NetApp StorageGRID vs Quantum ActiveScale comparison

NetApp and Quantum are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. NetApp is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.3, while Quantum is ranked #24. NetApp holds a 5.8% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Quantum’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Quantum users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

NetApp StorageGRID and Quantum ActiveScale compete in the object storage solutions category. Quantum ActiveScale has the upper hand due to its advanced features, making it appealing despite its higher costs.

Features: NetApp StorageGRID focuses on robust data management, scalability, and pricing, appealing to enterprises seeking reliable solutions. Quantum ActiveScale provides advanced data protection, performance optimization, and superior security, making it preferred for data-intensive environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp StorageGRID is known for its straightforward deployment and strong customer service, facilitating easier infrastructure integration. Quantum ActiveScale offers robust customer support but presents a more complex deployment process due to its advanced capabilities, potentially posing initial challenges.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp StorageGRID is recognized for competitive setup costs, offering better ROI for budget-conscious enterprises. Quantum ActiveScale requires a higher initial investment but justifies it with enhanced performance and features, appealing to organizations where advanced capabilities outweigh setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed NetApp StorageGRID vs. Quantum ActiveScale Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID vs. Quantum ActiveScale

September 2025

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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 Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp StorageGRID is 5.8%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quantum ActiveScale is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashBlade	5.7%
NetApp StorageGRID	5.8%
Quantum ActiveScale	0.5%
Other	88.0%

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Parul-Patel

Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.

High performance and throughput enhance IT backup management

The multi-dimensional scale-out design feature of Pure Storage FlashBlade is not in use in our environment. Regarding data reduction technologies, we don't get much deduplication because the data is already deduplicated from our FlashArray before we get to backup, so there is no benefit of deduplication. Regarding the integration with cloud-native ecosystem tools, we are not on cloud; we are strictly an on-premises solution. Pure Storage FlashBlade is not used by any end-user; it's used only for IT backup, with only about four people in our group managing it. I cannot recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other users depending upon their financial situation because it's an expensive solution, and the cost is very high, including licensing and renewal every year. I rate Pure Storage FlashBlade an eight out of ten.

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Michael Lopez

Sr Systems Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Has reduced storage costs and improved snapshot management for large data workloads

The advanced features of NetApp StorageGRID which our upper management wouldn't agree to use, include the S3 feature. We are heavy into AWS, and my thoughts were to develop a small dev environment or even a POC environment on-prem. That's still up in the air as we continue on. Currently, AI has taken over everything with a focus on AI. The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present a challenge. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade. The positive aspect is that it didn't take down the entire environment. The environment remained functional on two different versions. The scalability of NetApp StorageGRID has been proven as we've expanded twice. We started with six or seven nodes and have grown to 15 nodes. It does take time for synchronization to complete. From what I've seen, it took a couple of months for it all to sync up once adding nodes. However, it was transparent. It captured the addition and performed effectively, all happening in the background, steadily and surely.

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Frank Lai

Architecture Department at Supermicro Computer

Good performance and reliable but the setup is complex

We would like to see a self-sufficient installation. Nowadays it's open-source, but the installation is still tied to the vendor, which means it is unlikely that it is going to scale. I want them to tap into the broader community. It is really emerging, they have a year over year, 50% annual growth. With a 10-year-old company, it will certainly bring a lot of interest, and will certainly make it more successful, if they tap into that growing customer base. They have to make themselves relevant to the industry. The industry is totally geared to the Cloud, DevOps, and geared for agility. The software with the appliance in my set is already outdated, and it is not that it cannot sell, but it has to be tapping into the emerging and growing sectors to continue with the customers and businesses. This is what the requirement is, to improve their technology. Which means that they have to make themselves relevant to the industry.

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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 most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is Safe Mode."

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"I like its size. It is smaller than the other competitors. We can plug in many blades, and we can have data up to one terabyte."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"NetApp StorageGRID is a great alternative to AWS S3 buckets."

"We definitely saw the benefits of NetApp StorageGRID immediately as our growth of snapshots and our internal customers, including Kelly Blue Book, AutoTrader, and HomeNet, required long-term snapshots, and we saw the results of having NetApp StorageGRID saving us on SSD space."

"The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to restore data compared to our previous methods."

