Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

It is for storage.

It gives us capacity planning.

It saves us on administrative work.

The most valuable feature is its speed.

It is easy to use and manage.

The time to value of the solution is pretty quick.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

The technical support is great.

The technology that we had was outdated. We were using HPE SAN.

The initial setup was straightforward. We just followed the information on the screen: click, click, click. 

The start up process is very easy.

We haven't seen ROI yet.

The licensing is $100,000.

Darktrace, which we are also using.

I would recommend buying it.

As a customer, we use them as our Tier 1 storage arrays. It has been amazing. It's extremely fast, reliable, and resilient.

We have done a lot of different things with Pure Storage. We have included some real-time analytics that we developed for our eCommerce website and run those on FlashBlade. We used FlashBlade as it was the only storage platform fast enough to keep up with that data flow.

We are able monitor I/O, latency, read/write, capacity used, and all the different metrics that the Pure gives us the ability to monitor.

It definitely affected the ability to capacity plan, but in a good way. We have all the visibility into the capacity, forecasting, and all the metrics that the solution provides us with.

It takes drastically less time to manage and administer the solution. We would have about three or four people who were dedicated just to work on storage with only one guy who could actually do the Hitachi replication, because it used old archaic technology called HORCM files. In the Pure Storage realm, this is not true. All our junior partners can administer the storage arrays. It is simple and easy to use. We don't have to dedicate a whole team of full time people to work on it.

When I was a customer, the most valuable feature is the ease of use. 

It is the whole package: The ease of use, cost, and the ability for it to perform at a level that traditional storage arrays just can't compete with.

It simplifies storage. In the old days, you had to go and decide what ports were going to go to what workloads, which was a lot of work. You had to set up replication. Now, everything is just a few clicks away. It is set up exactly like you would want it to be. That is what it does. It simplifies and optimizes the solution.

I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support. I am not super familiar with all the different NAS protocols that they run on their box, but there could be some improvements made on SMB CIFS side.

Some of the FlashBlade protocols could use a little love. There are obviously some new enhancements. There is no dedupe on the FlashBlade. It is compression only. There is no replication. So, Pure is going to try to partner that product with ObjectEngine to bring in some of those features, and I'm not sure how all of that will work out. I'm not familiar with ObjectEngine yet, but we'll see how it goes.

The stability is great. We have had no issues. We have never had an issue or outage that has been related to Pure Storage.

We decided how big of a failure domain that we wanted to entertain. We decided to split three into what could have been one single controller interface system. However, at some point, if we lose 500 terabytes, what does that do to our company? Now, we have things like active clusters which mitigate a lot of these issues, but people still need to be wary about how they design their failure domains.

The support is great. The support has been amazing.

We thought we we going to go with the new version of Hitachi, and everything was going to fine: Lift, shift and replace with the new one. What we started doing was exploring the marketplace, then figuring out, "Is this the best option for us? Could it be simpler?" Because the Hitachi was a tank, but it was not simple to use. It performed very well, but it did not perform like an all-flash array does.

The analytics are great. Previously, we had Hitachi solutions, and it was very hard to understand what was happening with the array. One of the great things about the Pure Storage solution is you can instantly know just by logging in or checking Pure1. You can do it on your phone. Hitachi doesn't have anything like that. It's amazing that you can get this type of visibility from your storage array. All the analytics feed up into Pure1, and you can just see them whenever you want.

It used to be that people would buy Pure Storage arrays and they would use it for a single instance application, like an Oracle database. We never did that. We used the product to replace our entire giant Hitachi G1000 storage arrays. Everything that we had went to the Pure Storage arrays. We had three giant M70s that are now X90s which house everything the company was running when I was a customer.

The initial setup was very simple. They came in before lunch, and we had it up after lunch. Then, we were already starting to move workloads to it after that.

We have upgraded firmware controllers and physical controllers. It works exactly like they say it does, which is the best part. You don't even notice. Business runs as usual. You can replace a controller, it fails over to the other controller, and everything runs smooth as butter.

We used Sirius Computer Solutions for the deployment. They have been our partner and VAR for a long time. They know our environment very well and were with us every step of the way.

From a footprint perspective, we used to have big giant racks of storage on both sides of the data center. We would have to plan and have a hole where the future one would go. Now, we don't have to do that at all. They are just sitting in the rack right next to it.

We have a seen a reduction in TCO. It is definitely a cost-effective solution for us. We have seen ROI.

We have an Evergreen Storage subscription. We like it a lot. We recently upgraded from the M-series to the X-series FlashArrays. We used the Evergreen Storage solution and expanded our footprint.

We evaluated Hitachi, who was our current vendor. We evaluated Dell EMC for the VMAX and XtremIO. Then, we evaluated Pure Storage. 

We are also a NetApp customer, so we evaluated them. However, we don't run any block storage on NetApp, only files.

