We are in the health industry and use this product for block storage. We have VMware hosted on our Pure FlashArrays and we have a Citrix environment. We also have Oracle running as our SQL database. Our VMs run from Pure.
We have also done a couple of PoCs with the Blade solution for using the file share system.
One of the requirements from our developers and test and development team is that from time to time, they want to clone the production environment. We are able to accomplish this within seconds, using a script. This is one of the best parts that I have seen. This feature is not available with other storage solutions.
Performance-wise, it is giving us a very good result.
We are happy with the data compression and deduplication capabilities.
The interface is user-friendly and very easy to use.
Taking a snapshot and cloning data is very easy to do. We can create a script and it will clone the environment. Similarly, we can replicate the environment from one site to another site, and we can restore the environment where we choose.
The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard. For example, I can see all of the utilization and it has port monitoring capabilities. With other storage vendors, multiple tools are required for this, and there is an additional charge.
Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases.
Integration with VMware tools can be improved.
The reporting can be better.
We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for between five and six years.
This is a very stable product and we haven't had any downtime. We use this product extensively and I have seen that we have a 90% I/O load in our environment.
This is a flexible system that is easy to scale.
We initially purchased two FlashArray systems. One of them was small or midsized, and the other was high-end. Then, later, we started upgrading. As per the Everygreen contract, we get free upgrades. Every three years, we get a new controller upgrade, free of cost.
We have also upgraded our capacity and now everything is on the X series. We have four FlashArrays in total and all of our database users are connected to them. The infrastructure and database teams are directly involved with it.
The response from the technical support team is very good. We have not found any difficulties with their ability or engagement.
We have worked with solutions from HPE, IBM, and Hitachi. We don't work with any of these vendors now. We switched because Pure storage is much easier to manage. It is also more stable and it is very easy to work with.
For example, there is no shutdown procedure. If you want to power down the environment then you just unplug the power and that's it. Once you reconnect the power, it is up. With legacy storage, there is a shutdown procedure. You have to shut down the host, then the SAN switch, then the storage.
With legacy storage, there is also a procedure to bring it up. You have to power up the enclosures, then the controller, then the SAN environment, and then the server. We had to follow a long set of steps with more dependencies.
After a power outage, the storage devices from the other vendors did not always come back online. For example, we implemented a PoC with the IBM FlashSystem and a power outage occurred. The management tool crashed and did not come back up. We had to wait for IBM engineers to come and fix the issue. Whereas, with Pure, when the power came back on, the system came back online immediately.
The other storage systems were not as user-friendly. For example, I had a Hitachi G600 and I wanted to extend the block capacity. I had to spend between 30 minutes and one hour to complete it. It's quite complex. With Pure, that would be taken care of in seconds by going to the console, selecting the volume, and performing the reset.
The initial setup is straightforward and very easy.
The day that we received the box, we unpacked it, racked it, and configured it. The next day, we were able to utilize it for production.
Upgrading the hardware, such as performing a controller upgrade, is a seamless process. We are planning to do a major upgrade and it will be done on the fly.
We engaged Pure to assist us with our implementation, and our experience with them was very good. The technical team came onsite for the deployment. If we have any problems then they will return to our site to help.
Only one person is required for deployment and maintenance.
You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced.
We completed a PoC with most of the leading brands.
My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that I can recommend Pure. We were the first customer for Pure Storage in the UAE. It's stable, reliable, and you can trust it.
The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible. You can scale out and it's easy to upgrade. The upgrade process is not complex and it can be done on the fly, without any disruption.
My main complaint is that the garbage collection mechanism draws heavily on the resources. They have integration with VMware tools, although they can improve it slightly, and I would also like to see some improvements in the reporting.
We have been using it heavily and all of our people are happy with it. This includes the DBA team. Whenever we have a requirement of it, it's very easy and it can be done within seconds. With our previous storage solutions, we had to spend more time looking into problems and they were not user-friendly.
I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
We primarily use the solution for databases, including Oracle, SQL, PostgreSQL, and VMware.
We're moving some data warehouses over as well as our main financial system.
The NVMe flash cache is the most useful feature. It lowers transactional speed even more.
We have found the ease of use to be excellent. Everybody's got expertise in it.
AFF helped reduce our operational latency. Since we started using it, we've improved by 20%.
AFF has helped us optimize our costs. We partnered with StorageGRID on that, and so we tier our data with StorageGRID and use AFF for the hot data, and then we tier it off to StorageGRID, which is really helping with that.
