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NetApp AFF vs NetApp E-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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 NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (14th)
NetApp AFF
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
313
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
NetApp E-Series
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 3.2%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 18.5%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp E-Series is 3.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp AFF18.5%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe3.2%
NetApp E-Series3.0%
Other75.3%
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
 

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.
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
The product offers easy and reliable choices to customers without sacrificing performance
I rate NetApp E-Series an eight out of ten. They need to improve automation and business continuity. They have a gateway with other products coming from ONTAP to use cloud storage in Azure and AWS, and so on. That's good for hybrid clouds. I would focus on automation and business continuity because, for products like NetApp Insight, there are a lot of tools to administer and follow the storage during its lifecycle. It's quite easy to use and has some information about the array of storage uses. This functionality is useful, especially on primary storage rather than backups, since customers always ask for business continuity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable."
"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly."
"Tech support has been absolutely amazing. I think on the technical aspects as well, my staff is able to get great support from the NetApp technical support resources that we have. What I love about NetApp is they have a health care division. At times, it's such an amazing thing because if we have a healthcare-related issue, there's no one better than having prior CIOs from health care organizations that NetApp has hired, and that are part of the health care team, to help out with any of those initiatives and support problems. Support has been absolutely phenomenal."
"The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more."
"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."
"We use the NFS and SIP protocols a lot. The NFS is the most valuable feature."
"AFF works well for VMware storage."
"The mirroring of two different sites is great."
"Most of our business-critical systems are provisioned from the NetApp AFF system. Compared to others, we have a minimal latency. Configuring the DR for high availability or migrating the volumes from one box to another is pretty easy with NetApp AFF."
"Speed, reliability, ease of use are the most valuable features."
"The Snapshot feature is actually widely used; it is a feature that only NetApp E-Series has and it is quite good."
"The overall experience has been positive."
"My customers are satisfied with the performance."
"Customers go for the E Series if they need backup storage because it is cheap."
"The product is easy to use."
 

Cons

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."
"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."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."
"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"One of the areas that the product can improve is definitely in the user interface. We don't use it for SAN, but we've looked at using it for SAN and the SAN workflows are really problematic for my admins, and they just don't like doing SAN provisioning on that app. That really needs to change if we're going to adopt it and actually consider it to be a strong competitor versus some of the other options out there."
"One of the challenges we face with NetApp is identifying bottlenecks in the systems they integrate with."
"AFF could introduce different subscriptions on the platform."
"With NetApp AFF, I see some security reports that indicate bugs or BHP that could crash the system."
"It has not reduced our data center costs. NetApp charges a pretty penny for their stuff."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly."
"NetApp should add more production lines to the E series so we can make flexible solutions more easily."
"With NetApp E-Series, when we are running active-active NAS4, sometimes due to either an issue or a bug, we experience failures. At least twice yearly, we have seen this issue. When it occurs, we lose critical systems such as MQ."
"The solution must provide more training courses."
"Getting through first level to second level takes two hours minimum."
"Though the performance is there, if NetApp wants to be competitive with the others, it must improve their business continuity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"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."
"The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
"NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful."
"ATTO bridges add to the total cost of the system."
"Using NetApp, our total cost of ownership decreased by 17%."
"The price to performance ratio with NetApp is unmatched by any other vendor right now."
"I do not deal with pricing, but the pricing of NetApp and Dell seems pretty close. NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable, particularly with the recent inclusion of features like snap locking and ransomware protection within the ONTAP license instead of having them as separate licenses."
"The price is reasonable for NetApp E-Series."
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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
15%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise242
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...
 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF vs. NetApp E-Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.