Everpure FlashArray Reviews

Everpure FlashArray is used for storage, and it is very easy to maintain and very reliable. Everpure FlashArray does require maintenance on my end, as all servers and their storage arrays do.

Everpure FlashArray has reduced downtime in some situations. It reduces downtime considerably and can help perform upgrades or replacements of certain hardware without shutting the machine down, or perform upgrades of its firmware without shutting it down.

What I like the most about Everpure FlashArray is that it is easy to repair and based on Dell technology. The initial deployment of Everpure FlashArray when I first started was easy to deploy using standard Dell rails since it is based on Dell hardware.

I find the interface of Everpure FlashArray, the single management pane of glass they call it, to be very intuitive.

I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display.

I have been using Everpure FlashArray for about 15 years in my career.

I have not experienced any lagging, crashing, or downtime with Everpure FlashArray; it is stable.

Everpure FlashArray scales fairly well.

I have not had to contact technical support about anything, so no technical support has been needed.

I have used alternatives to Everpure FlashArray, including Violin Memory and Hitachi, which are all fairly similar. In my opinion, Everpure FlashArray is the easiest of the bunch.

The initial deployment of Everpure FlashArray when I first started was easy to deploy using standard Dell rails since it is based on Dell hardware.

Everpure FlashArray has reduced downtime in some situations. It reduces downtime considerably and can help perform upgrades or replacements of certain hardware without shutting the machine down, or perform upgrades of its firmware without shutting it down.

I think the pricing for Everpure FlashArray is fairly reasonable.

I have used alternatives to Everpure FlashArray, including Violin Memory and Hitachi, which are all fairly similar.

My advice for new users is to work with Everpure FlashArray a little before deploying it and learn the interface; once you do that and master it, then everything should go smoothly. I gave this review a rating of 8 out of 10.

Initially, there were a few use cases we started with when looking at alternative storage platforms. Once upon a time, we were ran a different platform that was physically huge, power hungry, low on capacity and mediocre on performance. Use was complex and did not scale very well. It was also very cost prohibitive to maintain. We quickly outgrew it, especially when we started to adopt VMware vSphere virtualization.  We knew we had to replace this beast with something that made more sense for us.  We needed to reduce the footprint down to something a lot more reasonable.  We wanted to contain costs, especially when it comes to hardware investments and maintenance renewals. We also needed more intelligence, visibility and flexibility in our data storage platform.

We were introduced to Pure Storage through one of our long-term partners in the Chicagoland area who brought them in for a meet and greet. Their presentation was compelling. It was exciting to see what they were doing with technology, especially with the concept of data deduplication, so we decided to give it a go. The results were simply unbelievable. We deployed Pure into multiple datacenters effectively consolidating down entire row's of storage to a single rack. It ran circles around our legacy platform and what it did for VMWare was really something to see.  Boot times were drastically reduce, latency went from 30-40ms down to sub millisecond...consistently. 

As we continued to use Pure and their products evolved to add in additional features/technologies, we were able to solve other issues we never knew we had.  Our BC/DR playbooks were effectively rewritten to take advantage of array to array replication for disaster recovery.  Snapshots cut our product upgrade times in half because we no longer needed to rely on taking full backups of our environment before deploying new code.  Snaps were immediate and rolling back was almost just as fast. It was a true game changer.  Pure had single handedly improved our business strategies and making us more agile in provisioning storage and overall, running our datacenters. 

Over the years, we have witnessed Pure continuing to deliver new feature sets and technical enhancements in it's Purity code base.  Did I mention that all of these features and enhancements are part of cost of support?  Yep...no nickle and diming people to death. 

As alluded to above, our environment is far more performant, reliable and feature rich since going on their platform. 

Pure has allowed us to minimize the storage footprint with their products. Their Evergreen support model effectively eliminates forklift upgrades and takes it one step further by rewarding customs who stay current on support by giving them free in family controller upgrades to the latest revision.  Did I mention it was free??   

The Pure1 portal gives me a unified single pane of glass to view my fleet of arrays globally. In addition, it integrates with our VMware vSphere platform, has it's own analytics engine and allows me the ability to self-upgrade the arrays.  It is also an invaluable tool for annual budgeting with their built in 'what if' planning tool.

As we needed to grow in capacity, we were able to do so without increasing footprint.  This is done by replacing smaller devices with larger ones. The array handles all the internal data migration seamlessly in the background without needing to be taken offline.

The snapshot and replication capabilities of the arrays improved disaster recovery and data protection in events like ransomware attacks by enabling us to revert to good datasets without complete loss of our (and our customers) data. 

Lastly, I have to say that their hardware architecture and Purity operating system has been nothing but stellar.  In all the years we have been using Pure, we never had an availability event.  They are the only platform/technology we have that I can honestly say has had a 100% uptime relative to storage availability.

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. 

I have used the solution since 2011.

Again, stability has never been an issue and we have enjoyed a 100% uptime experience on Pure. This doesn't mean nothing goes wrong.  Sure, there were instances of a controller failover event, a drive or cache module failure, GBIC burns out, etc. Sometimes Pure Support knows about an issue before I do and is already reaching out to me about it. 

Phenomenal.  I have never seen a platform go through as many generational changes as this one and have it all be done in place. It's truly amazing.

Pure's support is exceptional; no other vendor reaches out proactively to improve something on their array. They're interested in our success, which is also in their best interest. This experience isn't common with other OEM's that I use in my datacenters.

Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention. Their portal simplifies engagement, and they consistently offer friendly, prompt assistance, deserving a ten out of ten.

Positive

As discussed above, yes, we did use several different block storage arrays/vendors. All did their job, but for one reason or another, aged very quickly.  They were either limited on features, supportability or became too cost prohibitive to keep after the initial support contract expired.  There were not the only reason though.  Pure simply had a superior product that changed the game for us and frankly, no one else at that time has anything GA that came close.

When standing up a new array, it is as simple as it gets.  Pure does it for us.  There is a method of self deployment, but I have found it better to have them ensure the system is properly implemented and functioning to their standards.  After all, they know it better than I do.  Once the array has been deployed, it is very easy to setup.  In fact, the configuration of the SAN fabric will take longer (depending on how many hosts you need to zone up to the array).  But once that is done, I am in and out of the array in about 30 min. This includes all the administrative configurations, host and host group creations and volume provisioning.

Pure Storage handles our initial implementation of the array and we handle the rest in-house. We've had the same technician each time. He is familiar with our environment, and I trust him implicitly. This consistency is unusual and greatly valued.

This is hard to quantify, but all I can say is that they have been worth the money.  I have said this to many people in my 32 years in IT.  The technology you forget is running in your datacenter is the best one you own. The ones that constantly remind you that they are there....yeah, those are the ones you should consider replacing. 

Well...you know the old saying, you get what you pay for.  I wont lie...Pure is no cheap.  I could easily buy another vendors AFA (all flash array) and possible save some $$$, but I wouldn't get everything I love about Pure. Switching platforms would be very painful for me.  

Not really.  We were already using best in breed platforms.  Pure was the new kid on the block and seamlessly fit into our existing environment. Sure there were other options, but they all kind of looked the same.  Pure simply stood out in the crowd and they were committed to proving themselves.

I could spend all day talking about the platform, the portal, their support teams, or their account management. Suffice to say, Pure actually cares about me being successful and I have seen them do the same thing with other customer too.  I have been a customer reference for them on many occasions and I tell all of Pure's prospects the same thing.  Your not just investing in hardware, your investing in a company committed to your success.  

We're using Pure Storage FlashArray for VMware; we have all of our VMs on it, and we use it strictly for VMs, management, and also replication, doing the active DR replication.

Pure Storage FlashArray has helped us decrease the storage footprint in a significant way; the dedupe and compression that they have is really good, and we're getting about four to ten in the deduplication and compression.

Pure Storage FlashArray is very easy to use and easy to set up; it's not super complex, it's pretty simple. The interface of Pure Storage FlashArray is really good, helping out with creating volumes or LUNs. It's just very intuitive, making it easy to use. I'm not stumbling around trying to find everything. 

The best way to improve Pure Storage FlashArray is the active DR because that can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to test a failover and replicate back; better instructions on how to do that would help because we actually lost an entire volume when we were testing out some stuff as the fingerprint got reinitialized, and when you replicated back, it didn't know about that volume, causing a failure in that process. Better documentation on their failover would make a big difference.

I've been using it for three years.

I have not seen any instability with Pure Storage FlashArray.

The scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray is very good; it scales very well.

The quality and speed of support are very good; they will answer the phone and help you through the issue you're running into. I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I've used alternatives such as NetApp FlashArray, and for the VMware side, we were using HPE 3PAR before we migrated off of the 3PAR onto Pure Storage FlashArray.

Pure Storage is really good on the LUN presentation; however, I haven't worked with Pure Storage for the NFS and CIFS side because that's what we were using NetApp for, and I think NetApp shines in the NFS and CIFS side. Regarding speed, the speed of the array is really good.

The deployment was quite simple and not difficult to set up. The only issues we encountered involved our security team and allowing traffic to go out to the Internet. We had to navigate various challenges to make everything work. We had it up and running within a day for the first time.

Since we were the government, we weren't allowed to let Pure control our systems, so we did all the upgrades ourselves; their upgrades are very frequent, making it a little difficult to keep up with them. We would stay on one version and not do any incremental upgrades; for example, we would upgrade from 6.15 to 6.17, sticking with the stable version instead of upgrading to a non-stable version. We would stay on the long-term release, and whenever that changed, we would move up to the new long-term release.

It required a whole team, about three of us, working on it and getting it built.

The pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is in line with all the other vendors; they haven't priced themselves out of the market yet, and the Evergreen side of what they offer is actually really interesting because you can replace your head units or existing storage, and it just migrates, so it's actually really nice.

The dashboard is really good; as long as you're allowed to use it. We're not allowed to use it because we are a government organization, so not all of our Pure Storage showed up there because we don't allow internet access to that equipment. Overall, it gives you a way to see what you have that is presented out to Pure Storage, allowing you to have a central view of all your systems in one pane instead of having to go to all different clusters. 

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

Everpure FlashArray serves as my main storage solution for LUNs in a Hyper-V cluster. A specific example of how I use Everpure FlashArray with my Hyper-V cluster is that it provides LUNs for the cluster to store virtual machines on.

In my opinion, the best features Everpure FlashArray offers are data resilience and redundancy.

The data resilience and redundancy features have helped me by providing peace of mind knowing that the data will always be available and the virtual machines will always be accessible.

Everpure FlashArray has positively impacted my organization, although it was already in use when I came on board.

I cannot think of anything that needs improvement for Everpure FlashArray. I am exceptionally happy with the product and the way it works.

I have been using Everpure FlashArray for three years.

Since I have been working with Everpure FlashArray, I have noticed less downtime as it does not go offline for updates. Updates happen seamlessly with no downtime at all.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor beyond being a customer, as we are a partner.

I would rate Everpure FlashArray a 10 out of 10. Regarding Everpure FlashArray's AI capabilities, I like them and I am exceptionally excited about the AI capabilities and what that will do for accessing and using the data in the future.

I have not noticed anything noteworthy about the accuracy and reliability of the output from Everpure FlashArray's AI capabilities yet.

My advice to others looking into using Everpure FlashArray would be to make the switch as soon as possible and never look back once you do. My overall rating for this product is 10.

I support Pure Storage FlashArray, so I use it for storage and do some automation; however, the main use is storage.

The solution has helped decrease our total cost of ownership thanks to the compression, so we don't need to buy as much storage as we use, which helps keep our costs down.

In Pure Storage FlashArray, the dedupe and compression are excellent, and performance is good too. 

We use the Evergreen architecture for our upgrades and scaling. The portal, which we use for upgrades, is exceptional, and it influences our ability to maintain uptime because we can do most tasks from there. The single management pane of glass works effectively, and the portal is excellent.

The solution has decreased our storage footprint, so instead of using an array with a higher capacity, due to the dedupe and compression, we can use a much smaller array to accommodate our data. It has decreased our storage by four times.

The solution has helped reduce downtime, and downtime is similar to most storage solutions, which have good resilience.

More cloud connectivity would enhance the solution. Something that could be slightly enhanced is additional AI capabilities. These areas have room for improvement.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray since 2008, so I have 17 years of experience.

For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten. We don't have many problems.

For scalability, I rate it a six out of ten. We reach a limit. We never reached this limit, however, the architecture allows you to go until a certain size, and after that, you have to buy another array.

The environment is used across multiple locations, spread around the globe. The number of users that use the solution is close to 1000.

I would rate the technical support for Pure Storage FlashArray as an eight out of ten.

Positive

When comparing Pure Storage FlashArray with other products or vendors such as Dell and IBM, I prefer it because the support and management are better and easier. The performance and cost compared to other disk and flash storages is probably better in cost, while the performance is the same today. The main advantage is in management and support.

It's easy to deploy. We have it across multiple locations.

The solution requires maintenance, and it is easy.

I would recommend this product to other users. It is a good product. 

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray overall as an eight out of ten. It is excellent. 

I am an implementation engineer for Pure Storage FlashArray. We sell it through partners to different companies in Kazakhstan.

The single management interface is advantageous, enabling us to manage all arrays from a centralized location.

Pure Storage FlashArray provides immediate benefits to our customers with its easy setup process, allowing for instant use and rapid realization of advantages.

Pure Storage FlashArray is echo-friendly and helps reduce our carbon footprint.

FlashArray provides high stability and can help reduce downtime for customers. It was helpful when migrating data from one storage to another, achieving this without any downtime.

Remote Assist is a valuable feature that supports customers and engineers in troubleshooting and resolving issues, allowing for easy problem identification and repair. Furthermore, the cloud-based log collection enhances convenience and accessibility. FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.

Organizations with security concerns that prevent cloud utilization would benefit from a wider range of instruments available for offline operation. Currently, the limited selection of on-premise instruments hinders Pure Storage FlashArray's ability to compete effectively with other vendors.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for two years.

FlashArray is a highly stable and reliable enterprise storage solution that minimizes downtime.

One advantage of the Evergreen program Pure Storage offers is that it allows for easy upgrades, such as upgrading controllers for more power or increasing data flash memory for capacity.

The support from Pure Storage is excellent. Pure support team provides great maintenance of FlashArray, and their support consists of two parts: hardware support and software support.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward, taking approximately 40 minutes from unboxing to operation. Pure Storage systems, including FlashArray and FlashBlade, are equipped with comprehensive features that ensure easy installation and user-friendly operation.

Two people are required to place the FlashArray into the server rack due to its weight of approximately 45 kilograms.

For emerging markets like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, pricing is not a problem. However, we lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors.

The biggest competitor we evaluated is Huawei.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray eight out of ten.

To fully utilize Pure Storage's capabilities, explore beyond its basic features. Many companies underutilize this robust platform, often employing only a fraction of its potential. Familiarizing yourself with the full range of features will maximize the benefits and value derived from this tool.

I recommend against attempting to understand Pure Storage FlashArray independently. If necessary, do not hesitate to open a support case.

Virtualization with ESXi, Hyper-V, XenServer, KVM is the primary use case. VDI, containerization, AI, HPC are some other use cases seen in my day-to-day consulting with customers.

Being an all-flash storage, it has helped improve performance of business apps reducing latency and increasing IOPS.

One valuable feature of the Pure Storage FlashArray is its flash-based architecture, which provides a significant advantage. 

Another noteworthy aspect is their platform, Pure1, a cloud-based management and analytics platform that automatically creates an SR (case) on issue detection and proactively provides resolution.

Evergreen subscription model is also remarkable, allowing clients to receive the next hardware generation at no additional cost.

A noticeable area for improvement is the support for object storage. FlashArray does not natively support object storage like S3 or Swift, which pushes customers needing these features towards the more expensive FlashBlade. Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.

7+ years

The stability of the product is excellent. I have not encountered any significant issues, such as applying firmware that introduces bugs. The overall stability of the product is commendable.

The solution is highly scalable, particularly when there is a need to expand capacity. An expansion shelf can be purchased and connected when needed.

Opening a case with Pure is a smooth process, and they prove to be reliable, even in severe cases where infrastructure issues arise. Their support is top-notch, and their NPS scores reflect this.

Positive

Over a five-year cycle, compared to other vendors, cost savings of at least 10% can be achieved if configured optimally.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a premium product, but the introduction of the C-series has been a strategic move to make it more accessible to budget-conscious customers.

We mainly use FlashArray to provide flash storage for SQL and Oracle databases in production.

FlashArray has improved the stability of our servers and critical databases stability and server stability. We began seeing benefits two to three weeks after we deployed. The platform is more flexible and has lower latency.

The Direct FlashArray stands out as one of the best features in the market. The Pure1 storage management lets us see the details about utilization and everything else for all 40 storage boxes in one place. This is a crucial feature if you're using FlashArray for critical databases. 

I would like FlashArray to add reports that help us forecast our predicted resource needs based on current usage. 

We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for three years.

I would rate the stability of FlashArray as nine out of 10.

I rate FlashArray's scalability nine out of 10.

I rate Pure Storage customer service nine out of 10.

Positive

We previously used Dell EMC. Creating storage groups and mapping was more complex. Pure FlashArray is simpler and easier to use, and our storage staff doesn't struggle as much with it.

The initial setup is easy and does not require much expertise. Even individuals with five or six years of experience can handle it.

We have seen a return on investment as the solution has reduced resource requirements, allowing less experienced personnel to manage the storage. You don't need 15 years of experience to work on this. It can be easily handled by someone with five years.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

The cost of Pure FlashArray is a bit high compared to peers, but its sustainability and features justify the price.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray nine out of 10. I recommend FlashArray. It protects your data and has low downtime. 

My main use case for Everpure FlashArray is that it's used as storage for VMs that are running on, or that used to run on IBM Flex nodes. The nodes don't have storage, so Everpure FlashArray is used as the storage back end for the VMs and running production workloads.

Everpure FlashArray offers the ability to upgrade with non-disruptive updates. I can update or upgrade the controllers without any downtime or replace any hardware without downtime, which is a very good thing. The remote monitoring support provided by Pure Storage is very helpful in an enterprise environment.

The remote monitoring specifically helps my team in daily operations when there are upgrades to Purity, which are pushed remotely from Pure Storage. There is no downtime on our side, and business continues to run. Remote upgrades are a very critical feature of Pure Storage.

Everpure FlashArray has positively impacted my organization by increasing our agility and the ability to run our environment at high speeds due to the flash storage. This is unlike disk-based systems which have low access times and consume a whole lot more power and are noisy compared to Everpure FlashArray.

Everpure FlashArray can be improved by also being available in the public clouds, which I have been researching. That is a big jump for companies that want to run their production or backup systems in the cloud since Everpure is already integrated with some cloud providers and some hyper-converged providers like Nutanix. That's a very good fit between Nutanix and Pure Storage.

For the future, currently the features that are available are really fit for purpose. The product is very mature and well implemented.

I have been using Everpure FlashArray since 2017.

