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NetApp AFF vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Organizations reduced costs and improved performance with Pure FlashArray X NVMe, achieving quick ROI and efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetApp AFF improved performance, reduced costs, and enhanced reliability, making it a worthwhile investment despite high initial costs.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure delivers ROI by reducing costs and simplifying management, enhancing resource efficiency and minimizing downtime.
By opting for the gold subscription every three years, you get a free upgrade to the latest controller release.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe's technical support is praised for responsiveness, despite occasional follow-up issues, earning high customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.2
NetApp AFF's customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, with varying support quality and strong higher-tier assistance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure's customer service is praised for quick, knowledgeable support and effective resolution despite some cost concerns.
We also had one outage where a controller of one of the products had failed and had to be replaced on-site.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Pure has good storage.
The support for NetApp AFF is comprehensive—not just the documentation for self-guided reading, but for simple questions, spare parts, or urgent needs, you can have a contract that enables delivery the next business day or within four hours, depending on your process requirements.
I have communicated with them, and they are effective and responsive.
When we send an email, an engineer is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes, and we get on a call to resolve the issue.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers scalable storage with low latency, easy upgrades, though capacity customization and high costs are noted.
Sentiment score
7.8
NetApp AFF offers scalable, flexible storage solutions, allowing easy horizontal and vertical expansion despite some cost and controller limitations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers seamless scalability, allowing effortless, efficient cluster expansion to accommodate diverse business sizes and needs.
It is highly scalable.
It is suitable for both medium-sized and enterprise businesses.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
You can add more disks, more disk shelves, or migrate the data seamlessly.
I would assess the scalability of NetApp AFF as excellent in handling massive data volumes.
The scalability of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) deserves an eight out of ten rating, as there is no solution that is 100% efficient and there is always room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Pure Storage offers exceptional stability and reliability with outstanding support, consistently achieving high user ratings for performance and service.
Sentiment score
8.4
NetApp AFF is highly praised for its stability, reliability, and efficient non-disruptive operations, making it ideal for critical environments.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers outstanding reliability and stability, with minimal downtime and prompt support addressing minor issues effectively.
During the eight years, there have been no problems such as hardware failure or stopping.
I would rate the stability of the solution as a ten out of ten.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
Compared to VM, we find it most stable.
Regarding stability, I would rate Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) a seven out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Pure FlashArray X requires cost-effective improvements in UI, integration, cloud features, multitenancy, analytics, backup, AI, and scalability.
NetApp AFF users seek improved setup, intuitive interfaces, robust third-party integration, and enhanced management and support features.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure needs improvements in pricing, setup, integration, user interface, performance, and multi-tenancy features for users.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment.
The GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect.
Our backup system, Commvault, has an amazing capacity to do compression and deduplication better than NetApp AFF by itself.
We hope Nutanix can integrate inside our current license module.
I would suggest that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) should develop their own P2V (physical to VM) tools instead of requiring users to rely on third-party solutions.
They should add AI features in the future.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers see Pure FlashArray X NVMe as a justified premium investment due to performance and comprehensive licensing.
NetApp AFF offers competitive pricing, valued features, and flexibility, though some users find expansion costs concerning over time.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure provides competitive pricing and flexible licensing, offering good ROI and TCO benefits despite hardware costs.
While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits.
The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there.
I would give it a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
NetApp support is cheaper than Dell support.
While it is not cheap, they have introduced a new series of AFF that are more affordable.
The licensing cost of the product is expensive, and when combined with support, it becomes quite costly.
The pricing is renewed every year, at almost $100,000 per year.
It costs more compared to VMware due to different licensing areas.
At first, it is cheaper than cloud services, so the cost is a major benefit.
 

Valuable Features

Pure FlashArray X NVMe offers exceptional performance, reliability, scalability, and seamless VMware integration, enhancing workload efficiency and user experience.
NetApp AFF offers high speed, low latency, and robust performance with advanced data management and seamless integration for storage solutions.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offers high performance, user-friendly management, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency with seamless updates and monitoring.
Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator.
The platform's robust features include excellent sustainability tracking, and a comprehensive dashboard offering insights into IOPS, bandwidth, performance, and virtual activities.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
You can even download the ONTAP simulator and deploy it on your virtualization platform and test almost all features.
Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF.
Two important features that NetApp AFF has are the performance and the capacity to save data against attacks in general or hardware failure.
When technology development or devops teams request server provisioning, the setup time has been reduced from hours to less than 20 minutes.
The replication method between Nutanix clusters is a valuable feature.
It is easy to use, and it's easy to maintain.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (14th), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
NetApp AFF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
313
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
199
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (4th), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp AFF9.5%
Dell PowerStore15.9%
HPE Alletra Storage10.0%
Other64.6%
All-Flash Storage
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)9.5%
VxRail16.1%
VMware vSAN14.0%
Other60.4%
HCI
 

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.
MahendraPanchotiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates
Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise76
Large Enterprise82
 

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 is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?
Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from ...
Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF vs. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and other solutions. Updated: January 2023.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.