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NetApp FAS Series vs SolidFire comparison

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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
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
NetApp FAS Series
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (4th), NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (1st)
SolidFire
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (32nd)
 

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.
Srikanth Purushothaman - PeerSpot reviewer
DIRECTOR at Vellore Online Systems
Has supported long-term data protection and backup while requiring better part availability and pricing options
For monitoring purposes, we normally use flash access storage exclusively. We utilize a hybrid system because we need performance, combining NL-SAS for the volume and SAS flash to use as a fast cache system that provides more IOPS. We normally implement RAID 10, which we prefer over RAID 6's n plus 2 combinations. We utilize it for data redundancy, even with write intensity on. Regarding the unified storage architecture for NetApp FAS Series, we normally opt for exclusivity unless budget constraints exist. Our IOPS are very high, reaching somewhere about 50k to 150k or 1.150k. The high performance ensures minimal latency. An advantage we've seen with NetApp FAS Series is that snapshots provide very rapid backup and fast recovery. We basically use snapshots for data protection as first-level protection, with deduplication between the two storages serving as second-level protection.
Ramil Cerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution lead at Globe Mobile
A versatile storage solution suitable for various workloads in cloud environments providing scalable architecture, granular Quality of Service and consistent performance
The most significant benefit lies in its exceptional performance, driven by its Flash-based architecture. This enhances routing speed and, consequently, database performance. The provisioning process is efficient and doesn't demand higher latency, ensuring optimal data transfer performance which is particularly valuable for tasks like data mining, where quick results are essential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its ease of use is a very big thing for our customers; it's easy to set up and easy to maintain, and the support is automated, which is very good."
"They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good."
"Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"The features that are there now are really what we need."
"There was a dramatic improvement in operating costs just as a result of the environmentals and space, let alone the cost of the unit itself."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped decrease the total cost of ownership because we know what the cost is going to be every year; we don't get any hidden fees or upgrade fees, everything is included in the price."
"When we needed to replace the other arrays, we went straight to Pure and life-cycled them into Pure in every segment we have."
"This solution provides us with easy management and great vendor support."
"The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is its stability."
"The migration of the volume on the cluster is very useful and easy to use."
"It offers data compression and people management."
"It has been pretty stable, and when we have issues, the support has been great as well."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is data consolidation and visualization and snapshots of course."
"Enables us to handle business critical data with HA."
"Prices may seem to be a little bit expensive, but the features just makes you happy that you took the step, and licensing is all included except a very few features, with a high end and complex environment."
"The difference between SolidFire and other storage is that it is a stand alone storage; no one has that good storage software or that scalability and performance."
"To my mind, it offers a unique combination that isn't easily matched in the marketplace."
"If you're looking for an easy-to-implement solution from an all-flash perspective, really take a look at SolidFire."
"SolidFire has seamless performance for the nodes and extensions. I also like the tool’s scalability. The product’s performance does not get affected when we scale either up or down. This is not the case with other products."
"Individual settings you can put on each individual volume, if you want to do that."
"Greater IOPS, speed, it's all-flash. So seeing that everything is going to all-flash, all SSDs, SolidFire fits right in there with the emerging trend in IT."
"Initial setup was very straightforward, easy."
"The system efficiency is excellent overall."
 

Cons

"I would not say anything because we still do not use Everpure FlashArray fully."
"We would always like to see higher performance, and lower pricing is always better."
"The solution is expensive."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve some aspects. There are certain features that are good and there are some features that I see some issues with at the technical level. Those issues are related to replication. They need to resolve those issues, which I have already highlighted to the Pure team. Additionally, there are some issues in the active cluster that could improve."
"It needs to improve its price."
"I would recommend improvements in the graphical user interface, specifically a detailed hardware view that would allow us to see the individual drives and individual controllers more easily, as currently, they are presenting only a higher-level view."
"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure."
"The WAFL is slow."
"Absolutely, it’s just some compatibility variance with some of the production environment aspects, like AV, and Archiving systems which needed to be integrated with."
"It lacks automatic tiering, When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives."
"The solution could do more than just data."
"I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time."
"Another issue is the price which, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"We see a lot of bugs in roll outs, and sometimes I think the first GA are late-beta deployments."
"Sometimes there are bugs with firmware upgrades."
"However, when we wanted to change how we want to do it and basically start it over, do some hands on training with some of the architects who would be working on it, one of the issues was there wasn't an admin password at the BIOS level to restart it over."
"On the negative side of it, I'm working on support, and I would get not enough detail or the support tech would say, "Check the manual.""
"That's one of disadvantages, the actual cost."
"For people using FC SAN, SolidFire is not an option because of the interface."
"So feature-wise, I would say more reporting tools that could be merged into it."
"The level of monitoring could be better."
"In fact, the price is quite high compared to other vendors, but what we really loved about SolidFire was the agility of the team."
"When you set up the nodes, we have to serial into each one of these nodes to configure the IP ranges. It's still very easy, but it's time consuming."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure Storage is all-flash, so this sometimes tends to make it a bit more expensive in the beginning."
"It is not the cheapest one out there. We're paying yearly, but I'm not 100% sure."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"The NetApp FAS series price is very competitive compared to other solutions on the market it is a good choice."
"Cost effective storage for all performance levels (including all-flash)."
"The process for going to cluster mode is expensive."
"The solution’s cost is reasonable."
"If we want a ransomware solution with the product or other extended features, we need to pay an extra cost."
"The solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"It is expensive."
"The scalability is pretty good, but it's too expensive."
"Based on what I heard from other people, its price was on the higher side."
"It might be considered expensive, but when evaluating performance, it represents good value online because you pay for what you get."
"On a scale where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the solution between three and four. It is an expensive solution."
"We would probably use SolidFire more, except we're getting more bang for our buck with our purchases of ONTAP right now, and the deal we made with NetApp, so it's more of just a cost decision"
"The price of this solution is more expensive than others."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise59
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
 

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...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
Regarding its pricing, I believe it is high. I utilize both HDD and SSD, where SSDs are more cost-friendly, yet HDDs ...
What needs improvement with NetApp FAS Series?
Regarding improvements for NetApp FAS Series, I think everything is generally good. If there is a need to improve som...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
California Public Utilities Commission, RFA, 1&1, Ultimate Software , Endicia, ezVerify, MercadoLibre, Sungard Availability Services, ServInt, Elastx, Hosted Network, Colt, Crucial, iWeb, Datapipe, Databarracks
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.