We performed a comparison between NetApp AFF and Pure Storage FlashBlade based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I like FlashArray's ActiveCluster as well as its snapshot and cloning capabilities."
"The reliability is very good."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"It does efficient work of storing data while still delivering the performance that you would normally expect from a higher priced solution."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"It is the SAN backbone for our company."
"The speed is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The most important features are the IOPS and the ease of the ONTAP manageability."
"There are two compression technologies available within it, and they are valuable because they allow for significantly higher data storage capacity and the retention of a larger number of snapshots on the system."
"AFF works well for VMware storage."
"AFF helps us improve performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics and VMs. We have moved our primary data stores for production over to AFF, and a lot of the problems that might happened have gone away."
"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."
"It is easy to manage data through the GUI by using Active IQ and the unified manager."
"It is stable. In my three years working with the storage, I haven't seen any issues with our NetApp product."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."
"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."
"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"They could improve the price."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable."
"There was some complexity in the initial setup."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"The size of NetApp could be better. They're always about 40 pounds without the hard drives in them, so it would be great if there's a way to make them smaller yet keep the functionality. That would reduce the physical footprint."
"In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that."
"There is no direct storage attachment available. Most configurations require additional switches for data access."
"The price of NVMe storage is very expensive."
"The response to basic problems could be faster. They usually respond fast when there are critical issues, but you always want it right now."
"There are no RDMA capabilities in CIFS (SMB) and NFS protocols."
"I want an interface through ONTAP that look more like what it does for the E-Series with Santricity."
"I would like there to be a way to break out the 40 gig ports on them. We have a lot of 10 gigs in our environment. It is a big challenge breaking out the 40 gig coming out of the filer. It would be nice to have good old 10 gig ports again, or a card that has just 10 gig ports on it."
"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."
"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."
"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."
"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."
"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."
NetApp AFF is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 280 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 31 reviews. NetApp AFF is rated 9.0, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of NetApp AFF writes "Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". NetApp AFF is most compared with Dell PowerStore, Dell Unity XT, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, VMware vSAN and NetApp FAS Series, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Qumulo. See our NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.
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