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NetApp AFF vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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)
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
311
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
16th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (7th), File and Object Storage (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down 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 Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.8%, down from 2.2% 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.
Anna Sofo - PeerSpot reviewer
Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency
I like NetApp AFF's deduplication. The solution's AutoSupport feature is efficient and effective because customers are notified of potential issues before they experience problems with NetApp. The support is sold based on metro clusters, so they guarantee the client's business continuity. NetApp has an Active IQ app that allows you to get information on your smartphone.
Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"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."
"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"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 Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"I've combined other NetApp systems into one of our newer platforms, taking other file-sharing solutions native to Windows or Mac and creating file shares, yielding a better return on our investment. At the same time, we are providing better resources and more efficient channels for files."
"NetApp has sped up delivery for our virtual environment. It's been a great solution. Our customers have been amazed and overjoyed with the performance of our virtual environment, which uses VDI for virtual desktops and VMware for our virtual host servers. Everything is working seamlessly."
"We recently started using the volume encryption feature, which is helpful because there are some federal projects that require data at rest to be encrypted."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"It is a stable solution."
"All of the features are good. With Flash, we have high-performing databases. Having that kind of performance has been valuable."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The performance. The flash performance helps move data pretty fast."
"We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it."
"We can capacity plan at a greater level than we used to."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"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."
"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."
"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."
"It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"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."
"There are little things that need improvement. For example, if you are setting up a SnapMirror through the GUI, you are forced to change the destination name of the volume, and we like to keep the volume names the same."
"The total cost of ownership has increased a little."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"One of the challenges we face with NetApp is identifying bottlenecks in the systems they integrate with."
"We would like to have NVMe on FabricPool working because it broke our backups. We enabled FabricPool to do the tiering from our AFFs to our Webscale but it sort of broke our Cobalt backups."
"NetApp could lower the price and offer a true cluster architecture. It's currently a 1.4 cluster, not a real 2.0 cluster."
"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."
"The speed could be improved."
"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."
"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."
"Compared to, for example, Hitachi NAS, the solution is not mature at all. It's just in its infancy as far as technology goes."
"I would like to see better integration."
"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The total cost of ownership has decreased a great deal. As far as percentages, it's hard to gauge, but we did have quite a few personnel staying up, making sure batches ran well every night. Now, batches are being done by 8:00 in the evening, so we don't have to do that anymore. When you start adding the employee hours that we have for people working in the off-hours, and it is not an issue anymore, I suspect TCO might have gone down 25 percent."
"Once we did get into the NetApp ecosystem, we realized that the cost effectiveness was greater than we originally thought."
"It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors."
"Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%."
"I am comfortable with the pricing, which is fair compared to others."
"Our total cost of ownership (TCO) has decreased by 40 percent."
"Its price is quite competitive, but there is still scope for better pricing."
"I would like it to be a lot less expensive, but it's been a very good solution for us."
"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."
"The price is a little high."
"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."
"I feel that the price could always be lowered."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
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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%
Educational Organization
67%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 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 Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.