NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Pure Storage FlashBlade based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides.""Our storage phones home. It is smart and intelligent in that aspect, which has been huge for us. We don't have to be storage administrators.""We find the ease of usability and setup valuable.""It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done.""It's extremely stable and has good performance.""Performance is the most valuable feature.""Data reduction and compression. Sub millisecond latency.""It simplifies storage."

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"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload.""Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features.""One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue.""This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs.""The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access.""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.""The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

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"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective.""The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there.""We have integrated it with VMware. The integration process is pretty good. Especially with VMware, it helps with the capacity of it.""The main feature I have found to be product replication.""It has absolutely simplified our storage because the dashboards on the consoles show a clear understanding of where you are, and it is also very easy to provision. This been a big help for our teams.""The most valuable feature of this solution is performance.""Using this solution has made our backups more reliable.""The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

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Cons
"I would like to see more cloud integration.""In the next release of the solution I would like to see Vormetric native block encryption.""In the next release of this solution, we would like to see automated copy data management for SQL Server.""There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side.""The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration.""Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included.""CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly.""Had some issues with Purity not being entirely compatible with VMware ESXi."

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"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication.""The dashboard could be simplified.""This solution has limited storage.""I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better.""I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays.""The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support.""A little more manageability, a simpler management interface. It's not necessarily that it's way overly complex. It's just that it's not as easy as the FAS series.""The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."

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"I have not seen ROI.""It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product.""The speed could be improved.""The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us.""I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads.""I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features.""There could be improvements in public cloud integration.""Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."
  • "There is always room for negotiation."
  • "The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it."
  • "It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
  • "For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
  • "We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO)."
  • "It is a cheaper solution."
  • "Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
  • "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."
  • "It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
  • "The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."
  • "he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."
  • "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."
  • "Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
  • More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We used a reseller for the purchase."
  • "Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."
  • "I have seen ROI. It has allowed me to increase the density of my VMs without having to purchase anything additional."
  • "Our licensing is renewed annually."
  • "Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
  • "The price is a little high."
  • "In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."
  • "The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
  • More Pure Storage FlashBlade Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
    Top Answer:We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.
    Top Answer:Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.
    Top Answer:If one is cheap and ten is expensive, then I'd rate the pricing a three.
    Top Answer:The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units. Both the EF-series and NetApp are marketing this… more »
    Top Answer:The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is… more »
    Top Answer:Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "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."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    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.

    FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

    Sample Customers
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
    ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization32%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company23%
    Media Company15%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Energy/Utilities Company12%
    University12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization36%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    Buyer's Guide
    NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is ranked 23rd in All-Flash Storage with 38 reviews while Pure Storage FlashBlade is ranked 16th in All-Flash Storage with 30 reviews. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is rated 8.6, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays writes "A storage solution that offers great stability, resilience, and support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashBlade writes "A high-performing and scalable solution that improves data performance for S3 workloads". NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is most compared with NetApp AFF, Dell PowerStore, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, Huawei OceanStor Dorado and HPE Primera, whereas Pure Storage FlashBlade is most compared with Dell PowerScale (Isilon), VAST Data, MinIO, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Dell ECS. See our NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade report.

    See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage 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.