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HPE Alletra Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

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
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Alletra Storage is 9.6%, up from 1.1% 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.
Lisa Whalen - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure
I've always said I love that it's easy to use. At one point in time, we had a 3PAR. And with 3PAR, I always thought it was a little more difficult. There was so much more to maintaining it, setting it up, and everything. With the [HPE] Alletra [Storage], it's just easy. It's easy to provision space to use and to set up. InfoSight is invaluable to me. With it, I can just quickly go out there and see what is going on. Alletra provides a cloud-like operation model on-prem for managing data infrastructure. [HPE] Alletra [Storage] is very good for predicting problems and preventing them before they occur. InfoSight has really helped with that. I honestly don't have to look at it much. However, there's the alerting and everything that will tell us what's going on. That said, I check InfoSight every once in a while. [HPE Alletra Storage] reduced the time spent on storage provision. It's so much easier than the 3PAR. It's just so much easier. I don't spend time in there at all. The product improved our storage performance experience in terms of IOPS. Our end users that use the SAP environment were a little concerned at first. We said we were going to switch over from the 3PAR to the Alletra since they've always been more familiar with the 3PAR. However, when we moved them over, they noticed a performance increase.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"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."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."
"HPE Alletra Storage helps simplify storage operations, integrating with vCenter."
"HPE Alletra Storage comes with zero downtime, which is its best feature. It has real-time replication available, so no additional features need to be bought when purchasing the system."
"The reliability is very good."
"It took nothing really to set it up. It was all online, and we were able to set it up and start using it within about three hours."
"Ease of utilization and ease of backup are valuable. You just plug it in, run a few commands, and set it up. It is done."
"One of the best benefits I can think of is that the support team is top-tier."
"The ease of setup was huge for me, as I'm the only storage admin for our company."
"It's easy to deploy and maintain and it's made everything faster."
"It's helping us achieve our budget constraints while allowing us to work in other areas."
"We've been able to save a lot of money with the introduction of the use of the tiering aspect and the flex groups."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"It's helping to leverage data. The storage is being utilized to implement larger, complex file sizes."
"I would say the consistency with the ONTAP versions and the speed and performance from the flash."
"The overall latency in our environment is very low because it's All Flash and we've got 10 Giga dedicated to the storage network"
"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."
"At the file level, the protocols they support are easy to use. This improves resiliency and helps us run the environment."
 

Cons

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"It is on the expensive side."
"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"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."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"In the future, it might be nice to get text notifications for issues beyond simply getting emails."
"Technical support from HPE can be hit and miss."
"Long-distance, high-latency replication enhancements would be delightful to see in future versions."
"It would be better if there were an option to incorporate the NVMe feature alongside other storage tiers. Currently, the system operates on Autotier but can manually peer and mix different types of drives, such as SAS and SATA drives."
"They are starting to add more blocking tools. It's lacking natively, however, they seem to be adding in more."
"I'm not sure if I've gone through all the features. There's always room for improvement."
"I do not have any issues with it. It has been good for us. There are no cons that I see, and that is why we use it."
"It could use improvement in correctly identifying and naming the systems. The solution keeps changing the names of everything. It's been hard to track."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years."
"We don't have many issues related to the appliance itself. In terms of the OS, we do get some hiccups here and there."
"Sometimes, NetApp support could be better. When the customers escalate, it can feel like everything's starting from scratch. These are rare cases. I'm not directly involved in support, but that's what I hear when something doesn't work."
"The SRA stuff that intergrades with SRM is a problem point. It's a pain point. The support personnel aren't always knowledgeable on that product. At times, they are not even aware what product is supported and what is not, when one has been deprecated and there is a new one out, and what the bug fixes of the newer version are."
"There is room for improvement in terms of support. I have noticed that if I sometimes call their customer care for a particular issue, they will give me another number and ask me to call that other team. It would be better if they could do a warm transfer. That would save customers time from calling all the numbers again and speaking to another team."
"It would be great if they had a single pane of glass or a single dashboard where all the NetApp ecosystem storages could be viewed and monitored simply. That would help my Operations."
"I know they're working well with Microsoft and VMware. However, they could integrate with more."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"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."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is fairly priced. It is in line with industry standard pricing and cost models."
"Its licensing is good. Pricing-wise, there can be a little bit more flexibility. It would help to have different sizes. However, it fits into the budget that we have, so we are happy."
"For us, its price is good."
"It is reasonably priced."
"So far, so good."
"The solution is expensive and can cost around five lakhs."
"Its price can be optimized."
"The pricing is somewhat high, but when customers choose HPE, they often prioritize the brand value over pricing. The pricing is higher compared to other vendors."
"We have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"It consolidates a lot of our storage into one or two chassis, which makes money savings in our data center."
"We would like it to be free."
"The stability of AFF alone has been a significant ROI."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"From an application standpoint, we have seen a lot of return investment on the speeds and responsiveness of the actual storage."
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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
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

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 do you like most about HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
Its price can be optimized. The cost before deployment is significant to customers, but post-deployment cost analysis...
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
The user interface, configuration, and customization could be improved, though the configuration is currently very ea...
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
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra Storage vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.