David Ivorra - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Lynx View
Real User
Top 10
A great enterprise solution helpful with performance, reliability and cost
Pros and Cons
  • "We find the ease of usability and setup valuable."
  • "Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for this solution is focused on enterprise solutions, a support solution that needs either performance, reliability or cost. For example, most companies have databases, virtualized workloads, or VDI workloads. So with those kinds of environments like the Block Storage, it is perfect because it switches very well with the cost, performance, and reliability ratio. Additionally, it's easy to deploy to benefit the IT team in the management costs.

What is most valuable?

We find the ease of usability and setup valuable.

What needs improvement?

Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions. The amount of storage the customers receive is approximately 20% higher when you compare it with similar solutions. So it can be a problem when you are positioning the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for seven years as partners and are currently working with the latest version.

Buyer's Guide
Pure Storage FlashArray
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Pure Storage FlashArray. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is highly scalable, but scalability is sometimes undervalued, but everyone can scale. In the case of Pure Storage FlashArray, our experience with upgrading the capacity only involved changing the controllers. So, for example, if you have 20 terabytes and want to go to 100, you only have to change the controllers when paying for that storage capacity upgrade. You can also include the controllers, and the controllers' upgrade does not impact production. You can do it without stopping, so the upgrade of the machines can start with the smallest to the biggest machine that can deploy up to five petabytes. If you cannot do it smoothly, you don't have to stop production and will not have a disruption.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience with customer service and support has been very good. It is very good even though they are still growing, and they are very responsive to issues. They promise a 15-minute response time and are very good at keeping that promise.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. Two engineers are usually tasked with deployment.

What was our ROI?

Our return on investment is good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing cost is close to zero. Every new function or functionality is included when paying the annual maintenance. Our customers value it because the maintenance is always the same regardless of whether it's the first year, the seventh or the tenth year. Additionally, the products use the same operative system with new capabilities, like ransomware and safe mode. Another thing that is quite nice to have is outstanding performance. They can provide a lot of performance, so there is not a lot of difference. Still, efficiency is something customers value because the compression can be up to twice of the second competitor. I rate licensing costs a ten out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by improving upgrade prices.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
There are no bugs, it just works and it's stable
Pros and Cons
  • "Technical support has been amazing."
  • "A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."

What is our primary use case?

We make use of the solution primarily for storage and DR replication.

We use the most recent stable version, as the latest one is still in a beta stage and too new to be employed.

What is most valuable?

V-Vault is pretty new and its implementation is superior to that offered by nearly any vendor. It's easier to configure than most others and to import the V-Vault. A separate working machine is not required. 

What needs improvement?

I can't think of too many features that need improvement. There are no bugs, it just works and it's stable. The graphical interface is perfect and really simple. Someone who understands storage can figure it out within a couple of minutes. There are really no drawbacks.

The only minor issues that come to mind are that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad. Also, the solution should be cheaper.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for the past 10 years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. It's superb. We've done upgrades in which multiple controllers were involved and, while changing from one model of the array to another, a single controller was removed. It is swapped out and a new one introduced. Once it's stable they proceed to the next one. We have never experienced an outage in any of the three companies in which I've employed the solution. Even when the controller went down, the arrays remained up.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support has been amazing. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who is not super knowledgeable. The only time I entertained any doubts, whatsoever, is when V-Vaults first came out. Certain people were not very familiar with it, but this was short lived. As we were extremely early adopters of V-Vault, training was provided fairly quickly. While the general tech support was not up to snuff, within a month or two they were all trained. Since then, there have been no issues to report. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In this company we used an IBM V 7000 and in a previous one, an EMC VMAX.

When comparing the solution to an EMC array or an IBM B7000, both of which I've used, Pure Storage FlashArray is light years ahead of everybody else. I've used a variety of these solutions and many of them are very complicated. 

How was the initial setup?

Only two weeks ago we set up a new solution in a new location that we're building. It's pretty straightforward. There are certain internal matters that only the vendor can handle. But, that's fairly common with most good storage arrays. Besides this, it's really easy. The vendor is really simple to work with. One need only provide him with a list of the IP's he uses for management and replication. 

I did not do the initial storage myself, as I'm in Chicago and it is handled in Omaha, Nebraska. I did have to coordinate everything, however. We were sent a form to fill out with the name and IP use. At this point, the arrival of a technician is scheduled, who asks where the rack should be placed. At this point, it is racked, cabled up and all the initial IP configurations are introduced. This is the point at which the person can take over and start carving out the ones he wants or creating the V-Vault, should he so desire. The process is really simple.

