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Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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 FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashArray is 6.3%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Supercharges enterprise storage by way of highly optimized hardware, comprehensive data management and a feature rich interface.
During their early years, I was a member of Pure's Customer Advisory Board. In addition, when we first adopted Pure, they did not have replication GA yet. We got into their beta testing program and help them work out certain issues with that technology. One weakness I can say the array has, still to this day, is limited control on scheduling snapshots. Depending on the type of replication schedule you are building, you may or may not have control on specifying the start time of a given replication schedule. This is not a very big problem in the grand scheme of things, but something nonetheless that has bothered me about the scheduler in general. Another area for improvement would be automatic host alias creation. Other platforms such as EMC Unity/PowerStore will automatically detect the host name, create a alias for it and associate the logged in HBA's to it. Pure does not do this for you and as a result, requires manual configuration. This can be very time consuming especially when you are deploying a large number of new servers.
Eric Black - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us
The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers competitive performance, and the Evergreen storage model of Pure fits well with my organization."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It is easy to manage. You don't have to have the same people who used to manage the Dell EMC arrays because the solution is more intuitive."
"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"The stability is perfect. The reliability is 100% and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond."
"The speed of the Pure FlashArray is very, very fast and nothing in the market can compare to it."
"Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this."
"The initial setup was really straight forward."
"The deduplication and compression rates are beyond impressive."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."
"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."
"The onboarding and integrated monitoring tools are pretty good."
"Among its most appealing features are its ease of handling and minimal maintenance requirements."
 

Cons

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"It is on the expensive side."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"Areas for improvement would be the financial operations. In the next release, I would like to see a NAS protocol included."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"The interface lacks the same level of control as some other arrays I've used."
"The scalability of the solution is not as good as it probably could be."
"The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"Historical analytics would be useful. At the moment, they don't have any type of application built for historical analytics."
"To improve FlashBlade, some analysts suggest enhancing its handling of relational database management systems and SQL queries."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"The solution is expensive."
"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."
"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."
"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."
"It's on the expensive side, as expected for a niche product."
"I would like to see more deduplication."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"It is cheaper than NetApp."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"The price is reasonable."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"The product is very expensive."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"The price is a little high."
"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"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."
"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 could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
35%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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 do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive th...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
Find out what your peers are saying about Pure Storage FlashArray vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
841,824 professionals have used our research since 2012.