Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

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.  

On-premises

I work for a Pure partner, so we are actually doing deployment of the arrays at the customer sites. That's one part. The second part is that we help customers to maintain the infrastructure. Not all of them, but many of them.

My favorite feature about Pure Storage FlashArray is definitely the simplicity. In one word, it's simple to install, simple to upgrade, simple to maintain, and simple to manage. All the phases of that word are covered by Pure Storage FlashArray.

The storage footprint has been decreased with Pure Storage FlashArray, and that's also another great feature. They probably have the best reduction algorithms implemented on the market. On the install base we have, we can see an average of around 3-to-1 data reduction. That's well above other vendors we work with.

I think Pure Storage FlashArray can improve the file services that are enabled from factory, as they definitely have room for improvement.

I'm missing a few functions in terms of how they can be improved, but the most important for me would be to enable file services on the stretch cluster. Having two arrays in the stretch cluster would also provide file services.

Their interface, the dashboard, or as they call it, a single management pane of glass, is very intuitive. Sometimes I could imagine there could be more choices visible to the administrator.

Scalability is usually not as scalable as other vendors because they are pretty limited, especially with the low-end models, where you usually cannot scale above the single box. That's something they can work on.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately the last two years in my entire career.

Fortunately, I have not seen any instability, lagging, crashing, or downtime with Pure Storage FlashArray.

Scalability is usually not as scalable as other vendors because Pure Storage FlashArray is pretty limited, especially with the low-end models, where you usually cannot scale above the single box. That's something they can work on.

I have contacted the technical support or customer support of Pure Storage FlashArray many times.

The quality of the support and the speed of the support is exceptional. They never let me down. They usually work pretty fast.

For support, I would give them something between 8 and 9 on a scale from 1 to 10. I would say nine for the support.

Positive

I have used alternatives to Pure Storage FlashArray, such as solutions from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is our second vendor we work with.

The initial deployment for Pure Storage FlashArray was super easy for me. I remember it took approximately one hour to fully deploy it.

You definitely need someone to help you with the case to get it to the rack, so that's definitely not one person's work. All the rest is very easily done by one person.

Similar solutions include those from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

I don't think as a company we have any customer that uses Evergreen architecture and understands how important it is, so we don't use it. I will not comment on that.

I think the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray is the major issue because all the great things come with the price, and a lot of customers simply are not willing to accept it. That's why we also have some cheaper alternatives for them.

Everything needs maintenance, so Pure Storage FlashArray is not an exception. You need to patch it, but usually, it's very straightforward and easy to do.

Pure Storage FlashArray has helped me to decrease or reduce downtime. On other platforms we work with, there's sometimes trouble with the performance management during the upgrades of the array or some failures. In the case of Pure Storage FlashArray, they stick to what they say in the marketing, that they always keep the performance of the array no matter what kind of situation you are with the array. That's a very nice thing.

I would rate this review a 9 out of 10.

On-premises

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.

On-premises

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. 

Public Cloud

Other

Pure Storage FlashArray is used for storage purposes.

The best features of Pure Storage FlashArray are the all-flash NVMe, which is the primary one, along with the increased throughput compared to other products, and absolutely close to zero downtime. Pure Storage provides immediate support during any break fixes or outages. In the past 9-10 years, there have been only three to four incidents with serious downtime, and Pure Storage was able to get back on our feet pretty quickly with each of them.

Having a single management pane of glass view is very important for me, as I have 90 to 100 Pure Storage FlashArray arrays. The Pure1 console allows me to access, monitor, and administer all the Pure Storage FlashArray arrays, making it absolutely essential to have the single pane of view. This is a handy way to manage all arrays under one single pane, and this likely goes for other customers as well.

Regarding downtime reduction, Pure Storage FlashArray has reduced downtime by about 98%.

Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to enhance this aspect compared to other products. Even though Pure Storage FlashArray has started working on automation, I believe small issues should be fixed automatically without requiring manual intervention from me.

When I say automation, I mean that Pure Storage FlashArray should be able to auto-recover from small failures, as I do not see it doing this right now. For instance, even if there is a port failure, it requires my intervention. At some point, Pure Storage FlashArray should be able to auto-repair and auto-resolve many of these things, unless it is definitely a hardware replacement, which I understand.

I work with American Express and Pure Storage FlashArray is used a lot. I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for the past 9-10 years.

Overall, Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped decrease my storage footprint, as I have other solutions. It did not consolidate the other solutions, since we do not work with one storage vendor. We have multiple vendors and products, starting with 30 arrays and now at 90 arrays, which is a pretty big leap we have made. At the same time, it did not encourage us to decrease our footprints on the other products, as we have multiple products for multiple purposes.

For 90 arrays for Pure Storage FlashArray only, we have 20 plus engineers using the solution.

Regarding support for Pure Storage FlashArray, I rate it a nine.

Positive

We have experience with other solutions such as Dell, NetApp, and HP. We do not have IBM, but we have Isilon, which is also Dell, along with some object storage and S3 compatible storage.

In terms of deployment experience with Pure Storage FlashArray, I find it to be pretty easy.

Deploying one array takes three to four hours if the rack and cabling are in place. However, a week is a standard time because we have to do a lot of rack and cabling and physical infrastructure as well.

We handle a lot of upgrades ourselves, but if there is something critical, the vendor comes into the picture. In terms of dependability, we are at 80-20, with 80% of the work done by ourselves and 20% requiring Pure Storage FlashArray's help.

Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped decrease the total cost of ownership.

Regarding pricing, I think we are around eight on this scale. When I first started with Pure Storage FlashArray, I would say the product was very cheap compared to other storage products. Starting around 10-15 years ago, and obviously to balance in the market, Pure Storage FlashArray had to increase their cost. While I still find it very cost-effective, prices have increased a lot in the past 10 to 12 years. Along with that, there are new capabilities, so I would go with eight.

