No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

DDN IntelliFlash vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DDN IntelliFlash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
25th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (11th)
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.2%
DDN IntelliFlash1.3%
Other90.0%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
reviewer2393595 - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Storage Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have seen savings in our storage. The speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes. This product has reduced that time into minutes, simplifying storage for us."
"Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency."
"The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements."
"The intuitive way of managing storage is what I appreciate about Pure Storage FlashArray, along with the clever use of flash modules, and absolutely the data reduction, because they are using that in a very clever way to do compression and deduplication."
"This storage has to be the most well thought out and effective storage that I have had the privilege to work with."
"It simplifies the overall management. We don't have to worry about storage anymore."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors, as we've looked at some of the other competitors on the market."
"It releases those to new teams within minutes at a very small storage cost amount."
"We have been able to realize storage space savings for our virtualization environment and it has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the number of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"After five years, the cost decreases over 30% and the performance increases over 50%."
"Tegile All-Flash Storage Arrays deliver maximum performance, high density, compelling economics and it is ideal for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads such as online transaction processing, real-time analytics, decision support, and data warehousing."
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."
"We have been able to realize storage space savings for our virtualization environment and it has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the number of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"With so much technological advancement and more coming, the world is their oyster."
"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our databases, and what's great about this solution is that it speeds up our data store because it is a cheap solution for flash performances."
"The speed is the most valuable feature."
"For anyone who has critical workloads like Oracle databases or DB2, NetApp All-Flash Arrays will suit their needs, as long as it fits within their budget."
"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."
"Its performance is most valuable; this solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions, and we are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"Being able to partition different virtual volumes of storage is really valuable for us."
"It provides multi-protocol, which is what gives the edge when it comes to big lineage PC workloads."
 

Cons

"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"We would like to see better troubleshooting aspects. It helps us if we can find out where the problem is. Right now, it's difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint the issue. If they had more visibility and more troubleshooting feature built into the tool that would really help."
"I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it."
"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"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."
"It's annoying that if you turn on SMB3 (as opposed to the earlier CIFS protocol), then it is not possible to access a file store using a mixture of SMB and NFS."
"The monitoring matrix and its dashboard need work."
"I would say it's somewhat scalable, maybe not so much as some of the competition, but we don't really care."
"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."
"The solution as it is right now is not very stable. The stability seems to have eroded."
"Nonetheless, there are a couple of other things that NetApp hasn't done right."
"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."
"It needs a better management tool."
"It says NetApp on the badge, but it’s not a NetApp product."
"They could improve the product’s tools."
"This solution has limited storage."
"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"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."
"They have a standardized fee; it's been the same price for 10 years straight. I am happy with the price — I think it's good."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"While it comes with a higher price tag, this investment often translates to significant improvements in performance."
"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."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."
"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."
"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
14%
Performing Arts
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?
It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.