The technician's visit lasted an hour-and-a-half. I've been doing this for a long time. So, perhaps, it took me another hour to configure everything, although the level of involvement can play a factor. We created two only and a V-Vault. Like I said, it's really easy.

What was our ROI?

The solution absolutely provides us a return on our investment. I've worked with other storage arrays such as one that IBM was promoting to us. It was the company's first attempt at doing an all-flash array and it bore much similarity to Pure Storage FlashArray. It took us a week to get it up and running. We added some development servers and the whole array went down. We lost everything. Such experiences really make one appreciate the stability and thoughtfulness that goes into the engineering and redundancy and scalability of the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You could say that the licensing cost involves a one-time fee, at which point support can be renewed in what I believe to be three-year blocks. As long as a person keeps his support current he can upgrade to the newer version of the array, which can be done once every three to four years.

The solution could be cheaper.

We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee. Something that's really awesome about the solution is that the cost is all-inclusive of the features. There is no need to pay for replication or for any additional features. A person is entitled to employ these when they come out.

What other advice do I have?

In my present company we have around 500 users, but my previous one had closer to 10,000.

In the current company, there are five or six of us that are responsible for overall maintenance and we handle everything. This is in contrast to the company before last in which there were three of us who handled nothing but our four different storage arrays. To be honest, Pure Storage FlashArray does not leave us with much to do. Once it's set up, it just runs on its own and only requires the occasional checkup. It frees us up to do real work.

My advice to others is that this solution is the best available. For someone who's not a storage admin, the support is awesome and help is provided gladly for unfamiliar areas. What's nice about the solution is that it very rarely breaks, which vastly cuts down on downtime. There is much redundancy and support is super proactive. This means that if a part goes bad they will generally know about it before we would. It's such a clean, easy to use, great supportive product. It really frees one up to do other things that are more important.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray as a ten out of ten, although I would give it a score of 50 were this possible. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Pure Storage FlashArray
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Pure Storage FlashArray. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
A solution with high performance that is easy to install, troubleshoot, and manage capacity
Pros and Cons
  • "It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity."
  • "I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for general, primary storage in an on-premises deployment.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has improved our performance. We run a lot of security tools that scan for different things, and this would greatly impact our other storage arrays that were either spinning disks or hybrid storage. Even though we did see an impact on Pure, none of our applications that ran on Pure had experienced any problems.

Part of it was to simply go to an all-flash technology that shielded us from that, but it was also that the toolset was very valuable. We could quickly see how we were performing. With some of the other vendors' tools, it's really hard to know where the problem is or how it's performing. You just see the results. You see the symptoms of the problems, and it's hard to come to understand where they are coming from.

What is most valuable?

This solution is simple to install.

It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity.

We use the Evergreen Storage model so that we will get upgrades as they are needed, or as we expand. It has helped us meet some financial challenges we had internally. In the past, we had to buy whole trays of disks from another vendor. It's too much money because we typically bill people ahead of the project. This solution has helped us meet the spending needs of our customers, and allow us to be more flexible.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers. We're going through a transformation where we are trying to run IT as a business. I need to know how much a VM costs, so I need to know how much the compute costs, how much the storage costs, and how much the backup costs. It's really difficult to go to every single product and try to decipher how much I've spent on each of the products. It's not always as easy as just dividing, saying well this must be the cost. I'd love to be able to get that data out of Pure and into vSphere so that I can just see, by VM, how much we should charge our customer.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of this solution has been great. We did have a recent problem but it was probably poor capacity management on our part, where we allowed the system to become too full and it was unable to do its own correction. Besides that though, it runs great. It's very low-touch compared to some other vendors we have used in the past. In some cases, we used to really have to have an expert to run the storage network and now with Pure, that's not as important. Once it's installed and ready to go, it's very easy to maintain, very easy to provision new space, and very easy to expand the hardware. It's been transformational just in the way that you consume the product. It's a service now.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We tend not to do too much expansion but we can easily scale with the way we have structured our purchasing model on Pure. We can add small chunks as we need capacity, and we can once or twice a year add, which is kind on our budgets. It's kind on the IT people, as we don't have to fight our way through approvals because we're buying very massive amounts of expansion. It just makes it a little easier for us to do our own jobs internally.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have never contacted technical support for this solution.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We needed to do a lifecycle replacement, and we also knew that at the time that flash was just really starting to take hold. We had used a hybrid model before and we weren't necessarily satisfied with that product from another vendor.

We evaluated three products and Pure just really outshines them on the pre-sales. On the financing side of it they were more flexible. Today I would look at it and say that it's much more of an OPEX model, similar to Cloud, and as we try to promote our own on-premise cloud, that continues to be important to us. We want to be transparent about cost all the way back to our customer.