Do a fair evaluation. Be objective, look at the different technologies, and use the technologies. See what they look like and what you will to have to deal with when you're using the products. It's easy to make a decision based on bullet points, but it's hard to make a decision on actual use of the actual technology.

We are a Chef shop, so we integrate it into Chef and VMware, vRA, and vRO. We also use all of the plug-ins. The integration is easy, simple, and seamless.

For most of the workloads, the solution’s inline deduplication and compression has performed fine. We had a few workloads that were already precompressed, so when you put those workloads on top of a storage system that does compression and dedupe, they don't compress again. So, they tend to eat up a little storage. Therefore, we specifically targeted some third-party applications, like IDERA SQL Safe, and tried to remove them from the environment. This way Pure Storage could then compress and dedupe those SQL backup files.

We are from Texas. Power is like ten cents a kilowatt. Texans apparently don't care that power is cheap. From a power requirement, it definitely has used less power, but we didn't use that as a metric to look at.

Biggest lesson learned: Why didn't I switch sooner?

The primary use case is for any server and database that has high I/O demands on disk.

It is noticeably easier to manage than other appliances that we have.

Our Pure Storage unit is really small, so we just move what we have to it.

• Speed
• Scalability
• The cost

We do have an issue with the vCenter integration. Pure Storage says it has a lot of free space, but vCenter says its completely full. This is because their dedupes are saved as space, but Vcenter still detects the disk as completely full. So, we do have an issue with that. Therefore, we would like to see improvements with the way it integrates with vCenter for picking up dedupe.

The stability is good. It hasn't gone down since we've had it.

From what we've been told, it looks like it would be really scalable if we purchased more. The licensing and scalability patterns are really cost-effective. We don't have to rebuy things in different tiers to just continue on, so we like that.

The technical support is really good. They are really responsive. For the call that we had, we had a call back within 15 to 20 minutes.

We noticed a dramatic increase in application performance when moving it from NetApp to Pure Storage.

Pure Storage seemed more cost-effective than NetApp. When we did our POC, we saw big performance gains between all-flash on NetApp and all-flash on Pure Storage. It was significantly better.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. They set it all up for us.

They pretty much manage the firmware upgrades for us, and they've gone well so far.

We dealt directly with Pure Storage engineers for the deployment, and our experience was good.

We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership.

It is cheaper than NetApp.

There were several vendors we looked at. We also looked at Nimble, but we did not do at PoC of them.

We just liked the way Pure was pitched to us overall.

Get a PoC and see how it works out for you. See if you see an improvement with your apps and go from there.

We really like it. It is really speedy.

We use virtual servers on there.

We have tons of capacity on it.

It is fast and reliable. It works. 

For three years, we haven't had any trouble with it. It is reliable. Once it is installed, off it goes.

The scalability is handy. You can just add more drives. They automatically synchronize. You don't have to do anything but snap them in there. It is pretty easy.

I can't even remember dealing with technical support. 

We had tons of old physical servers and needed the storage room. It was more cost-effective to set this solution up for running our VM environment off it.

The solution is bigger and faster than what we had before.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and simple. 

We used Compunet for the deployment. Our experience with them was good.

The solution has reduced our power usage.

The solution could be cheaper.

There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it.

I would recommend to go with this solution.

We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless. We've never had any trouble with it.

Flash drives make an amazing difference.

We attach it to a Cisco UCS for VMware.

The product has helped with speed. Previously, on disk, we would see latency issues with our SQL boxes. With Pure Storage, we don't see any latency or IOPS. It has been a very seamless integration.

• Resiliency
• Speed: It's fast. It's like I don't notice anything. 
• It's very easy to use. The GUI is simplistic, which can be nice.

The predictive performance analytics are great. I get everything I need to know: IOPS, latency, etc. The tech support works with me if I have any questions that need to be answered.

The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it.

I would like to have better training. I would like to have an hour class or more online training.

It is very stable. 

The only thing that we have ever had an issue with is connecting to the Cloud Mediator. Because we run in an active cluster situation, it has to connect to the cloud. Recently, we lost connection to the cloud, so it sent us alerts, making us all worried that our active clusters would separate. However, when the time came, it worked really well, and we were fine. Then, tech support fixed it, and it was better.

With scalability, you just add more shelves and buy new controllers. If you have the Evergreen Storage subscription, then you get new controllers every year. 

I can buy more storage, if needed. However, with the dedupe and compression, it will be a while before I need to.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to setup because everything was brand new. We had brand new Cisco UCS servers with the FIs that plugged right in. It was seamless.

We have experienced an upgrade of firmware controllers. The process is very easy.

Before my space was a whole entire rack. Now, it is 4U or 6U. Space has been nice, because now I can put other things in that rack.

The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years.

I would recommend Pure Storage. We have already done the research.

