Pure Storage FlashArray vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Pure Storage FlashArray and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage.
To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: May 2023).
706,951 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is scalable.""FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle.""The Pure1 component is most valuable at this point in time when comparing it with EMC. Pure1 is where you can have your diagnostics in the cloud, so you can look at things from your mobile phone.""Technical support has been helpful and responsive.""It has good, reliable, fast storage.""The solution is very straightforward to set up.""The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

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"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions.""We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray.""Technical support has been amazing.""Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""It's just very easy for general block storage.""The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster.""The all-flash disc is the most valuable feature of this solution.""We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

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"VMware comes with different stacks like VMware Cloud Foundation, which is integrated with different VMware modules. There's interoperability between VMware products.""We have found the solution to be very scalable.""The most valuable feature is the fast performance.""Very easy to implement in any existing environment.""The most valuable feature of VMware vSAN is the ease of management. VMware vSAN it's a part of VMware ESXi and when you do patching for VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN receives the patches too.""The scalability has been quite good.""I have found the solution to be scalable.""The vSAN features we've found most helpful are live application migrations and storage policies. It has storage, policies, application, and DRS policies. Automation is there."

More VMware vSAN Pros →

Cons
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.""We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly.""You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me.""It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking.""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.""Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient.""They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

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"It was not proactive communication.""A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad.""We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance.""The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in.""Beyond a certain amount of petabytes, you have to have a separate system. Basically, it's not infinitely scalable.""The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature.""Larger capacity and more storage ports would be the two things I'd like to see.""Its price could be cheaper. It is not the cheapest one out there, but I'm not directly involved in the figures and negotiations."

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"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper.""Customers who are using Essentials Plus or even Essentials have to pay for technical support. However, they should not have to pay for support.""We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases.""If the support could be provided more quickly, it would be very helpful.""The pricing could be better when it comes to renewing the licenses.""When we talk about improvements for vSAN, there is some way to go from a at least stability perspective. Adding all these new features is nice, but we are now at the level that most of the features you need in production are there.""Lacks an integrated backup solution.""A vSAN cluster must have compression and deduplication to be an all-flash array, but it's not supported with a hybrid array. Deduplication and compression work better with an all-flash array, so I think that VMware should give customers the option to activate and support this feature for hybrid arrays. Other products like Nutanix support this."

More VMware vSAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
  • More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
  • "My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
  • "There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution."
  • "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 pricing is reasonable."
  • "When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us."
  • "We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it."
  • "There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."
  • More Pure Storage FlashArray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution is expensive. Nutanix provides us with Acropolis Operating System (AOS) along with its hardware, while VMware provides vSAN, vCenter, and vSphere which all have separate licenses and costs."
  • "I feel the pricing to be reasonable."
  • "In comparison with other solutions, such as HP or Cisco, I find the solution to be quite pricey."
  • "The price of VMware vSAN is expensive and there is an annual license required."
  • "For a classical node plus storage solution, the price is higher."
  • "It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."
  • "We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."
  • "This solution requires the purchase of a license."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well… more »
    Top Answer:We don't have any issues with the pricing. It's not too expensive.
    Top Answer:Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers… more »
    Top Answer:Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure… more »
    Top Answer:Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a… more »
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
    vSAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is the world’s first enterprise-class storage array that runs exclusively on the nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) protocol for memory access and storage. It represents a totally state-of-the-art type of storage technology. It offers users shared accelerated storage that delivers cutting-edge features in the realms of performance, simplicity, and consolidation. Pure Storage is fresh and modern today and will be for the next decade. Without forklift upgrades or planned downtime, Pure Storage takes the work out of storage ownership and delivers unprecedented customer satisfaction.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is built with simplicity and reliability in mind. The solution can be implemented and optimized in hours, as opposed to other similar solutions that can take days. It has no moving parts, which removes areas where it could potentially be vulnerable to suffering errors. It is highly stable and gives users the ability to manage system shutdowns in a way that  prevents data loss.

    Benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray

    Some of the benefits of using Pure Storage FlashArray include:

    • A much higher level of speed than similar pieces of technology. Pure Storage FlashArray maximizes the speed at which data can be transferred while at the same time minimizing system latencies that might slow the transfer down. Additionally, it offers users quick memory read and data access speeds.

    • A higher bang for your buck in terms of the storage capabilities you get for the money you pay. They are smaller in size than more standard storage technologies, but they offer flash memory, which enables users to store larger amounts of data than the current standard.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Pure Storage FlashArray is a highly effective piece of storage technology which stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its overall robustness and the value that it offers by way of its reliability and ease of use. It provides users with many valuable features that allow them to maximize what they can do with this solution. Pure Storage FlashArray’s reliability and ease of use make it a highly valuable solution. 

    PeerSpot user Prabakaran K., a technical consultant at Injazat Data Systems, notes the robustness of this solution when he writes, "FlashArray has many valuable features. It's very user-friendly and it has high availability, so there is comparatively less downtime. During maintenance, there is no shutdown procedure, so you can directly power off the Array and manage the shutdown process without any data loss, which is a unique feature. Managing replication and data migration is also very easy."

    PeerSpot user Jason D., a cloud solutions architect at a tech services company, notes three features that make this solution valuable when he writes, "We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin."

    VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

    VMware vSAN Features

    VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.
    • Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.
    • Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.
    • High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.
    • Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.
    • HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.
    • Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

    VMware vSAN Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution. 
    • Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance. 
    • Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.
    • Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly. 
    • Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

    PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

    A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

    Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

    Offer
    Learn more about Pure FlashArray X NVMe
    Learn more about Pure Storage FlashArray
    Learn more about VMware vSAN
    Sample Customers
    Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
    Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Educational Organization15%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization20%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Government8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise54%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise50%
    Buyer's Guide
    All-Flash Storage
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, NetApp and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: May 2023.
    706,951 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Pure Storage FlashArray is ranked 2nd in All-Flash Storage with 45 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 60 reviews. Pure Storage FlashArray is rated 9.0, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Pure Storage FlashArray writes "Provides protection against ransomware threats with immutable snapshots, and it is well known for its scalability, ease of use, and non-disruptive upgrades". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". Pure Storage FlashArray is most compared with Dell PowerStore, NetApp AFF (All Flash FAS), IBM FlashSystem, HPE Nimble Storage and Dell Unity XT, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and HPE Hyper Converged.

    We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.