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NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs NetApp NVMe AFF A800 comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp NVMe AFF A800
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.2%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.2%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.4%
NetApp NVMe AFF A8001.3%
Other90.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Helder-Valente - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at affidea
Has improved data efficiency and application performance while supporting encryption and fast access to imaging workloads
We use it quite extensively because with this we have more space and the information can be read without wasting time. We are satisfied with this. The performance is quite good. We don't have any issues regarding the applications that use fat clients. It helps prevent being hacked, and so far we don't have any issues. We can do the encryption of the data. The solution performs quite well. It helps us maintain our systems. Since we have many applications that use images for streaming, it works exceptionally well. We don't have any issues, and this helps us with the service we provide to the hospital.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has not gone down in a year, so I would say that it is stable, and we haven't seen any high spikes in read/write latency."
"Now they are trying to add more and more applications because they're getting better performance and stability."
"They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth."
"FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."
"We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
"Overall, I am sure that Everpure FlashArray is the best option on the market."
"This solution has improved the way our organization functions through its reliability and consistent platform for storage and has helped us to simplify storage because the management tools make everything a lot easier."
"The console is simple to use. It has good performance. It is easy to install, understand, and manage, with a good ratio of deduplication and compression. It is doing its job."
"When we compared it to other all-flash arrays, it was the most cost-effective solution and really the most performant that we looked at."
"Compared to Dell Unity XT, what I see as an advantage in NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is the fact that it is more scalable...The performance of the product is good."
"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."
"NetApp maintains the very high performance that we want to have."
"We have high use cases for SQL databases, most of our business critical applications use SQL to allow us to complete the DoD mission needs, so we have been using the EF-series for about two years now and everything has been going smoother and faster."
"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."
"You can't beat it for the price."
"Our use case is both corporate storage and for all of our datacenter and back-end enterprise applications."
"The storage features are valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a product that is fast and provides a fast I/O."
"NetApp NVMe AFF A800 is easier to use than some other solutions and the UI is very good to use for day-to-day activities. Overall, the solution has good technology."
"You can easily scale up, and scale-out."
"The product can be scaled vertically as well as horizontally."
"The features I find most valuable in NetApp NVMe AFF A800 include the part of doing the tiering, NetApp NVMe AFF A800 has helped in enhancing my application performance, and in terms of metrics, I have observed that the latency with NetApp NVMe AFF A800 decreased significantly for us, with the response to read and write being faster, and we are satisfied with the applications."
"During the use cases of the solution, its reliability and suitability are the best."
"Low latency is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"It doesn’t provide enough information on performance analytics. For example, Nimble Storage has Infosight, which provides data; Pure Storage doesn’t have an equivalent."
"I would like to see additional features like performance monitoring, configuring alerts, and the customization of alert thresholds."
"Storage. There could be better storage."
"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"With the introduction of Albireo technology and 81x data de-duplication reduction, Pure Storage better start looking at more effective de-duplication techniques."
"I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"It needs a better management tool."
"There could be better integration with some of our Cisco products."
"Obviously to a small, medium size business, you're probably not going to recommend it because it's probably overkill."
"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
"When it's a software-related issue, it is difficult to find an engineer that can help you."
"Some of the processes are difficult and others are simple."
"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."
"For NVMe, the reporting and consolidation dashboard could be improved. The dashboard is not user-friendly. It should be more simplified."
"The product's performance has some shortcomings, making it an area that could be a little better."
"Increasing the RAM, and including physical cords would be beneficial."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The support can take a few days to have a response. However, the response that we do receive is very informative."
"Stability is an area with a certain shortcoming where the solution needs to improve"
"Sometimes, it takes a while to get somebody competent on the other end of the line. They do have engineers in multiple time zones around the world. However, their level-one support is not always the best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper than NetApp."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."
"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."
"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."
"One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to renew the license."
"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"Considering the requirements and the situation, I don't feel that this is an expensive product."
"There are licenses for the use of this solution, such as commercial licenses."
"Though NetApp NVMe AFF A800 may seem like a highly-priced product, it is not extremely expensive."
"I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
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...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
What needs improvement with NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
For NVMe, the reporting and consolidation dashboard could be improved. The dashboard is not user-friendly. It should ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp NVMe AFF A800?
We continue with NetApp NVMe AFF A800. We are the client. It is used for storage and backup. Regarding equipment mode...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp NVMe AFF A800 and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.