NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

NetApp AFF vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 856,807 peers since 2012

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 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 NetApp AFF is 9.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage

Ian Rousom

Owner at RTX

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.

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

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.

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

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

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The solution is scalable."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more."

"I like NetApp AFF's deduplication."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the software bundle, replication, and cloud connectivity."

"NetApp is like a one-point central management. For example, one can put everything on the right version and control the whole environment from one software solution."

"It's pretty scalable. It can scale up to 24 nodes."

"MetroCluster provides business continuity and is a critical part of our contingency setup."

"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."

"It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."

More NetApp AFF pros

"I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse."

"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."

"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."

"It provides multi-protocol, which is what gives the edge when it comes to big lineage PC workloads."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

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

"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."

"The management software is very good."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."

"We need better data deduplication."

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

"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."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."

"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've had a few cases where support wasn't able to answer the question or they took quite a while."

"When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage."

"The quality of technical support has dwindled over time and needs to be improved."

"In future releases, I would like to see the ability to automatically mount SMB shares and file systems."

"The cost of this solution should be reduced."

"Another issue is that for smaller customers, NetApp doesn't have enough disk sizes. You begin with a 980-gigabyte disk and the next size is 3.8 terabytes. There aren't any disk sizes in between. Competitors have more choices in disk sizes."

More NetApp AFF cons

"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

"It needs a better management tool."

"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."

"Better support technicians for CAPP."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"It's expensive. it's in the hundreds of thousands. It's beneficial, but at times, I feel compared to other vendors, we are paying a premium for the licensing that other vendors include."

"In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF."

"I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us."

"We have been able to utilize and leverage equipment which was purchased a decade ago up until this past year. So, we were running disk shells for 13 years and all we were doing was upgrading the filings and controllers, and using the same disk shells. Therefore, we were able to do something where we didn't have to invest that much. Recently, we had to upgrade all our disk shells, but it was a lot less because the technology had changed a lot since those times. It is faster now, and we have SSDs. We have larger drives that are 4TBs and 6TBs. Everything can condense so we are saving disk shell space and rack space. We are paying less now than we did at that time"

"The pricing is not a lot considering what you get and it bundles hardware and licensing."

"Our TCO has increased by 15 to 18 percent."

"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."

More NetApp AFF pricing and cost advice

"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."

"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

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

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

"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."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

856,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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…

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

55%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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 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...

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.

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...

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...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

Compared 29% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF

Compared 16% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp AFF

Compared 10% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs NetApp AFF

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

More NetApp AFF Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 31% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 14% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 12% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

May 2025

Download NetApp AFF product report

NetApp AFF

May 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

May 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

NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS

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

The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.

NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.

AFF A-Series all-flash systems deliver industry-leading performance, density, scalability, security, and network connectivity.

AFF C-Series systems are suited for large-capacity deployment as an affordable way to modernize your data center to all flash and also connect to the cloud.

NetApp AFF Benefits

Speed up your critical applications with lightning-fast end-to-end NVMe enterprise all-flash arrays.
Increase Performance: AFF A-Series systems deliver industry-leading performance proven by SPC-1 and SPEC SFS industry benchmarks, making them ideal for demanding, highly transactional applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB databases, VDI, and server virtualization.
Save up to 95% of rack space and up to 85% of power and cooling cost over hybrid flash storage.
Reduce cost with guaranteed storage efficiency.
Realize even greater savings by tiering cold data to the cloud easily.
Simplify Operations on premises or in the cloud: Eliminate fragmented and redundant toolsets and combine visibility and manageability of storage instances with data services in a unified control plane across the hybrid cloud.

NetApp AFF Features

Expand capacity with nondisruptive scaling in a cluster without silos or data migration.
Manage data with the ultimate flexibility of unified support across different storage media and protocols, on premises or in the cloud.
Scale performance with technology innovations of NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP connectivity.
Safeguard your data with best-in-class data security, ransomware protection, multifactor admin access, secure multitenant shared storage, and in-flight and at-rest encryption.
Simplify backup and recovery with built-in application-consistent data protection.
Achieve business continuity and fast disaster recovery with zero data loss and zero downtime.
Scale out to 24 nodes, 367PB of effective capacity, and 4 million IOPS non-disruptively.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.

Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”

Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”

NetApp

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

DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation