Qumulo vs Zadara comparison

Qumulo and Zadara are both solutions in the File and Object Storage category. Qumulo is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3, while Zadara is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.5. Qumulo holds a 3.9% mindshare in FaOS, compared to Zadara’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Qumulo users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Qumulo and Zadara are competing products in the enterprise storage market. Qumulo has the upper hand in ease of deployment while Zadara excels in feature-rich offerings.

Features: Qumulo is known for its scalable storage solutions, real-time analytics, and ease of managing large data sets. Zadara provides multi-protocol support, elastic scalability, and high-security measures, making it flexible and effective for data management.

Room for Improvement: Qumulo could enhance its feature set to include greater customization options and advanced security features. Zadara could benefit from simplifying its setup process and reducing the initial learning curve for new users. Offering more transparent pricing could also be an area of improvement for both.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qumulo offers quick and simple deployment with robust customer support, minimizing disruptions during transition. Zadara's deployment allows for customization in complex environments but requires more initial effort, although its customer support remains reliable and effective in addressing user needs.

Pricing and ROI: Qumulo's competitive pricing offers a positive ROI for budget-conscious businesses. Zadara's higher cost is justified by its extensive features and flexibility, promising a solid ROI for enterprises with advanced storage needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Qumulo vs. Zadara Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Qumulo vs. Zadara

April 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 May 2025, in the File and Object Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 5.8%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qumulo is 3.9%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

File and Object Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

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.

Read full review

VinceVitro

Senior Storage Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Useful data sharing, simple cluster scaling, and excellent support

One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential.

Read full review

Kirubel Behailu

Cloud System Engineer at cloud251

Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience

Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Read full review

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 of this solution are the rewrite speed and the nonstop services."

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

"The most valuable features of FlashBlade include its replication capabilities, reports, and easy allocation. Everything is user-friendly."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"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."

"I would rate Pure Storage FlashBlade a ten out of ten."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The most valuable feature of Qumulo is the ability to share files and reliability."

"The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability."

"The most valuable feature is real-time analytics."

"The ratio of total operational cost to complexity versus feature set is very good."

"The data protection algorithm to protect the data between the nodes has been the most valuable feature. The integration with backup platforms such as Veeam and Veritas has also been valuable."

"The feature that I like most is the analytics part of the file system."

"The most valuable features of Qumulo are the ease of management and special permissions that are quick to enable. The overall performance of the solution is good."

"It is a very stable product. I never faced any issues."

"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."

"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."

"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."

"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."

"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."

"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."

More Zadara pros

Cons

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

"I have not seen ROI."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade should improve on more cloud integration."

"There could be improvements in public cloud integration."

"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."

"I would like to see more deduplication."

"Recently, while upgrading the version code, one of the controllers failed. Replacing the controller took between 14 to 20 days."

"The features provided for SMB customers are limited."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"Some anti-theft permissions do not transfer well to Qumulo."

"Qumulo should continue to expand automation and orchestration capabilities."

"The solution could improve availability and improve data protection or data services such as compression of deduplication. In a future release, we'd like to have more cloud API integrations."

"In the future, I would like to see non-disruptive updates."

"In the next release, I would like to see the ability to have more control at a terminal level of the file system."

"The support for iMac and protocols should be improved, not all features are available."

"The price of the software is a bit expensive, so a reduction in cost would make it more competitive."

"One aspect of Qumulo that I hoped to see improved was its software upgrade process, which did see significant progress during my usage. Initially, upgrading the software resulted in several minutes of system downtime. However, by the time I departed last summer, the downtime had reduced to mere ten seconds. Although I am unsure if Qumulo has yet achieved a completely outage-free upgrade, I simply performed the upgrades early in the morning before the marketing department began its workday, so any downtime was inconsequential."

"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."

"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."

"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."

"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."

"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."

"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 is a little high."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

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

"The price could be cheaper."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to others. We look at the price per terabyte."

"The price of Qumulo is reasonable."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about Qumulo?

The most valuable features of Qumulo are its rolling updates and all-day availability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qumulo?

Initially, the failover was supposed to be implemented in Qumulo itself. This failed to happen mid-case, so we had to...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Qumulo?

We use Qumulo for end-user storage and some application storage as well.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

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What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

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What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure FlashArray X NVMe vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 3% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Qumulo

Compared 25% of the time

VAST Data vs Qumulo

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs Qumulo

Compared 11% of the time

Scality RING vs Qumulo

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Qumulo

Compared 3% of the time

More Qumulo Competitors

MinIO vs Zadara

Compared 21% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 14% of the time

Wasabi vs Zadara

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Zadara

Compared 8% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

April 2025

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NAS

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Zadara

April 2025

Download Zadara product report

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

Qumulo is a data storage and management platform that promotes object-based storage for users, backup archives, and surveillance. Its primary use case is to provide a cost-effective and feature-rich solution for managing large data.

Qumulo's data protection algorithm ensures the safety of node data, while its integration with backup platforms like Veeam and Veritas makes it easy to manage backups. The platform offers a good balance between operational cost and complexity versus feature set, making it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

Qumulo

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

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

County of Riverside Sheriff Department, Hyundai Mobis Automotive North America, University of Arizona, UCSD - San Diego Supercomputer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Kaiser Permanente, Deluxe Creative, Vexcel Imaging, University of Florida, The Madison Square Garden Company, Arizona State University, Cinesite, San Diego Padres Baseball, Johns Hopkins University - School of Medicine, IHME, EllieMae, Washington State University.

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

Qumulo vs. Zadara

April 2025

Free Report: Qumulo vs. Zadara

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