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Portworx Enterprise vs VMware Software Defined Storage 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
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Portworx Enterprise
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Software Defined Storage (3rd), Data Storage for Kubernetes (1st)
VMware Software Defined Sto...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (15th)
 

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.
David Ivorra - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Lynx View
Modern data platform has simplified Kubernetes backups and disaster recovery across environments
Portworx Enterprise is a leader in the market according to consultancies and consultant agencies, but one area for improvement could be the visibility about how applications are working on a low level, especially regarding how they are messaging between all those microservices. Cybersecurity in those kinds of environments needs to be rock solid and really secured. With all those AIs working now to infect and attack environments, this is something that Portworx Enterprise should put more focus on even more than they do now. There are security solutions already implemented in Portworx Enterprise, including anti-ransomware, but as the environment grows, the possibilities of having cybersecurity issues increase, so they should focus even more on that part.
Mohammad Jundiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Qatar Datamation Systems
Data security and performance excel but integration and licensing need improvement
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery.  Additionally, I worked with VMware Software Defined Storage both internally and with partners to consolidate servers into one solution The most valuable features of VMware Software…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would highly recommend this solution; it has all the features we need and tests all the software solutions that are currently available and that will be available in the future."
"We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression."
"It upgrades in place which means we'll be using it well into the future."
"It's extremely stable and has good performance."
"Everpure FlashArray is very user-friendly, easy to learn, and makes it easy to identify issues while providing more redundancy on both the controller and host sides."
"The availability and ease of use are the big features."
"I would recommend Pure Storage, as it is well-established."
"Running SAP on Pure Storage helps a lot without doing any further tuning to improve application performance. Our internal clients are happy."
"We are offering two kinds of environments: one for customers working with modern data and modern application development, and they are finding that it is easier for them to migrate workloads from on-premises to cloud or the other way around."
"Portworx is a great solution for managing container environments."
"Portworx is a simple solution. It's similar to Pure Storage products. They're all easy to use and install. You need to have a little expertise with containers to use Portworx, but it will be no problem for you if you understand containers."
"Portworx virtualizes the aspects of the underlying block storage. That is good because they can also use block storage for their future deployment instead of just NFS."
"I like that you have a small dedicated file system that is fast and resilient for containerized workloads."
"If I containerize a database server, I know that not only is Portworx providing a persistent and resilient storage backend, but it also meets the database's IOPS requirements, in a containerized environment."
"Stateful applications are now more resilient and less susceptible to infrastructure-related disruptions, while storage management has become more consistent with our Kubernetes practices, leading to better disaster recovery readiness and faster application deployments."
"A custom IBM script is designed to tackle the storage management challenges within containerized environments, providing crucial data services and features required for enterprise applications."
"The solution is simple to configure and provides good performance and less footprint."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to deploy and the support is really good."
"The most valuable features of VMware Software Defined Storage are scalability, high availability, and performance."
"The product is user-friendly from an administrative standpoint and very easy to use."
"The best part of the solution is that you can actually scale up to a large number of operating systems without the requirement of additional hardware, which is the biggest advantage."
"VMware Software Defined Storage gives higher availability against data corruption."
"This is an easy-to-use product for adding flexibility to your storage solution."
"The technical support is awesome."
 

Cons

"They need to find another way of doing data protection, RAID is not working very well."
"The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless."
"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"The overall scalability for this product could be improved as well as having a single console to management multiple arrays."
"It is not possible to create a cluster on top of multiple arrays."
"The difference in pricing could become a problem for Pure because the commoditization of the solutions could lead to a different price being a problem."
"Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."
"Pure Storage will have issues with positioning in the near future since its a relatively new company. For now, customers need a PoC to trust using the solution, as it can't stand on its brand name alone. They need to improve Pure Storage's marketing."
"The documentation could be better."
"I would like to see a more native mapping to mainframe-type systems."
"Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there are customers finding the pricing a little too high for the service they receive."
"It would be highly advantageous to include an integrated backup solution within the same license, rather than purchasing backup separately."
"They have not integrated Portworx with Ondat since they are too focused now on Pure Storage APIs and not on users like us."
"I think the vendor could provide more training for new users who may not be familiar with containers."
"The integration has room for improvement."
"Simplifying the licensing model and making it cheaper would improve the solution."
"The performance is not as good as some competing products and reporting can be improved."
"There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages."
"VMware Software Defined Storage should include a shared database on a standard version."
"The cost of the product is where an improvement could be made. It's generally very expensive and requires a lot of architecture that needs to be designed according to specific situations."
"I'd like to see improved hardware compatibility"
"The license model of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It's easy to scale and expand but the main catch is the cost. It's expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"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."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."
"I would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"I'm not sure how the licensing was broken out, but I don't think our offering of the Portworx was more than USD $20,000."
"It has two offerings. One is free, which is limited to only five nodes. The other is enterprise, which is a bit pricier."
"The price of Portworx Enterprise is high."
"The price is competitive, but it is too expensive when paired with Red Hat IBM."
"The solution is very expensive."
"I believe there is a yearly licensing fee of around $2000 - $5000. I don't think there are additional costs above that but it depends on the type of infrastructure you're booting."
"A single socket costs you around US $6,000 for three years. At a minimum, you have a three load cluster for a medium or enterprise-scale company. It can get quite expensive because you're likely to need four to six sockets on the other side. It comes to around $30,000."
"VMware Software Defined Storage is a slightly expensive solution."
"The product is quite expensive and is among the most expensive for this type of solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portworx Enterprise?
Regarding pricing, I found that a couple of customers did not purchase the project because, at least in Spain, there ...
What needs improvement with Portworx Enterprise?
I see some limitations such as operational complexity. Configuring Portworx initially requires an understanding of ke...
What advice do you have for others considering Portworx Enterprise?
My advice for others considering Portworx Enterprise is that if you operate in a cloud-native environment such as Kub...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Software Defined Storage?
The price of VMware Software Defined Storage is on the pricey side, rated four out of five in cost. There is room for...
What needs improvement with VMware Software Defined Storage?
There is room for more integrations and plugins into more storages. More automation, such as using Playbook on Ansibl...
What is your primary use case for VMware Software Defined Storage?
I used Nutanix for its hyper-converged infrastructure capabilities and VMware Site Recovery for disaster recovery. Ad...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
VMware SDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
NIO, GE Digital, DreamWorks Animation, Lufthansa, beco, NEW CONTEXT
Helse Nord, Sky
Find out what your peers are saying about Portworx Enterprise vs. VMware Software Defined Storage and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.