DDN IntelliFlash vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

DataDirect Networks and Pure Storage are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while Pure Storage is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8. DataDirect Networks holds a 1.2% mindshare in N, compared to Pure Storage’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

DDN IntelliFlash

Read 12 DDN IntelliFlash reviews

648 Views
272 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Read 36 Pure FlashArray X NVMe reviews

1,805 Views
975 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DDN IntelliFlash

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Pure FlashArray X NVMe are two leading storage solutions. Pure FlashArray X NVMe appears to have the upper hand as users are happier with its features and customer service, despite its higher costs.

Features: Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers high performance, efficient data management, and a comprehensive set of features. DDN IntelliFlash is known for its scalability and flexibility but lacks some advanced features present in Pure FlashArray X NVMe.

Room for Improvement: DDN IntelliFlash needs better integration, more intuitive management tools, and enhancements in advanced features. Pure FlashArray X NVMe could improve scalability and performance under specific workloads, with fewer deficiencies noted compared to DDN IntelliFlash.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash users report a smoother initial deployment experience but face significant hurdles in complex environments. Pure FlashArray X NVMe, while slightly more challenging to deploy initially, excels in ongoing customer support and robustness in more complex deployments.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash is favored for its lower setup costs and quicker ROI. Pure FlashArray X NVMe, despite higher upfront costs, is valued for delivering long-term savings through superior performance and scalability, making it a worthwhile investment for high-end solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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

DDN IntelliFlash

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

28th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

14th

Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 3.2%, up from 2.5% 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%
DDN IntelliFlash	1.2%
Other	95.6%

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

Featured Reviews

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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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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"

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

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

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

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

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

"The latency is good."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."

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

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

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

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"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've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

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

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

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

Questions from the Community

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 ML features.

See all answers

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 than a thousand disks. So, in terms of scalability, the solution is very good.

See all answers

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 Evergreen monthly payment. I do not know the exact device price, but I think the ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

See all answers

Comparisons

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 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

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

October 2025

Download DDN IntelliFlash product report

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Also Known As

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

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

Overview

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

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

Sample Customers

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

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

September 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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