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Kaminario K2 [EOL] vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
Kaminario K2 [EOL]
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Engineerdb78 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A solution with a simple configuration and good stability but it's quite expensive
Access to technical support should be improved for our region. Technical support is good, but they're very hard to access. When we have a problem with this storage, it's usually related to a very bad configuration. All-Flash Storage is very, very expensive. They are important solutions so I don't really have any ideas about how to rectify this. The device could use better monitoring tools.
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboard is nice. It is easy to manage compared to other storage solutions such as Dell EMC."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"After moving to Pure Storage, I have noticed that our databases are considerably faster and our performance has improved by at least four times."
"We have perfect run through times and latency."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is simple and easy to use. It offers protection when removing devices. It has the ability to undo deletes."
"The most valuable feature is replication."
"I would highly recommend this solution; it has all the features we need and tests all the software solutions that are currently available and that will be available in the future."
"The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure."
"Scale out is a differentiator for them, especially in the enterprise market. It's key for a lot of customers."
"Go with it. I tell people all the time they need to take a serious look at it."
"The increased performance is many times above our previous array performance in all metrics. Integration with vSphere features is also a definite plus."
"Using snapshots allows us to automate production database refreshes to development environments in minutes, rather than in hours."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the always-on data deduplication."
"The K2 has basically removed storage as a bottleneck in our datacenter."
"Looking at what changed at Kaminario the last couple of months (and the last couple of years, for that matter) I’m certain we’ll see a lot of great innovation from Kaminario in their upcoming releases."
"The speed and, for us in particular in what we're doing, the data de-duplication."
"We have had the NetApp system for 18 years with no downtime."
"They have come up with top of the line inline deduplication, delivering compression and aggregate compaction, and everything is improving with their new features coming out on a day-to-day basis."
"The solution is helping us to leverage data in different ways, providing more reliability and simplicity, and the performance helps the business quite a bit."
"NetApp AFF has reduced our application response time, and in some cases, our applications have gone from almost unusable to instantaneous response times."
"The usability of actually being able to scale it out has been great."
"Having it separate and having a dedicated storage area network or a dedicated network attached storage, for us, just worked better. It's been faster."
"Until now, I have had no problems with the system."
"We need everything to be reliable and to work fast, and we have absolutely found that with NetApp."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more cloud integration."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"I recognize it's a difficult challenge, but I would like to see them make the pricing more reasonable."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"I would like to see a Nagios monitoring plugin which watches the health and performance of the system."
"The price is too high."
"The interface lacks the same level of control as some other arrays I've used."
"The way Pure Storage does the controller storage warranty or replacement has been an issue for some people who just replace the controllers every couple of years, and that's where some of the confusion with pricing and support has come in."
"I think it should have better performance with small files. With big data, its performance is top notch, but it is difficult to load small files."
"On the road map, I'm hoping to see Active Directory integration. Right now, you still have to use a local admin account to log in and manage everything."
"There are a few areas where the system could be improved. Examples would be that the system currently has a 15TB LUN size limit and that snapshots need to be scheduled through script API instead of the GUI."
"The interface look and feel could be improved."
"I would like to see them work with Cisco, so it comes off the FIs, instead of having to go through my 10-gig network."
"A single pane of glass to monitor/manage multiple arrays would be helpful."
"Access to technical support should be improved for our region. Technical support is good, but they're very hard to access."
"The front panel of the drive shelf doesn't always seat firmly."
"There are no RDMA capabilities in CIFS (SMB) and NFS protocols."
"Our technical support experience hasn't been very good. However, we are hoping with our new contract that it will be a lot better."
"It needs to be cheaper, as we want more but can't afford it."
"Communication with the customer for showing and exploring the new technologies is available."
"One of the things that I brought up, that I will continuously bring up whenever asked, is that it seems easy enough to upgrade the OS straight from the OnCommand management software, but one thing that seems difficult is updating disk firmware and qual packages."
"I would give it a perfect rating if they reduced the cost – it is still expensive – and then, what I have mentioned about HA."
"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."
"I believe that there were firmware issues. I think it was just a mismatch of things that were going on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"Licensing is very straightforward. The cost was considerably lower than other products we looked at."
"Kaminario is very competitive on price. They also have a pay per TB model."
"The "extra" costs associated with features and options that are available off the shelf with Kaminario, make their value proposition extremely competitive."
"The Kaminario setup is simple and there are no hidden licensing fees so this area is a relief."
"I would like them to come down in price. It is as expensive as EMC, Hitachi, and other major vendors."
"The licensing is all-inclusive."
"All features are provided in the licensing. The cost of Kaminario was less than the cost of a hybrid array."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"We would like it to be free."
"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."
"NetApp AFF is an expensive solution."
"It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
"I understand the cost is less than many other storages of same/similar performance benchmark."
"The pricing is good."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise153
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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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...
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 Storage FlashArray
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Wargaming.net, El Rio Community Health Center, ECN, SpotOption, Ashkelon College, Clearwater Analytics, Intigua, Cobb EMC Customer Case Study
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.