I could plan to do capacity on my Pure1 storage, and the deduplication works very well with it. For VMware, it has been a humongous savings. Once we get our file system onto it, we may see the dedupe work better, but we haven't got that far yet.

We have integrated the solution with VMware, which is great.

Our compression rates are 4:8:1. We are using it for VMware and our Oracle solution. It's a little higher on the Oracle solution. However, it has been great. 

For the IOPS, I don't think we ever really hit anywhere near what we thought we were going to hit. You always think you need more than you need.

I have found the whole deduplication and compression process enlightening.

We have all-flash for our SQL environment.

The product added speed to our SQL environment, so we receive a bit better compression. It did give us a little more space when I moved my SQL environment off the competitor onto Pure Storage. Therefore, I obtained a bit of space and saw an increase in performance.

They have really good baked in analytics to show you trends for growth history, so it does help with future planning for data growth.

I like the five-year controller upgrade, easy-to-use interface, and performance.

They do a good job at ease of use for the interface. I don't have a big team, so its easy user interface has helped us be able to manage our data better.

I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates.

The product has not gone down in a year. So, I would say that it is stable. We haven't seen any high spikes in read/write latency.

Scalability seems pretty simplistic. You just buy more drives and slap them in the box, then tack it onto your current storage pool. It seems like it would be pretty easy to scale out.

However, I don't know about scaling up. I don't think they do extra data shelves, so you would have to buy a whole new unit.

We have only used the technical support for upgrades. They respond very quickly and are efficient at what they do.

A local VAR was talking about our challenges and some different solutions to take care of it. Pure just seemed like it could fit the bill.

We have Tegile and HPE 3PAR in our environment.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We were about to get the installation done within two hours.

We have done a firmware upgrade for the OS. We clicked the button to place the call in with support. They remote in with a time that we agreed upon to upgrade the solution. We have never had any problems with it.

We used the reseller for deployment, who came in and worked with our storage guy to deploy the solution. The reseller company was Sirius Computer Solutions. My local rep and his engineer were the ones who came in to install it, and it was a perfect experience. They are whom we have always bought storage through. We have never had any problems with them.

We watch latency, then our I/Os. We care about how much we're pushing through the box, then what latency the box for read/writes is hitting. I have seen a decrease in read/write latency since moving to Pure Storage by seven milliseconds.

Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year.

We looked into a couple other vendors. I am currently still using one of the vendor. Then, with Pure, we looked into some solutions from Dell EMC or HPE. Pure seemed to be a bit more cost-efficient. It also had better reviews from what we could find online and with references.

Because they do the compression and dedupe on the backside, I have seen better numbers of the Pure Storage box than on the other competitors that I have in my environment.

Ensure you are looking at all aspects of what the device can do, what your company needs are, and try to see how Pure Storage can meet all of your company's current needs.

We have Pure Storage integrated with our vCenter. The integration was very simple and gives us a lot better insight into our virtual environment.

Pure Storage hasn't increased nor decrease our ability to manage storage, because the solution that we are moving from had a very easy to use interface too.

I don't really use the predictive performance analytics.

Biggest lesson learned: Longevity planning. Pure Storage, with their five-year upgrade for controllers, has helped me feel comfortable. Even as the company grows, I will still have a storage solution which will fit the environment.

Our primary use case is SAP. 

Its ease of use has allowed us to stand up landscapes faster.

The most valuable feature is its upgradeability.

Pure Storage helps to streamline storage because of its simplicity.

What it needs to do is work a little closer with solutions, like VMware, so it understands the particular workloads that are on it. Today, it does not understand the applications which are running against it. 

We have never had an issue.

We just doubled it in size it was painless.

The technical support is fantastic and proactive.

Our previous platform did not support SAP.

The driver for us to implement Pure Storage in our SAP landscape was that it was SAP certified.  Additionally, it had really good numbers and reviews.

We plugged it in, and in an hour, we were using it. It is very straightforward and simple.

We deployed it in-house.

We did not displace any other technology with the Pure Storage purchase so it's doesn't have a traditional dollar ROI.  From an intangible standpoint the lack of care and feeding is notable and freed up the Storage Team to do other things.  

Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs.

We looked at Pure Storage, EMC and HPE. We chose Pure Storage because of its innovation.

I would recommend the product.

The primary use case is big data. 

SAP is very important for our business. We are running our management system on SAP, so it's very critical. We are running SAP S/4HANA and other ERP modules. We run our config on-premise.

The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data.

The stability is very good.

The scalability is very good.

The technical support is okay, but could be improved.

We switched because the performance was bad with our previous solution, and it was expensive.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed it in-house.

We have seen latency improvements.

We also evaluated EMC and HPE.

We really needed high performance with large amounts of data. We weren't happy with other vendors, and the speed and the volume of data that they could store, handle, and compress.

It has been quite satisfactory in performance and scalability. Since we adopted this only a year ago, we will see what happens in the long term, if they will keep up with their quality.