Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL] vs NetApp AFF comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Hitachi Vantara and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 100% of Hitachi Vantara users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL] and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

October 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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it_user1205586

Chief Solutions Architect at Science Applications International Corporation

Good price-performance ratio, provides simplified provisioning and management

We use this solution for provisioning and management The most valuable features are simplified provisioning and management, de-duplication, and built-in encryption. The exterior display needs to be improved. Sorry, I like the blue lights the competition has, but maybe we can see green led lights…

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Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Unified storage has delivered efficient AI analytics and low latency for critical workloads

There might be some lag or response time with respect to support cases, but even then I will rate it 8.5 out of 10. All of this is the same for all product ranges, whether E-series, NetApp AFF, or FAS series, because they are very efficient to respond. The only reason I rated it 8.5 is because the warehouse for spare parts, when a problem comes, a spare is needed to replace it, for example, a disk. In Pakistan, they have only one warehouse in Karachi. This warehouse manages all the problems when a problem comes. They ship the part based on the customer use case and customer service request. That is the only reason I rate it 8.5 because they have only one warehouse in Pakistan, which is in Karachi. For example, if a problem comes in Islamabad, it will take time to deliver the spare because the part will be shipped from Karachi to Islamabad, which will take around maybe a day. Other OEMs have their warehouses in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi also. In terms of part replacement requirements, they are very efficient in that area because they have warehouses in multiple cities of Pakistan.

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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

"Pure Storage FlashArray provides immediate benefits to our customers with its easy setup process, allowing for instant use and rapid realization of advantages."

"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."

"The best feature is consistently lower latency, even when IOPS crank up to over 75K, and the product maintains submillisecond response time, which is incredible."

"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."

"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore."

"The most valuable features I have experienced are the centralized management and redundancy under speed of the right disk."

"It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."

"Pure Storage FlashArray simplifies maintenance and management with its intuitive GUI, making storage allocation and other processes easy to understand, even for beginners."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"The most valuable features are simplified provisioning and management, de-duplication, and built-in encryption."

"This solution had the best cost and it was easy to work with the Vendor."

"The improvement for us has been space savings on the All Flash FAS platform, with data space savings almost three times better than what we have right now and tripled performance for the customer."

"The storage solutions that we use allow us a lot more peace of mind."

"The most valuable feature, primarily, would be speed. That's why we got it. Storage is costly but it's very, very fast. Very efficient, very fast."

"At this point, performance is the most valuable feature, and so far, it's performed exactly how we wanted it to on a pretty heavy performance-intensive workload."

"We use All Flash for block and file storage, and our impression of NetApp has a long history; it's been good to us in providing the support and giving us the right solutions when we need them."

"I would tell potential users that NetApp is one of the best primary storage systems with many good features."

"Flexibility, being able to network multiple 880 series together to increase speed."

"Because of the speed and storage efficiency, we have no complaints from the customer and we don't have to buy as much space, because we can compress it."

More NetApp AFF pros

Cons

"It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that."

"In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google."

"When creating a support case, visibility should be extended to others involved in assisting."

"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."

"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography."

"I’d love to view the average, minimum and maximum performance in the reports (Analysis tab - Performance) but it is only graphics and you need to export data in CSV to find this information."

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."

"The only thing is that we've had to upgrade controllers a few times because we ended up wanting to use more stuff on here."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"The exterior display needs to be improved."

"I want to see more send features."

"Where I see room for improvement is their technical support."

"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."

"For other issues, NetApp support is not as good as it used to be."

"They should make these features a little more affordable."

"There are some bugs with the solution which need to be fixed."

"There are a lot of features with ONTAP, and the user interface is far more complicated than it needs to be."

"These setup hangups are why I’m not giving it a perfect rating."

More NetApp AFF cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."

"We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI."

"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."

"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."

"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."

"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."

"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"This solution has a good price-performance ratio."

"The pricing is competitive when we compare it to other products."

"The solution is moderately priced."

"It is pretty expensive compared to other solutions. I would give it a seven or eight out of 10 in price (where 10 is expensive) compared to similar solutions."

"The only area where the product has room for improvement is the cost."

"Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job."

"We don't like the cost. We would like to buy more."

"It's expensive but we think over time all the prices are going to go down."

"The stability of AFF alone has been a significant ROI."

More NetApp AFF pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user186357

Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees

Jan 28, 2015

NetApp vs. XtremIO

Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Outsourcing Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	161

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	47
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	242

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...

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

When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?

The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...

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What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?

The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...

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Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 5% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 4% of the time

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Tintri VMstore T7000 vs Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

NEC iStorage S4900 vs Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL]

Compared 3% of the time

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Dell Unity XT vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp AFF

Compared 5% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs NetApp AFF

Compared 4% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp AFF

Compared 4% of the time

More NetApp AFF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

November 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Frame-Based Disk Arrays

October 2026

Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL] report

Download Hitachi Universal Storage VM [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp AFF

October 2026

Download NetApp AFF product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

HUS VM

NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

The Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM delivers proven enterprise-class functionality — advanced virtualization of externally attached storage, logical partitioning, thin provisioning and universal replication — in flexible, cost effective service oriented configurations.

Hitachi Vantara

NetApp AFF provides high-performance storage solutions, emphasizing speed and efficiency for demanding applications. Its features include low latency, inline deduplication, and seamless integration, making it ideal for businesses needing reliable storage and data management.

NetApp AFF stands out in offering rapid data access with features designed to meet the demands of high-speed environments. With capabilities such as low latency and inline deduplication, it ensures efficient data management. Data recovery and SnapMirror enhance its appeal for businesses focused on utility and integration with other NetApp systems. The clustered Data ONTAP enriches the user experience, making NetApp AFF a strong choice for those prioritizing usability and performance during migration. However, some users highlight the steep learning curve and high costs, along with the need for better integration, monitoring tools, and technical support. Improvement in migration, scalability, documentation, and automation is also desired, along with more competitive pricing.

What are its standout features?

Speed: Offers rapid data access for high-demand applications.
Low Latency: Ensures quick response times.
Inline Deduplication: Optimizes storage efficiency.
Seamless Integration: Integrates smoothly with NetApp systems.
SnapMirror: Facilitates efficient data recovery.
Clustered Data ONTAP: Enhances user experience.

What benefits should users look for?

High Performance: Supports critical applications with speed.
Reliability: Provides robust data management solutions.
Data Utility: Enhances data access and recovery options.
Efficient Migration: Ensures smooth transitions with minimal disruption.
Integration Support: Works well within existing NetApp environments.

NetApp AFF is commonly utilized in industries such as telecom, healthcare, and insurance that require high-performance storage. Virtualization, database management, file storage, and NFS/CIFS protocols are key use cases. It supports high availability and disaster recovery, serving as the backbone for VM and Hyper-V infrastructures. Organizations also benefit from its low latency and support for AI workloads, optimizing operational efficiencies.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Hanergy Global Solar PV Application Pte Ltd

DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: October 2026.

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