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NetApp AFF vs NetApp AFF C-Series 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
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
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
NetApp AFF C-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
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.
MB
Transition from costly infrastructure lowers expenses and improves hardware performance
NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware. Frequent improvements are shared through bulletins so we can enhance hardware performance by upgrading the ONTAP version. Firmware upgrades are also widely distributed. Weekly calls with NetApp ensure we're staying on top of any potential issues. The transition from SAN-based to NetApp storage eliminated SAN switch costs and reduced CommVault dependency, lowering license costs significantly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The latency is good."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"It impacts customer retention because of its overall ease. When you are running a business, where time is a factor, that is the biggest selling point. Things happen really rapidly, when they happen, and being able to say, "Yeah, we can get this up and running in a day, if you want," or even less time in some cases. Sometimes, that can be what makes or breaks our case."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of technical support."
"In terms of the footprint, it is far more efficient. It has smaller, higher-capacity drives than our older unit. In terms of space, power, and cooling, it has simplified things."
"The design has been great."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment."
"I like NetApp AFF's deduplication."
"We're not fully utilizing NetApp's Converge BlueXP, but it's a great help. It integrates on-prem and cold storage and provides disaster recovery. We'll see more benefits as it improves."
"NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"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."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."
"It is on the expensive side."
"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."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"The software layer has to improve."
"As for AFF itself, I don't have any suggestions of what I would be excited about seeing. I think that adding the support for the rest of APIs to AFF would be super handy. I think it's something that we've been waiting for for a while which would be fantastic."
"The certification classes are good, but they don't cover enough of the material, and the exams only test on what is covered in class."
"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."
"I would like to see more frequent updates at a faster pace."
"On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products."
"It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that."
"I just got through the session where it looks like they are going to support Oracle running on Linux with SnapCenter. That is one of the main things that we are hoping to get integrated."
"Stability could be improved."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The product is expensive."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"I think the pricing and licensing are a little high, but compared to those of other storage vendors, it's within reason. After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
"NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost. The cost is very high compared to other devices."
"It consolidates a lot of our storage into one or two chassis, which makes money savings in our data center."
"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 is getting too expensive."
Information not available
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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
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 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...
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 ...
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 needs improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series?
We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue. Better ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp AFF C-Series?
We are using NetApp C series for our VMware environments mainly.
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF C-Series?
Overall, from one to ten, I would rate NetApp as an eight. As for additional advice, I suggest that NetApp provide mo...
 

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
Information Not Available
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