NetApp AFF and Pure FlashArray X NVMe are top contenders in enterprise storage. Pure FlashArray X NVMe has the upper hand in performance and features, while NetApp AFF stands out in pricing and support.
Features: NetApp AFF is praised for data snapshots, replication, and integration with major cloud services. Pure FlashArray X NVMe stands out with high-speed NVMe across the architecture, AI-driven management, and speed and AI functionality.
Room for Improvement: Users suggest NetApp AFF could benefit from faster performance upgrades, easier management, and more frequent software updates. Pure FlashArray X NVMe users seek enhanced support for cross-platform integration, better customer service responsiveness, and simplified licensing options.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp AFF is noted for a straightforward deployment process, excellent customer service, and comprehensive documentation. Pure FlashArray X NVMe has rapid deployment aided by extensive automation and advanced tools but mixed reviews on customer service responsiveness.
Pricing and ROI: NetApp AFF offers competitive setup costs and solid ROI with better initial costs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe has higher setup costs but delivers superior ROI due to enhanced performance and features, compensating for its higher initial investment.
If you wait more than seven years to buy another one, you get a return on your investment.
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.
Customers always have their issues resolved promptly.
Technical support is good at least through vendors, not directly with the principal.
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.
It is highly scalable.
It hasn't broken down anytime in the last six to seven years, despite hurricanes, earthquakes, and power outages.
They have always been upgrading very fast and implementing patches to resolve these issues.
I would rate the stability of the product at seven out of ten.
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.
All of this is the same for all product ranges, whether E-series, NetApp AFF, or FAS series, because they are very efficient to respond.
We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware.
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.
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.
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 rate the solution as an eight out of ten in terms of costliness.
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.
They have 4:1 data reduction techniques, which is really very high. If you have a size of 100 terabytes, you will get 400 terabytes of usable capacity when applying compression, deduplication, or other data reduction technologies.
Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen.
The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability.
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| NetApp AFF | 17.0% |
| Pure FlashArray X NVMe | 3.6% |
| Other | 79.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 45 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 47 |
| Large Enterprise | 242 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 15 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
The NetApp A-Series and C-Series are AFF storage arrays that deliver high performance, scalability, and simplified data management for a wide range of workloads. They are designed for organizations that need to improve the performance and agility of their applications, while also reducing costs and complexity.
NetApp A-Series and C-Series feature a scale-out architecture that can be scaled to meet the needs of your growing business. They also support a wide range of built-in data protection and data security features, including snapshots, replication, disaster recovery, and autonomous ransomware protection.
AFF A-Series all-flash systems deliver industry-leading performance, density, scalability, security, and network connectivity.
AFF C-Series systems are suited for large-capacity deployment as an affordable way to modernize your data center to all flash and also connect to the cloud.
NetApp AFF Benefits
NetApp AFF Features
Reviews from Real Users
NetApp AFF stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its high performance and simplicity. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:
PeerSpot user and Storage Administrator, Daniel Rúnar Friðþjófsson, comments “AFF has helped to simplify our infrastructure, while still getting very high performance for our business-critical applications. Having all these things working well on one solution is really good. We run this as the backbone for both Hyper-V and VMware as well as an archive location for Rubrik. So, it is great having one solution that can do it all.
Because of the ease of it all, you have a highly tunable, high-performance storage system that alleviates a lot of problems. With its ease of management, you can quickly get your work done and go onto the next thing on your list.”
Additionally, Mohan Reddy, Sr. Technology Architect at a Pharma/Biotech company comments on how “NetApp's ONTAP data management software has also made tasks simpler for us. There's no question about that. It has helped us run operations very quickly, saving us a lot of time. Before ONTAP, we used to spend a long time doing regular operations, but with the latest version of the tool, our day-to-day operations are much quicker and easier.”
Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.
We monitor all NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