I have noticed significant outcomes or improvements since moving to Everpure FlashArray, as boot-up times for VMs and backups run very fast compared to the disk-based systems that I was using previously.

I am currently researching how Everpure FlashArray can be used with AI systems. I haven't implemented anything yet, but I am researching at the moment.

Regarding Everpure FlashArray's AI capabilities, I think that they have the ability to bake in whatever tools or resources are required to make sure that the AI capabilities and governance will be up to the required standards for most enterprises.

I haven't played with Everpure FlashArray in a demo or production environment, so I'm not familiar with the figures, though I'm going to be researching it from now on.

The single management pane of glass is very important to my organization because it allows me to see what's happening with my complete environment from one window without moving between different tools. That simplifies management or monitoring of alerts or anything that I might need. The single pane of glass is essential to our operations.

I have nothing to add at the moment about the features. My overall rating for this product is ten out of ten.

We use Pure Storage FlashArray as well as FlashBlade. In Pure Storage FlashArray, we have the SAN and NAS storage models. 

We focus on performance when it comes to enterprises. We need both types of storage, one is for better performance and the other one is for larger space requirements. We use both types of storage at the same time.

Pure Storage FlashArray is helpful in meeting the performance needs of critical services. Different models are available, and each model has a different series. For example, you have the C model, and in this model, you have the 50 series and 90 series. Similarly, in the X model, you have the 70 series. We now get a lot more models of Pure Storage than before. Previously, not many models of Pure Storage were available, so we had to rely on other vendors, such as NetApp, but we faced performance issues with NetApp. It also required more troubleshooting. We started to get a better response time after we moved from NetApp to Pure Storage.

We have a single pane of glass for management. It is good.

With Pure Storage, the creation of LUNs is easier and quicker than others. We have not had any issues with it. The response time improved significantly, and the entire process became much more efficient, eliminating previously existing troubles.

Some storages do not provide an easy IOPS report, but with Pure Storage, we can see performance impact directly on the storage itself. That is the best feature.

Additionally, creating a replication pair is straightforward without the need for CLI commands. With other storage solutions, we have to use the CLI commands, whereas we do not need to do that with Pure Storage. We can simply create a replication pair. That is another good feature.

I like the performance. Performance-wise, it accommodates the needs of highly-critical servers. It is reliable. That is the third best feature. 

Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage. More documentation and presentation would help reach new users. They need to come up with new ideas and ways to improve their brand awareness.

They also need to see if the system can handle creating a large number of LUNs at the same time. Any automation or a way of doing that could be helpful.

We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about two and a half years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability. It has been good.

We have a lot of applications with millions of users. There are five data centers. Three of them are in Hyderabad and two of them are in Mumbai.

We have 150 people working with storage solutions.

I would rate the customer service a seven out of ten. Depending on priority cases, the vendor's response time can vary. For P1 or P2, a case owner is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes. Everything is great from the vendor's side.

Neutral

In my environment, different types of storage vendors are there. We have NetApp, Hitachi, Dell, and other vendors. We have been using Dell PowerStore Storage and we have been migrating some of them too. We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray and FlashBlade for a long time, and we have seen a lot of differences compared to the other storage solutions. 

The performance, latency, and throughput of Pure Storage FlashArray are good. The throughput is 5 GB or 12 GB per second. Latency is also below 5 milliseconds.

The replication process is easier with Pure Storage compared to others. Replication was one task that I found difficult with other storage solutions.

The deployment and associated activities are handled by a different team. They take care of everything necessary for the new environment.

With proper approvals, we can implement it within a month. It does require some maintenance from our end, but the vendor takes care of all the upgrades.

Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive.

We are happy with Pure Storage. About six months ago, we had a Pure Storage event in my company, and I liked attending that Pure Storage event.

Pure Storage should focus on creating more awareness and providing documentation and presentations. It should also aim to reach lower-end clients who are currently focused on other storage types.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.