Huawei OceanStor vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Huawei and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Huawei is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.9, while NetApp is ranked #26 with an average rating of 9.5. Huawei holds a 2.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Huawei users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Huawei OceanStor compete in the premium storage solutions category. NetApp EF-Series appears to have the upper hand in speed and reliability, while Huawei OceanStor offers an advanced feature set.

Features: NetApp EF-Series includes high performance, low latency, and suitability for demanding workloads. Huawei OceanStor offers AI-based data management, active-active disaster recovery, and comprehensive capabilities.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series needs enhanced scalability options, better integration with third-party applications, and more intuitive management platforms. Huawei OceanStor requires a more intuitive management platform, improved technical documentation, and streamlined user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series is known for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. Huawei OceanStor has a steeper learning curve but offers more extensive support services.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series users highlight fair pricing and quick return on investment. Huawei OceanStor is more expensive upfront but justified by its extensive features and long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

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 November 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Huawei OceanStor	2.3%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	1.1%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays	0.7%
Other	95.9%

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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ChukwuemekaOnyemelukwe

Infrastructure Administrator - Server, Storage & Virtualization at MicroAccess Ltd

Uses a proprietary technology with simple interface and has easy deployment

If you are not generating a substantial amount of data, the available storage space might suffice, making scalability less of a concern. However, if your data generation increases and you require more storage, Huawei OceanStor offers solutions to expand your storage capacity. Expanding storage resources can involve additional costs and configuration efforts. Acquiring more storage solutions and ensuring their integration with your existing setup might require a significant investment of time and resources. While this process can be complex, it allows for seamless scalability as your data storage needs grow. I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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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 FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"The solution is scalable."

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

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."

"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."

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Huawei is much cheaper compared to Dell, offering a competitive price that makes companies consider their options."

"Great value for money."

"Huawei OceanStor utilizes a proprietary technology known as RAID 2.0. This technology sets it apart from conventional storage solutions. RAID 2.0 offers advantages over traditional configurations. OceanStor's user interface is very simple and easy to use, featuring a graphical interface that enables quick and error-free setup of the storage system. This interface ensures that users can configure the storage efficiently and without mistakes."

"I find the scalability features of OceanStor valuable. Additionally, installation is easy, and it only requires one person to install it. Maintenance is also easy and not a big issue."

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

"OceanStor is cheaper than Dell EMC, and its management interface is quite simple."

"The setup and the price are the most valuable and not the features related."

"The solution is easy to use."

More Huawei OceanStor pros

"The management software is very good."

"The main advantage of this solution is performance."

"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."

"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."

"The management of it is very simple. that is the most valuable feature."

"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."

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

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"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."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"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."

"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."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"CFS integration is one area where OceanStor has some room for improvement. The CFS on OceanStor is dedicated, so it's not integrated with the existing active directory domain."

"The solution needs to improve the compression side of the application."

"In the future release, Huawei OceanStor should improve on what they already have. It is a good solution."

"The upgrading process needs improvement. Deploy it and notify the customers when new versions and stuff comes out. I don't think they're doing that well."

"The solution’s reporting could be improved."

"The product must improve the local technical support in China."

"The main concern is regarding the usability of the data storage."

"They should introduce a feature to Huawei OceanStor similar to a storage controller, allowing for seamless integration of additional storage modules."

More Huawei OceanStor cons

"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."

"The management interface, while very reliable, it seems a little old now and could maybe use a little modernization."

"It needs a better management tool."

"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."

"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."

"A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series."

"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Huawei OceanStor is priced very well but is a bit complicated."

"The price of the license is quite low, so it's not something special or expensive."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. However, there are not any licensing costs."

"Its price is affordable."

"Pricing is very fair."

"Overall, the solution's pricing was cheaper."

"We pay a monthly licensing fee for this solution. The price could be less expensive."

"The pricing depends on the features the customer wants, such as storage, RAM, and processors, but in general, Huawei is much cheaper compared to Dell and Cisco."

More Huawei OceanStor pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."

"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."

"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

University

Performing Arts

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

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	26
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	18

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.

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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 do you like most about Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei OceanStor has the capability of SSDs, high-performance disks, and higher disk support.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei OceanStor's pricing is very aggressive, making it highly competitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor?

Huawei currently lacks a solution for high-performance AI, unlike other companies like DDN, WekaIO, or IBM BlueStore....

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 22% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 24% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 17% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 14% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 6% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs Huawei OceanStor

Compared 6% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 20% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 18% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 16% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

October 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor

October 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

October 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System, OceanStor 18000 V3 Series Storage Systems, OceanStor 6800 V3 Storage System

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

OceanStor Dorado V3 is the industry's first all-flash storage that puts NVMe into commercial use. It is specially designed for enterprises' mission-critical businesses, meeting the most-demanding performance and reliability requirements of databases, VDI, server virtualization, and SAP HANA.

Huawei

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

September 2025

Free Report: Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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