DDN IntelliFlash vs SolidFire comparison

DataDirect Networks and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #28 with an average rating of 9.0, while NetApp is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. DataDirect Networks holds a 0.5% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and SolidFire are two leading storage solutions. Users are generally more satisfied with the pricing and support of DDN IntelliFlash, but SolidFire is often seen as superior due to its feature set and performance metrics.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash is known for its hybrid storage capabilities, flexibility in handling different workloads, and data reduction technologies. SolidFire is recognized for its scalability, QoS controls, and seamless integration in cloud environments. While DDN IntelliFlash offers versatility, SolidFire’s robust scalability makes it the preferred choice for larger deployments.

Room for Improvement: DDN IntelliFlash users suggest improving integration with third-party cloud services and enhancing AI-based analytics. SolidFire reviewers point to the need for more user-friendly management tools and improved customer support. DDN IntelliFlash could benefit from better cloud compatibility, whereas SolidFire needs to refine its operational tools and support services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash is praised for its straightforward deployment process and reliable customer service. SolidFire users, however, experience a steeper learning curve during deployment but find the product’s performance worth the effort. Customer service for SolidFire is noted to need enhancements, unlike the strong support seen with DDN IntelliFlash. While SolidFire may be complex initially, its long-term benefits resonate well with users.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash has competitive setup costs and delivers solid ROI through efficient data management and lower operational expenses. Conversely, SolidFire’s higher initial costs are justified by better long-term scalability and performance. Though DDN IntelliFlash offers attractive initial pricing, SolidFire’s long-term value makes it a compelling investment.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. SolidFire Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. SolidFire

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 All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolidFire is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.0%
SolidFire	0.2%
DDN IntelliFlash	0.5%
Other	98.3%

All-Flash Storage

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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Ramil Cerrada

Solution lead at Globe Mobile

A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance

The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

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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

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

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

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"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."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

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."

"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"

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

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"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."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability."

"We can add a node, we add compute, we add storage, and we've had really good luck with that."

"Overall performance of the solution."

"The system efficiency is excellent overall."

"The simplicity of it."

"The dashboard is such that you don't need to be a storage expert to administer it."

"Templates are already predefined for it. If you're coding it up, it will take two days. You can pick up a template right there from the API, and it just works for you. Implementation done in 10 minutes."

"It's got full API functionality and the performance is pretty steady."

More SolidFire pros

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

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

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."

"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."

"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."

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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"SolidFire should start from two nodes instead of the four nodes. That's the only thing. In a lot of solutions, we have to use four nodes, that's the better thing. But as a starting point, two is better. That's why their starting point is expensive."

"You don't have business continuity with SolidFire. I think it could be a nice feature to have in the future."

"The tool should improve its initial cost which is expensive compared to other products."

"We have a large fiber channel infrastructure, and that's one area that we haven't seen implemented in SolidFire, its more iSCSI."

"They could do a file-based NAS: SolidFire NAS-based. It's probably not its niche, but that is our direction, not to use block, and it's block. Solid state block is what it is."

"This solution would be improved if it were made to be more compatible with other products."

"We are looking for, potentially, on the Active IQ reporting side, to do reporting based on the datastore. Right now, I can report on the whole SolidFire, or I can report on just a certain datastore or a volume. I'd like to take all of my VDI infrastructure, which as an example would be multiple datastores."

"There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS."

More SolidFire cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

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

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

"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."

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."

"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."

"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."

"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."

"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"

"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."

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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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	16

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...

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 th...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolidFire?

The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance w...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolidFire?

It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay fo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolidFire?

There is room for improvement with a focus on creating a centralized storage system, functioning similar to AWS. This...

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

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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

NetApp AFF vs SolidFire

Compared 100% of the time

More SolidFire 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

SolidFire

September 2025

Download SolidFire 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

SolidFire delivers all five core elements needed to deliver newfound storage agility to your next generation data center and beyond. With SolidFire you can deploy new applications and capabilities faster, provide more agile and scalable infrastructure, increase application performance and predictability, enable automation and end-user self-service and raise operational efficiency and reduce cost.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

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

California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. SolidFire

September 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. SolidFire

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. SolidFire and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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