No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL] comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (29th)
VIOLIN QV2020 [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lead at Globe Mobile
Has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category
VIOLIN QV2020 lacks scalability. This affects both the timeframe for installation and the performance of end-users. Additionally, there's a challenge in deploying horizontally, either by deploying between different nodes or adding new ones. We have many customers. 50,000 users are using this solution. It depends on the projects being taken out of the operations team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pure Storage is extremely reliable — it's never failed."
"With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration."
"We have seen savings in our storage, and the speed of deployment has gone from several days to a few minutes, reducing backup and restore times from 93 days to minutes and simplifying storage for us."
"It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit."
"Cost, racial per terabyte, and speed is why we chose PureStorage. It was no brainer."
"Provides fast access and is user-friendly."
"We transferred our old architecture from hyper storage to all-flash storage, which made our business faster and more connected to our customers."
"The stability of Pure Storage is very very good."
"Being able to partition different virtual volumes of storage is really valuable for us."
"Go with the NetApp EF-series All Flash Arrays, if you want good quality, reliability, speed and size."
"The end-user experience has improved the organization as a whole; the customers that the DBAs serve."
"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."
"We know this solution's software, hardware devices, and support are very good."
"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."
"At the end of the day, low latency was what geared us towards the EF."
"The main advantage of this solution is performance."
"VIOLIN QV2020 is the latest in terms of performance. It has high-speed data access and processing capabilities, distinguishing it as a leader in its storage solutions category."
"It has lowered batch times from 14 hours to two hours."
"It’s simple to use hardware to fix performance issues. Our issue is poor coding/queries. This greatly speeded things up. It’s too costly to track down poor programming in applications. The price of a developer’s time to scan through all the coding is high compared to buying Violin."
 

Cons

"The scalability of the solution is extremely costly."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"It took us a year to get it to stabilize and to get the best out of Pure."
"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 love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."
"The pricing and licensing of Everpure FlashArray is a problem because Everpure is considered more expensive than competitors."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around the movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"The solution's technical support is not as good as it is supposed to be since you have to push them to get support."
"Nonetheless, there are a couple of other things that NetApp hasn't done right."
"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."
"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."
"They could improve the product’s tools."
"Better support technicians for CAPP."
"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."
"For us, in our country, the solution is a bit expensive."
"VIMM replacement is poorly designed."
"I set up Wi-Fi for storage, and since then, we haven't experienced any interruptions in service."
"VIMM replacement is poorly designed. You have to slide out an entire drawer, remove the cover and then pop out the failed VIMM. I would like to see a front replacement just like with hard disks. This leaves room for error; for example, when you slide it out from the rack, you are moving cables along the cable management arm. This leaves the possibility of accidentally unplugging a cable from the array if it is not seated properly. Also, you might pinch the cables when sliding it back into the server rack."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"It was less expensive than some of the alternatives. It's not as though it was a premium price to get that kind of quality. It's a very competitive product from a price perspective..."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive."
"I think that the pricing is less expensive compared to other standard products in the market today. Even the support contract and maintenance services cost less when compared to market-leading products like EMC."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive. It is very fair, and very easy. In comparison, Dell EMC has licensing that needs to be added if you wan to work in a complex environment or in specific functionalities."
"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."
"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."
"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."
"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."
"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."
"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."
"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."
"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."
"They will beat anyone’s price right now. They are struggling and just need to get product out their doors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
912,788 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

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
No data available
 

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 find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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
BlueScope Buildings, GameVil, VRT, IKYU Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: August 2026.
912,788 professionals have used our research since 2012.