How was the initial setup?

My understanding is that the initial setup is generally easy compared to some other implementations we have done for storage in the past.

What about the implementation team?

Pure's consultants assisted us with the deployment, and we liked those guys. Our pre-sales team is really great to work with and I have never heard any complaints about the
support teams. That's typically an indicator that it was an acceptable service. 

What was our ROI?

Well, as a personal perspective and from my team's perspective, we've seen a lot of return on investment. It is difficult to quantify monetarily. For example, we had one business unit that used Pure, they were the first, and it was supposed to be an evaluation at the time. We were going to come back later and do further evaluation of storage, but it performed so well that we didn't even think of evaluating again. When we needed to replace the other arrays, we went straight to Pure and life-cycled them into Pure in every segment we have. I think we only have one non-Pure storage array in the environment now, so that speaks volumes when it has worked that well.

In IT, we don't necessarily care about costs. We care about how much of a headache it is to make sure it keeps running and it was a win on both sides. It worked well in all areas for us. The other vendors weren't yet there, as Pure hit the market faster. Maybe the other vendors are catching up but it's going to be harder for us to walk away from Pure now that we have it working well.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pure has been flexible with us on the pricing models.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Prior to choosing this solution, we evaluated Dell EMC. We looked at Nimble but they weren't all-flash at the time so they didn't last very long. I am sure that we probably looked at an HP product but I don't think we ever really wanted to do business with them.

What other advice do I have?

After implementing this solution, we did see the performance impact. The performance had increased, although our customers did not see it. So as IT, on the backend, we could tell that something was happening but it didn't impact our customers. That is big for us because a lot of times, you have outages that IT recognizes that don't impact your customers. Those are the good outages. When you have an outage that impacts a customer then those are the bad days.

VMware greatly benefits our IT organization. We are about ninety-five percent virtualized, and it's made it tremendously easy to support the number of servers that we have with the number of staff that we have. It increases the ability to provision and de-provision. The whole server lifecycle is much simpler than when things used to be hardware only. It allows us to leverage our spending better because we can use the whole platform.

We have been running VMware for fifteen years, but the reason we have Pure there is so that we have a general workload platform there that can meet any and all needs for our customers. Only for very specific customers do we develop anything different. It gives us the power to run pretty much any workload besides maybe AMP-analytics or artificial intelligence, so it allows us to be very flexible. A lot of times, our customers don't know how to ask for the resources. They say "Just make it run". Our response is that we have a tool that is flexible and powerful enough to basically handle any request because our customers sometimes don't know how to size for their applications.

Running VMware on Pure helps because it makes it easy for IT. The virtualization makes it easy for IT to withstand outages, to do refreshes, and to make changes. With Pure, the all-flash gives you the speed to endure bumps in performance and it shields you against performance slips on your network. In the past, with spinning disk technology, you would feel the pain. You customers would experience the pain. We help the customers by not spending so much time dealing with the hardware. It's like "said it and forget it". We set it up, it's running and now we try to spend more time working with our customers to understand what they want to do and less time on the back end just trying to make sure that everything works.

I think we are using a plug-in with vCentre, which allows our system administrators to see into the storage. In the past, they would have to reach out to the storage team to try and understand if there are any performance problems. Now they can see that right away as they are troubleshooting, so instead of having to get two or three seniors together to troubleshoot, we can get one person in vCentre. They can do most of the high-level troubleshooting right away and only if it has developed into something they can't figure out, do they need to engage multiple people. This all allows us to respond quickly to the customer.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to consider the impact on your employees. You want your employees to be successful so that your business can be successful. Don't look at just cost because any salesman can come in and make a proposal that looks appealing to you, whether it's over a one year period or three year period or otherwise. Especially when you deal with the very large vendors like Dell/EMC, who can bundle so many products together, it makes it easy for you. You have to also consider that this tool was so easy for us to implement that instead of spending three to six months fighting implementation, it was in so quickly that we were on to other efforts. There are a lot more soft costs that would have been there that we were able to avoid.

To summarize, I would suggest that you think more than just about the money and the investment, but the service level. For us, we needed support at international locations, and we took all of that into account.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
IT Contractor at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
Good replications, excellent resiliency, and helpful support
Pros and Cons
  • "The scalability is good."
  • "There was some complexity in the initial setup."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for storage. 

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit. 

What is most valuable?

The tool size is good. We have a tool size and then each size has one Pure Storage and they form the active cluster. We can just access the data on both sides with a uniform access design.

The scalability is good.