I do not have any notes for areas of improvement.
There's a lag with StorageGRID. It's off of this tier-three disc. After a few days, we sluff it off to StorageGRID, and then if all of a sudden, they need to restore that data, it takes a while to spin it back up and write it back to that. What would be great is if they could actually make StorageGRID so that it's pretty fast and has a fast recall. That being said, that's a recovery issue.
In the past, NetApp designed it so that you have a 70% threshold. You would never fill up past 70% since you need to have that room available. Whereas with Pure, I can fill it up to 110% of what they listed and it's still going at full speed. NetApp can't do that. They need to build in more capacity to ensure users don't lose 30% of a buffer off the top.
I've been using the solution for six years.
The stability is fantastic. They're really coming as close to a high availability system as you can get.
In the past, with the controller failover, you'd have to rely on the other controller. It was a little bit hit or miss. AFF has really stepped it up to where I'm not lagging on performance when it fails over if it's an upgrade, update, or something like that. I don't have to worry as much about controller failure anymore.
Scalability is great. It's just expensive. That's why we would go with StorageGRID. Due to supply chain issues, I already know that these flash drives are so expensive. We're paying through the roof for those drives even on a discount. Therefore, while scalability's great, we can't really afford it. I can't go and buy a $4 million system.
Technical support is pretty good. It is hit or miss. For the most part, it's good.
The main complaints I get from the engineers are that they'll just say, "it's a future release, and that future release is just too far down the road, and we need to get that done right away." Whereas we see a pain point now, and we would like to see them fix our problems right now. That said, we understand we're not the biggest customer on planet earth.
Neutral
Before AFF, we used Hitachi. We switched to simplify from the fiber channel over to NAS. We were looking to simplify and make the network the cost point instead of having fibre channel expertise and network expertise.
I was not involved in the initial setup of the solution.
We've probably optimized our costs by 70%.
We have seen ROI in terms of less latency on applications and users being able to get more done more quickly. The experience is really good with StorageGRID unless you're doing restores, and then they've got to restore that data. That's the only thing that's lagging. That said, the return on investment has been great since the DBAs and the other customers get more done and get more cycles accomplished with that enhanced IOP performance.
The pricing is palatable; we can swallow it. We're a longtime customer and we view our relationship as a partnership, not just a one-time deal. They have taken good care of us.
We looked at Dell, Pure, and EMC, among other options.
I like Pure. Pure has very low-cost copies of point-in-time databases that they can spin up immediately, and the developers, the database administrators, can have that hanging off the same disc at a low cost. It's just built off of the existing data, and I haven't seen NetApp come up with anything like that yet.
The Snapshotting, SnapMirror, SnapVault technologies, and just having all of those technologies, are really nice so that we can get a copy, SnapMirror, for example, in the data center, and we can have that spun up really quick. That's NetApp's technology and that's the advantage there.
I have not used BlueX, their cloud management aspect.
We haven't seen any ransomware attacks. Security's pretty closed off. They're not going to tell us if something happens, so it's hard to gain visibility. We'll just know that we've got to do a restore or something. That said, we haven't lost anything.
We do not use any other NetApp cloud services. We just use StorageGRID and the AFF right now. FSX looks intriguing. We'd be willing to test it in the future.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a good product.
The primary use case for XtremIO is for managing business applications, either critical or non-critical. It's mainly used in the banking and finance sectors, but it can be used for other sectors as well. XtremIO is an on-premises solution.
A valuable feature of XtremIO is that, in terms of administration, it's simple and manageable.
If you are looking at flash storage solutions, XtremIO doesn't offer any unique features. Most of my customers are migrating their workload from XtremIO to other formats because of this. If you look at Hitachi or IBM, they have the VSP G series or FlashSystem, these products have many features available. We can scale up and scale out, add multiple nodes, use a global cache, and we don't have the same kinds of features in XtremIO. Because of the lack of unique and key features, most customers nowadays don't want XtremIO.
XtremIO needs to have a global cache. Internal architecture should also be redefined and existing architecture sectioned off. Additional unique features should be added, rather than just common features like replication. Right now, XtremIO is an all-flash array, which is costly. I would like to see them come up with a hybrid model, one that is more cost-effective and may offer more benefits to customers.
Since XtremIO is all-flash, it doesn't currently have NAND support. I would like to see interface support from XtremIO, and at least NAND or SD card support. If they supported a combination of SSDs and SDs, that could be beneficial to some small and medium businesses.
