrate with existing IT frameworks makes it a valuable addition to businesses aiming to streamline data processes while maintaining high standards of data protection and system reliability.

Hitachi Vantara

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Hitachi VSP E Series

September 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Hitachi VSP E Series

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Hitachi VSP E Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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