Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We have bare-metal boxes now so we are thinking of going Cloud. We have to have a hybrid solution because we're closer to the financial industry and we have regulations that require us to have on-premise systems. In that case, we would go with Pure Storage.

Now we can store more for a cheaper price as opposed to paying for larger devices and larger rack spaces which get outdated sooner and which we'd have to change every two years. It simplifies storage for us. 

There has been a reduction in the total cost of ownership. We did a cost analysis before buying Pure Storage. Now with Pure Storage, our developers work a lot faster and more efficiently which has definitely improved our productivity.

The most valuable features are the speed, cost, and that we get the best value for the money. 

It is stable. 

We switched solutions because we were looking to expand our storage and we looked at various options. We were having an issue with our previous solution in that we had to continuously upgrade solutions and had restrictions of creations of new environments. 

We used an integrator for the deployment.

Dell EMC was another vendor we looked at. 

I would rate this solution an eight. To make it a ten it would have to be a little cheaper. We want to restrict the data set that's required to be on-premise to be kept on-premise and the rest to be moved to the cloud so that we just pay for what we use. 

If you're looking into Pure Storage I would definitely recommend Pure Storage if you have a need of having something on-premise. 

Since we're a database shop, we primarily do databases on Pure. Everything else follows from that.

We are doing a project in tandem with Boeing to develop a security solution for their Oracle databases. We've been doing it in the VMware virtual solutions lab, which is back-ended by Pure Storage. It's a very complex project. Pure made it fast enough that we could cycle through the things that we needed to cycle through to get it exactly right. We were able to do so a lot of times, to rev it enough to get it refined to where the process was exactly right every time. There's no way we would have had time to rev it that much had it been on anything slower.

It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues. As long as you don't max out the bandwidth of your connectivity, your Fibre Channel, then it doesn't matter. That has pushed the bottleneck down to the connectivity to the storage, as opposed to the different spindle groups on your storage. That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit.

We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure Storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates. Not only that, it helps dramatically speed the read coming back in, because you don't have to read it 400 times. Actually, the write doesn't hurt anything either because the write goes in once and then it gets deduplicated and that's that. It does help speed I/O because then everything is coming right off the front end of cache. Certainly, in terms of space, it's probably the most helpful.

1. It's really fast
2. It's fall-off-the-log easy to use. 

That is the strongest selling point. The ease of use is really nice.

In terms of the Predictive Performance Analytics, it certainly contributes to better overall performance and I'm a total fan of that. I've worked with some other flash storage vendors and the one that has the best overall offering, certainly, is Pure, the Analytics is part of it, whereas some of the other storage vendors haven't had as strong an offering in predictive analytics.

The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless. 

I'm assuming that the VVol implementation got fixed in the last little while. We ran into that last February, so it's been about eight months. I suspect that they probably have it resolved by now. Other than that, it's bulletproof.

We have never, ever run up against a bottleneck. It's a piece of cake to scale it. You plug in more and you keep going until you max out your bandwidth and then you put another storage controller in, a Fibre Channel controller, and go some more.

The guys in technical support are great. They're on the money. Our client, Chapman University, is on a first-name basis with the Pure support guys. You get really good interactive support from the Pure team.

I think our client, Chapman University, was on Dell EMC before they went to Pure. What I'm about to say are some of my impressions, I don't know that I know all the details that went into the decision. I think that they were just done with Dell EMC and that Dell EMC's all-flash solution was an afterthought, where Pure's was engineered from the ground up to be all-flash, as opposed to bolted on after the fact.

From what I saw at Chapman University, they wanted the increase in performance plus the decrease in power utilization and space and cooling in their data center. That dramatically mitigated a whole bunch of data center issues they had before. It didn't take nearly as much power to power it or to cool it and they reduced their footprint significantly.

I saw a little bit of the initial setup at Chapman University, and it didn't look all that complicated. It appeared to be pretty straightforward.

There Is ROI has come in saving personnel time, a lot of time. That pushes into the DBA staff, the DevTest staff, and the production folks, because we got their stuff to run 50 percent faster. We took it off the old physical hardware and virtualized it and got it to go 50 percent faster than the physical hardware running against Pure Storage.

That made it easy to rapidly provision DevTest environments. Things like that, that used to take hours and hours and hours, can now be automated down to one click of the button by the requester and another one or two by the approver. Then it just runs in the background and it's done in a couple of minutes.

It's hard to quantify the reduction in the total cost of ownership, but it's there, absolutely, particularly in the VS lab context and the channel context as well. It's so much faster, that not only has it eliminated the time that DBAs would have spent otherwise, doing tasks that take a long time to do - things like backup and the like - but it has also helped on the front end because you can do development and DevTest provisioning so much more quickly. It's hard to roll that into traditional TCO, but it's certainly part of it when you look at the entire organization.

Regarding finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations, I'm not sure I could quantify that.

Do it. I have zero reservations about recommending Pure to anyone who is looking for some really good all-flash. Pure is the way to go, for sure.

All-flash is great whenever you can get it but I really like the Pure offering. It's very robust. I heard the "chief scientist," the brains of the deal, explain how some of that stuff works at the bit and byte level and, being a computer science major, I thought that was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Pure works pretty well as is. I've been so busy using all the good stuff that it already does. I'm sure it can be improved, but we haven't got that far yet. We've been milking what it already does.