Dell should also provide a data analysis tool, in the case of any issues with internal components like controls, cache, backup drive, etc. It would be helpful to have a tool to troubleshoot performance issues.
A last feature is that XtremIO should have a cloud mobility option, in addition to flash. XtremIO has no data migration features, so these features should be implemented without needing to purchase an additional license or application. XtremIO needs some fine-tuning and these are where I would start.
I have been working with XtremIO for three years.
This solution is stable and has good performance.
The scalability is good. The option to scale out is available on XtremIO.
I had a good experience with Dell EMC's support.
The setup process is simple.
My company proves implementation and maintenance services.
XtremIO is an all-flash array, which means it's a costly solution. When compared with general mid-range storage solutions, this is more expensive. As far as I know, there are no additional costs besides the license.
Other similar options are the Hitachi VSP G series or IBM's FlashSystem. These products have features that are missing from XtremIO.
I recommend XtremIO primarily for big companies, but I would like to see improvements in terms of feature availability and reliability. Also, XtremIO doesn't support the IBM iSeries.
I would rate this solution a five out of ten, right in the middle. It's missing a lot of features and has a lot of room for improvement.
I work with customers all over demark, which consists of small to large companies. I normally make dual data centers with one HPE 3PAR StoreServ on each side. Our customers are mainly running with failover/failback mission-critical systems.
There's a lot of good features. HPE 3PAR StoreServ is similar to Dell EMC. It is a high-speed system with automatic failover/failback, integrated with Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware. These are the main reason for choosing HPE 3PAR StoreServ in Denmark. We have a very good consulting service together with the product.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ could have better integration into the cloud and converged infrastructure.
I have been using HPE 3PAR StoreServ for approximately 13 years.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ is a highly stable solution.
The solution is easy to scale. It is normally used for enterprise companies.
The support from HPE is good but slow. The speed of the resolution could be faster.
We use HP Enterprise, Dell EMC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, and Lenovo.
A lot of the solutions today are very similar. This was not the case five years ago. If some new functionality comes out with, for example, Dell, other vendors will have the same features in a short time.
The initial installation is complicated. The storage administrator needs to be trained or they need to have a contract with someone who can take control over the system. Mainly in Denmark, the customers prefer someone to take control of the system. There are companies that will take care of their systems.
We can do the implementation of the solution.
There is some maintenance that is required for HPE 3PAR StoreServ, such as upgrading firmware software, upgrading the system to a larger system, increasing the capacity, or increasing the performance of the system.
The price of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is reasonable, but buying upgrade licenses are priced very high. There are additional fees.
HPE have have made a new system to substitute with 3PAR. It is the HPE Primera solution. It is a product similar to 3PAR, but it's more converged together with the hybrid system. You can implement it on-premise of the cloud. It has cloud connect functionalities and the market is going that way.
If you want a solution better than HPE 3PAR StoreServ you will be using Primera.
I would advise those wanting to implement this solution to use a partner which has high-scale competencies. They need to be technical experts, both in hardware and software. Customers cannot implement this solution themself.
In the beginning, it was allowed for customers to do the installation, but after one or two years, HPE decided that it was not allowed. It is not allowed today. You need a certified person to do the installation and configuration.
I rate HPE 3PAR StoreServ a nine out of ten.
We are resellers and deploy the solution for our clients as a guard for storage on virtual machines, databases, and their VDI.
The solution allows for easy, useful replication with good features for VPLEX and VIVO.
The solution should include a free process in the HPE portal that uses serial numbers to verify that hardware is genuine. We find Chinese hardware easily but it is difficult to determine if it is genuine which causes problems.
The solution should allow for connection and replication with other storage models such as HPE, IBM, and Hitachi.
I have been using the solution for two years.
The solution is very stable and I rate it a ten out of ten.
The solution is scalable within the storage limitations for each model.
For example, category 380 allows for one device. To scale up, you need to add additional software or hardware like VPLEX.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
Our company handles software issues but uses technical support for hardware replacements.
Due to sanctions in Iran, I am not permitted to contact technical support directly but must submit issue tickets through authorized agents. I am unable to rate technical support because I do not have direct access to them.
The initial setup is very easy.
Depending on the size of the project, we assign two to ten engineers for setup and deployment which can take a total of one to three hours.
We also provide six hours administrative training to our customers via small, on-the-job courses we have created.
Most licenses for the solution are free but upgrades are available when adding additional software or storage.
The solution little or no cost so I rate it a ten out of ten.
Supply of genuine hardware is challenging and there should be more availability in the market. I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
