NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series

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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

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

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Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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Paweł Jabłoński

IT Infrastructure Manager at Bricoman Wilanów

Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The database workloads are pretty fast because I frequently move data from here to there."

"The solution is scalable."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"The latency is good."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."

"The product's initial setup phase can be managed easily and completed in 20 to 30 minutes. It is one of the fastest storage tools that you can implement."

"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

"I would have to say performance at this point, because the application it is based on is so diverse."

"Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

"NAS stability"

"The most valuable feature is SnapMirror."

"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."

"It is a scalable solution."

"It is very easy to expand disks and manage CIFS."

"One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments."

"The replication feature protects us from data loss."

"Most valuable features are its ease of use, robust Snapshot functionality, and that you can use it in two datacenters with SnapMirror-ing."

More NetApp FAS Series pros

Cons

"We need better data deduplication."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."

"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."

"Things like the FlexClones, SnapVault, SnapMirror, all of that. Some of it's available on the EF series, but we like what we have in the FAS system."

"I would like to see higher-capacity drives, as they come out; I have heard that 15 TB are out on a different NetApp series. Getting those on the EFs would be nice."

"Better support technicians for CAPP."

"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

"When getting new hardware, always tell the account manager that you are also considering other brands. They will be forced to adjust the price lower."

"It could be more flexible in terms of configuration."

"The solution's configuration is not flexible."

"When we were going through all the MFA hardening and the anti-ransomware setup, I gave some feedback to our executive. The MFA process for getting that set up on the AFF systems was cumbersome compared to some of our other systems."

"Its licensing cost can be improved."

"The solution could do more than just data."

"They should add new features to the product."

"NetApp FAS Series should improve its price, which is expensive."

More NetApp FAS Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"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 licensing is on a yearly basis."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."

"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."

"It is a one-time license charge for NetApp FAS Series to run and we pay annually for upgrades and support."

"The price it not low, but comparing features to other vendors, the price can be balanced."

"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable because they also have deduplication, compression, and inline compression. They focus on storage only, which is really good; it works."

"We purchased it for four years, and it wasn't expensive. It was reasonable. Every company has a different agreement with NetApp. We got everything we wanted with all the bells and whistles and all the features and functionalities."

"The solution is more expensive than other vendors."

"The solution’s cost is reasonable."

"It's not cheap, but at the same time, it's also inexpensive. It's somewhere in between."

More NetApp FAS Series pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

55%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

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 do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?

Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.

What do you like most about NetApp FAS Series?

Flexibility in data replication.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?

The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable be...

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Comparisons

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TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 33% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

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Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 22% of the time

HPE MSA vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp FAS Series Competitors

Product Reports

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

NetApp FAS Series

Download NetApp FAS Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

No data available

Overview

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.

Pure Storage

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.

Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.

Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.
Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.

Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.

High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.
Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system
Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series