I hesitate to give it a ten out of ten because I'm sure it can be improved somehow. In terms of how it could be improved, I don't know. I'm pretty happy with it as it stands. Pure is the best thing that I have seen in that space so far, hands-down, bar none.

Pure Storage FlashArray has significantly improved our data center performance. It handles high workloads efficiently, providing better performance in the environment. With increased storage capacity, it has led to improved overall system performance. The tool's technology is a standout feature. It has helped me reduce storage costs by 15 percent. 

The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

I have used Dell EMC before. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive. 

I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

I work for a company that offers outsourcing services for IT solutions. I work in system support and we are resellers of Pure Storage FlashArray. 

I'm a Pure Storage fan because I think this solution offers great performance. It provides fast access, is user-friendly and it's easy for us to support this product. The product is also very powerful with high-speed duplication which makes it easier to manage things. I understand that there is a new version of system operation that includes a self-protect configuration to avoid getting hacked. It's crucial for us here in Brazil where we need to be safe. 

The only feature the solution lacks is self-backup. If you're working with different processors, you need to install different software tools to back up. But if it were directly available, it would make things very easy. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable, we haven't had any problems in five years. 

The solution is scalable. 

We have a close relationship with customer support and they are good. 

Positive

The initial setup is very easy, there aren't any problems. 

I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

Access speed and power consumption are most valuable.

It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable.

We did not have to do that, but it looks like it is.

It is very good.

It is our first solid-state array.

It is very easy.

It could always be lower, but it's okay.

I would advise others to have a go at it because it has worked fine for us. I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for general block storage. Usually, the storage product owners are the users.

It's just very easy for general block storage. Generally, the ease of use is what customers comment on. It's very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

Scalability is possible. You can expand the solution.

The stability and reliability are great.

Technical support has been helpful in general. 

The solution needs an integrated NAS platform, file platform. The file functionality could be better.

I've been dealing with the solution for a couple of years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We find the product to be quite scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

The solution is extensively used. Likely usage will increase in the future. 

Technical support is great. They are helpful and responsive. We're quite satisfied with the level of support they offer customers. 

I used to work with Hitachi and switched to this product for ease of use and for performance.

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex. 

The actual startup and deployment take about half a day.

From an ROI standpoint, if you consider compression and de-duplication and all that, you get a pretty good ratio.

The pricing of the product is very competitive to others in the market for Flash and NVMe storage. That covers the cost of hardware and support.

I'm a reseller.

I'd advise potential users to try it out and consider it as an option.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten based on the overall performance, scalability, and reliability.

The experience has been very good so far for the company. It's very fast and it's very easy to configure the storage. 

It's very efficient. 

The snapshot feature is great. It's very easy to apply. You can see present error applications by going back using snapshot. It's very good for the company.

We haven't had any problems with it in the time we've used it.

I like the user interface.

Support has been helpful.

We have no issues with pricing.

Integration is easy.

The initial setup is simple. It's easy to deploy using the whitepapers on offer. 

The compression is quite good compared to other options.

We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups.

I've been using the solution for three years. 

The stability is good and we haven't had any issues with it. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is possible. It's pretty simple to just add more storage as needed. We plan to do so next year. Our impression is that it will be an easy process.

We have about 2,000 users at this time. It may even be as high as 10,000 when you factor in academic users. 

Technical support has been good. We haven't had any issues so far with them. We are satisfied with the level of service. 

In the past, we had an IBM storage device, however, when we compare this old storage with the Flash Pure, it's just so much better.

The initial setup is very simple. We have experience in using the storage and using the new Flash Pure Storage is even easier. It's quite an intuitive solution, which makes the setup process a breeze. 

It takes about six months to move from old to new storage. 

There are seven people on half that can handle the deployment process. 

Our organization did use an IT consultant to assist us with the implementation. 

The pricing is okay. We pay to license on a yearly basis. It's just a standard fee with no extra costs. 

We are a user and a customer.

While right now we are using an on-premises deployment, we likely will move to the cloud.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We are a solution provider and the Pure Storage FlashArray is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I have installed three of them in the past month.

The primary use case for this product is high-performance storage.

This is the best all-flash storage array on the market. They were the first brand that provided access directly from CPU to memory to disk.

This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve.

The Pure Storage FlashArray is very stable.

This is a scalable product but not as much as the Infinidat InfiniBox. That solution is more expandable.

I have approximately 20 years of experience with enterprise solutions. These include various hyper-converged systems, all-flash storage systems, business continuity, and disaster recovery solutions for data assurance.

My experience is with products from a lot of different vendors. These include IBM, Dell EMC, Pure, Infinidat, and others.

The best features come included without any additional cost.

The InfiniBox is more expandable than Pure FlashArray. InfiniBox is more for big data than the Pure product.

The suitability of this solution depends on the customer's environment. Depending on the use case, we propose the right product. Pure Storage is not better than InfiniBox and InfiniBox is not better than Pure Storage.

In comparing products, I would rate Pure FlashArray an eight out of ten, InfiniBox a seven out of ten, Dell EMC products receive a six out of ten, and all of the other all-flash storage systems that I have experience with would be rated a five out of ten.

With PowerMax, there is a big difference in cost when you start adding more features.

The Pure Storage solution has only two active controllers and one passive controller. InfiniBox has three active controllers, and PowerMax can have up to six active storage controllers.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.