We performed a comparison between Pure Storage FlashArray and DNN IntelliFlash based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Pure Storage FlashArray came out ahead of DDN IntelliFlash. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found DDN IntelliFlash more difficult to deploy, with more capabilities for improvement, and with less reliable support.
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."
"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."
"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."
"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"
"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."
"We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates."
"I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."
"The stability is perfect. The reliability is 100% and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"It simplifies storage."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"The sales and executive support have been outstanding compared to the rest of the market... My upgrade paths have been simple on the Pure... It's a lot simpler to implement and a lot simpler to manage."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"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."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."
"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."
"It is on the expensive side."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"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 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."
"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."
"They need to offer better integration for a virtual platform to enable you to create hyper-converged solution."
"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."
"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."
"It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside."
"If we suddenly dump large amounts of data onto the storage system, it takes a while to process it."
"I would like to see them lower the costs."
"It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive."
"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."
"We would like to integrate it more with our backup solutions."
"In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption."
"It was not proactive communication."
Earn 20 points
DDN IntelliFlash is ranked 29th in All-Flash Storage with 11 reviews while Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 3rd in All-Flash Storage with 174 reviews. DDN IntelliFlash is rated 7.4, while Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of DDN IntelliFlash writes "Good features with an easy initial setup but technical support is slow ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Effective provisioning, helpful support, and reliable". DDN IntelliFlash is most compared with VAST Data, NetApp AFF and Tintri VMstore, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem and VMware vSAN.
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