"It has awesome scalability. We consume it with storage appliance nodes, then we just plug and play as we need more."

"Duplication, interface and the manageability is good and simple."

"It improves our operational efficiency."

"It helps automate our storage infrastructure."

"Cost-effective and easy to deploy."

More NetApp StorageGRID pros

"Workflow is easy to manage and maintain."

"The technology is stable which is good."

Cons

"I would like to see the licensing fees improved as well as the price per terabytes."

"I want efficiency. FlashBlade doesn't have efficiency now."

"They need better integration with public clouds along with a better hybrid solution."

"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."

"I have not seen ROI."

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"One key improvement I'd like to see in StorageGRID is enhanced visibility for management purposes."

"The price is something that NetApp could improve, as with most companies. NetApp is known for not being the cheapest storage option, which is also valid for StorageGRID. There are other storage options on the market which we are aware of and have done proofs of concept for, but you cannot really compare the list prices because, as a big user of NetApp storages, we have totally different prices than some list prices. Still, the price information we got for other options are almost always less expensive than StorageGRID."

"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space."

"The product's continual innovation and enhancement in integration capabilities with other NetApp solutions could be better."

"The processes around installation and upgrade need improvement."

"I would like to see them integrate more with the monitoring platforms. It is a bit difficult to get automated monitoring of the system."

"There was a small amount of confusion when working with StorageGRID and Active Directory for access. We had to do things three to four times resulting in our engineer troubleshooting a couple of things. The location of the menu, along with what is inside the menu: configurations, settings, etc., is not straightforward to users. Most users are Windows-based. So, when make logical changes to the menu which are not similar to Windows, users and administrators get confused."

"The only real issue that we have run into is, when we are cloning, we cannot do a thin provision clone, it has to be a full clone."

More NetApp StorageGRID cons

"We would like to see a self-sufficient installation."

"Lacks some ability to integrate with different systems."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The price could be cheaper."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

"The price is a little high."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"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."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of StorageGRID falls within the typical range for enterprise-grade solutions and is comparable to other vendors such as Dell, NetApp, and Pure Storage."

"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."

"We pay for a license annually."

"NetApp is not known for being the cheapest storage option on the market. Almost all of the other storage options we looked at were less expensive than StorageGRID. The price is one thing to criticize, which is what we hear internally and from customers as well. They find the cost of the terabytes in this class of storage a little bit higher than expected."

"Creating your own data stores, backups, or storage grids, helps eliminate all these costs of downloading all the data back after you downloaded to the cloud."

"With respect to pricing, it is okay. This product is mid-range."

"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."

"Buying the solution is expensive, but it saves you money down the line when you factor in the logistics of not having to buy tapes."

More NetApp StorageGRID pricing and cost advice

"Quantum ActiveScale is open-source."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

University

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	11

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?

The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to rest...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?

As an administrator, I was not involved in the pricing of NetApp StorageGRID. From what I understood, it was cheaper ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?

The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node w...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 19% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 9% of the time

Qumulo vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 3% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

MinIO vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 28% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 22% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 21% of the time

Scality RING vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs NetApp StorageGRID

Compared 3% of the time

More NetApp StorageGRID Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 47% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 29% of the time

Qumulo vs Quantum ActiveScale

Compared 24% of the time

More Quantum ActiveScale Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

September 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID

September 2025

Download NetApp StorageGRID product report

Buyer's Guide

File and Object Storage

October 2025

Download Quantum ActiveScale product report

Also Known As

No data available

Storage GRID

ActiveScale, Quantum ActiveScale Object Storage, ActiveScale Object Storage

Overview

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.

Pure Storage

Store and manage unstructured data at scale using NetApp StorageGRID for secure, durable object storage. Place content in the right location, at the right time, and on the right storage tier, optimizing workflows and reducing overall costs for globally distributed rich media.

NetApp

StorNext File System
Increase productivity and reduce time to critical business insights with StorNext® File System. StorNext architecture delivers the necessary performance to get your business moving forward.

Quantum

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

ASE, DARZ GmbH

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

NetApp StorageGRID vs. Quantum ActiveScale

September 2025

Free Report: NetApp StorageGRID vs. Quantum ActiveScale

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp StorageGRID vs. Quantum ActiveScale and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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