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Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs NetApp AFF comparison

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hitachi Virtual Storage Pla...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
11th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
NAS (5th), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd), Frame-Based Disk Arrays (1st)
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
311
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is 3.2%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
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. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Ozair Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee
We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products. Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes. The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings. Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand. I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others. There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers. The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues. The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive. Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service. The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions. In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task. Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.
Anna Sofo - PeerSpot reviewer
Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency
I like NetApp AFF's deduplication. The solution's AutoSupport feature is efficient and effective because customers are notified of potential issues before they experience problems with NetApp. The support is sold based on metro clusters, so they guarantee the client's business continuity. NetApp has an Active IQ app that allows you to get information on your smartphone.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"The product provides a good storage space."
"It is the most stable high-end solution in this area."
"One of the features, for us, that is important is the monitoring platform integrated into the solution. It has all the elements that we need to see, at all times, to be sure the platform is working right."
"What I like best about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series is that it's a fast storage solution. It also has reliable models. The sales support is also good for this product. Even the pricing for it is good."
"The efficiency ratio is just as high as advertised. It's very high relative to other storage solutions as well. The compression and deduplication capabilities are also very high."
"The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations."
"The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure."
"The deduplication is useful for us because we don't have that much money for our lab infrastructure. Deduplication means we have more storage available. And the IOPS are really fast."
"The features that I found most valuable are SnapMirror and SnapVault; these provide DR and backup for data redundancy."
"We're not fully utilizing NetApp's Converge BlueXP, but it's a great help. It integrates on-prem and cold storage and provides disaster recovery. We'll see more benefits as it improves."
"The in-line dedupe, and the compaction saves us a lot of space because most of our AFFs house VMware VMDK files."
"It is stable. In my three years working with the storage, I haven't seen any issues with our NetApp product."
"The design has been great."
"Multi-protocol is the most valuable feature for us. It does everything in one system: sifts, EBES, ISCSI, and fiber channel. Other systems don't do all that."
"I like some basic features like Snapshot, FlexClone, and advanced features such as SnapMirror, and SnapVault. They also recently enhanced the market with Cloud Volumes ONTAP. I think that NetApp is a very good product."
"The performance of NetApp AFF allows our developers and researches to run models and their tests within a single workday instead of spreading out across multiple workdays."
 

Cons

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"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."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"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 software layer has to improve."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"Hitachi Vantara has invested heavily in improving their management interface, however, they still have a way to go to catch up with many of their competitors."
"One improvement I am hoping for in the next release is unified storage."
"The distributor needs more knowledgeable resources for technical support. It would be better to connect directly to the vendor in case of queries."
"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform needs to improve its scalability options where there are a few shortcomings."
"The solution is stable. However, there have been some software crashes where we had to restart the system. They could improve the hardware to prevent this type of issue."
"If they had a certain approach to layered storage, it would be better. For example, adaption to the browser, or having a centralized console."
"I would like the fan noise to be automatically adjusted based on the drive's current workload."
"n future releases, I would like to see enhancements in the web GUI capabilities for direct management without additional PCM."
"Tech support is great with NetApp if you can get past Tier 1. A lot of times when you open a new case or do a direct dial-in with an issue, like with any support, you will definitely reach a Tier 1 level that is not particularly helpful until you get escalated to an expert."
"They should make these features a little more affordable."
"It would be very useful if we could do the NFS to CIFS file transfer, but it is not supported at this time."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"We don't have it in production yet."
"I would like them to roll in global monitoring instead of having to buy another product for it."
"The monitor and performance need improvement. Right now we are using the active IQ OnCommand Unified Manager, but we also have to do the Grafana to do the performance and I hope we will be able to see the improvement of the active IQ in terms of the performance graph. It should also be more detailed."
"For ONTAP, in general, the deduplication ratio and Snapshot limitation are areas that need improvement. There is a global limitation on the number of Snapshots or clones that can be spun off of a particular Snapshot. If those limitations are increased, it might be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"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."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"I find Hitachi to be cheaper by five to ten percent when compared to Dell and HP's costs, but the features in Dell are better than Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform."
"This solution is cheaper than Dell EMC VMAX. When you are looking for a high-end solution, price matters, but availability and stability are more important than the price."
"A drawback of Hitachi storage systems is that they are expensive. The upfront cost is very high compared to others. But when you compare the IOPS at the same price, Hitachi gives you better business value..."
"Our main issue with the Hitachi G-Series is what we consider to be an archaic software licensing scheme and high maintenance costs."
"It is expensive. Everything is included in the license. There is no additional cost."
"The cost price of this product is better than its competitors."
"Architecture-wise, it's actually at a competitive price point. It is not cheap."
"Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G Series tools are highly specialized, such as management and performance tools and the overall solution is expensive. If customers want to have a lot of data in their hands, they need to purchase several solutions."
"Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%."
"The entry point for potential customers, who are looking at coming onboard for flash systems, it may be a bit expensive. It would be good if the price comes down."
"If you go for Replication, Vault, and NAS, please ensure that the license has been ordered at the very beginning. However, licenses can been added or modified without rebooting the system at any time."
"I looked at other vendors for other potential projects and thought NetApp's pricing was very competitive."
"The list price of AFF is too expensive... they need to be careful with the pricing of the new NVMe disks. They are way too expensive."
"NetApp AFF is an expensive solution."
"We would like it to be free."
"Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
67%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform?
For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or...
What do you like most about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.
What needs improvement with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E990?
The interface management and monitoring need improvement. Although I receive emails from Hitachi Virtual Storage Plat...
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series, 5000 Series, E Series, N Series, G Series
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Turkcell, Owens Corning, Region Nord, Net Credit Financial Group (NFC Group), Russian Railways
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.