In evaluating Pure Storage FlashArray against other disk and flash storages in terms of performance and power, I think it is on par with the biggest player in the market, which is Dell EMC. There are cheaper software storage solutions available in the market. Therefore, if Pure Storage FlashArray can work on the costing, it will be good for end-users like me.

We are actually using the self-service portal for upgrades. We started doing this for the past one year and are yet to make a transition to Evergreen. It is in the roadmap to use Evergreen because Pure Storage FlashArray has not actually given us the complete view for Evergreen, since a lot of our products are being onboarded on Pure Storage FlashArray. As of now, we are doing the self-service upgrade and it is in the roadmap to have Evergreen onboarded.

Regarding how Pure Storage FlashArray has helped with decreasing downtime, in terms of how it has decreased my storage footprint, I am unsure if I am referring to storage footprints on other products or not.

Pure Storage FlashArray does not require maintenance such as updates, upkeeping, or patching. It was a partner purchase, and I was not actually involved in the purchasing process, as we have a dedicated team. We have a long-standing relationship with Pure Storage FlashArray, so I think it always goes pretty smoothly. As we talk, we are still in the process of buying multiple Pure Storage FlashArray products, so the process has been absolutely smooth and the experience has been good.

I would recommend Pure Storage FlashArray to other users because, first, the speed that I get with Pure Storage FlashArray is not remotely possible with any other product at this price range, and second, the support is absolutely fantastic. For P1 scenarios, we get on a call with an engineer, and the engineers are mostly available throughout the day, whether it is a weekday or a weekend. When we need someone to join the webex, Pure Storage FlashArray joins in very quickly, which is not possible with the other products. We prefer Pure Storage FlashArray, which is why we have a lot of them. Pure Storage FlashArray is the primary solution at the moment for SAN and block storage. I would rate this review a 9.

On-premises

Other

The main use case for this solution is block storage. I deal with the transportation logistics industry.

It overperforms both in terms of storage capacity and throughput, and bandwidth capability. The single management pane of glass is pretty useful, and it's nice to be able to get a snapshot of the environment. 

We have a dedicated array for our data warehouse, for our SQL Server workloads, which has allowed us to empower the SQL team to give more frequent updates to the business so they can make data-driven decisions.

Based on the last Pure Storage FlashArray that we purchased, the only thing that could be made better would be the price.

I have been dealing with Pure Storage FlashArray for about two and a half years.

The stability of Pure Storage FlashArray is extremely good, as we have never had any issues during many code upgrades, and the controllers have been resilient.

Whether Pure Storage FlashArray is a scalable solution depends on the product you're in; we ended up buying a second array. Theoretically, we can do controller upgrades and get into a larger chassis, but there was a limit to how far we could go without needing to do a full migration, so I do not have direct experience with that.

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

Positive

We previously used Dell EMC as a different solution before switching to Pure Storage. The main reason we switched from Dell to Pure was that the management was more difficult, and we needed faster storage, specifically an all-flash solution.

It was quite simple to get online. We were fortunate that our account manager was able to come out and perform the array initialization before our go-live date. So, when we stuck it in a rack and got it online, it was already ready to go. The initial setup was straightforward. 

It's hard to determine the return on investment with Pure Storage FlashArray, as the last array we bought replaced the primary one we had run out of space on, and we moved where the SQL workload had been shipped over. Our current workload, particularly the SQL use case, would not be possible on mechanical storage, and the ease of use for the small team for the array is important for supporting that workload.

The pricing and licensing are straightforward, but I do consider it to be expensive.

I cannot say how Pure Storage FlashArray compares versus other disk or flash storage solutions in terms of sustainability, as it is not something we were interested in. In terms of cost, I believe Pure Storage FlashArray was probably competitive with other all-flash solutions, but the leading competitor had more complex management.

Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease our organization's storage footprint, as far as the physical storage or the space it's taking up in the rack. Our physical storage has not decreased because we have actually increased the number of arrays since moving to Pure, but our overall amount of data has also increased. Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped to decrease the total cost of ownership, and I believe our total cost has probably gone up, but that's balanced by our increased amount of data and number of use cases. I cannot say how Pure Storage FlashArray differs in terms of power. 

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten. It’s really good. The only negative experience I had was related to getting a replication figured out. We encountered a couple of issues with that once, but those problems were compounded by issues with our network architecture. 

On-premises

I use Pure Storage FlashArray for backend storage in our VMware environment.

The most valuable features I have experienced are the centralized management and redundancy under speed of the right disk. Everything is in one place with the entire dashboard, all alerts, and usage reports. I can expand the drive and take backups at the VM level to Pure Storage backup files seamlessly. I have also observed minimal outages.

The pricing needs to be improved as they offer very high budgeting prices. Searching is a big challenge in Pure Storage FlashArrays, especially when trying to restore a VM. I can only search manually, which is a required improvement.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for almost five years.

It was not difficult to deploy. I had help from Pure Storage and was able to migrate our storage easily.

I have not seen any instability. It's good.

The support is good, and the response time is satisfactory.

Neutral

I used Hitachi and EMC in previous projects.

The initial setup was easy. It was a project that took around four to five months because we had small sites that needed integration.

It required an entire team for deployment. Around four people were involved.

I don't have the billing details right now, but the pricing is high.

I like Nutanix better from the presentations I have seen, but I did not work directly with it.

On the scale from 1 to 10, I rate Pure Storage FlashArray nine. I have contacted technical support when there was a data restore challenge, and the support quality was good.

On-premises

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.