It can do some replications. They're very easy to perform. 

What needs improvement?

We're quite happy with eh solution overall. I can't recall coming across any features that were lacking. 

There was some complexity in the initial setup.

While they've improved a lot, many features have been released recently and they are not that mature just yet. My understanding is they just released some features, for some transport services over the NVMe and then the file service. However, the file service is not so mature. I had some problems with the file service when we used it. 

Other new features, such as the active clustering over the FC, and the verification over the FC feature, we didn't use. We have to have a trial on it first before commenting on it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very, very, very stable. There are no performance degrades during any upgrade or replacement of the parts. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is extremely scalable. 

There is only one person using the solution currently. 

How are customer service and support?

I've dealt with technical support previously. Their response is fast and mostly very, very helpful. We just need to enable the remote console on the array and then they just can easily troubleshoot by themselves. That way, we do not need more time to work with them. They just fix the problem for us.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use HPE Nimble. This solution scales much better. That said, it is a bit more complex to implement when you compare it to Nimble. 

There are two different classes in our design. We put more critical applications on Pure due to its stability and resilience. Less important or less critical applications or servers are on Nimble. However, the capacity of Nimble is far larger than Pure Storage.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is more complex than the Nimble. Mostly the configurations must be done by the Pure engine at the back end.

It took two or three weeks to deploy the solution.

You only need one person to deploy and maintain the solution.

What about the implementation team?

We handled the initial setup by ourselves. We did not need any outside assistance from any integrators or consultants. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

With Pure Storage, we buy the array and then all the features can be enabled on that.

It is more expensive than Nimble. The price is likely double Nimble's.

You do not have to pay for any extra features or add-ons. Everything is included. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm a customer.

We use the Pure Array X model with a version of Purity 5. Recently, we bought the Pure C series.

We use it with a private cloud and on-premises as well.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Storage Solutions Architect at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Is easy to install, scalable, stable, and has great technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes."
  • "CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."

What is our primary use case?

We use Pure Storage FlashArray for machine learning, storage, backups, and computing.

How has it helped my organization?

After installing Pure, the processes that would take 40 minutes to two hours to complete are now done in five minutes.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to install.

The stability and scalability are awesome.

The technical support is awesome as well.

Processes that used to take 40 minutes to two hours can be completed in five minutes.

Also, we can use more capacity and pay less.

What needs improvement?

I think the areas that they have been working on for quite some time are the CIFS and SMB Shares, that is, being able to mount them directly. I think they're on the right track.

One wish I have is that they will have a solution to help archive data to the cloud, that is, a Cloud Tiering Appliance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with it since 2016.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is awesome too.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is awesome. You have the opportunity to grow as needed.

The entire company uses this solution, so that would be close to 2100 people.

It is very extensively used, and we are continuing to expand.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been awesome. Sometimes, they've let us know about problems before we've even known that they were there.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used an EMC Array.

We switched because the response time went from a few hours to minutes.

The other piece was the amount of space that we were able to use because of the duplication and compression built in the unit. We can use more capacity and pay less.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. The deployment took a couple of hours.

We did a PoC with the product and checked to make sure that it worked in our environment.

We have a group of about 6 to 10 people managing the system.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When we bought the unit, we bought per capacity. So, the licensing is per capacity, and the only thing that we have to buy every year or every three years is maintenance. Included in that maintenance is the upgrade of the controllers every three years at no cost to us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated NetApp, Kaminario, EMC XtremIO, Tintri, and Nutanix.

We used scalability, support, the evergreen model, the cost per terabyte or per gigabyte, and the footprint as the factors for comparison. We also looked at how they are able to provide support globally, not only here in the US but also overseas.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend that you do a PoC to ensure that it works according to the needs of the company, and that will help prevent a lot of headaches.

I think it's a very complete solution at this point, and I would rate it at ten on a scale from one to ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate Director of Cloud Engineering at ZS Associates
Real User
We no longer have to worry about managing volumes, capacity, or replication
Pros and Cons
  • "Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular..."
  • "The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."

What is our primary use case?

All of our production, development, and workloads run on it.

How has it helped my organization?

We were previously a legacy storage system. After moving to Pure, the stability and performance both dramatically improved. 

We don't have to worry about storage anymore. Previously, we had to babysit our storage system, doing things like managing the volumes, looking at the capacity, predicting when would we run out of space, and replication work. All of those created a lot of challenges with the previous system. Since moving to Pure, we no longer have to worry. We defined the policies once, and things mostly work.

Pure Storage simplifies the management, overall.

What is most valuable?

Flash is the most valuable feature.

Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular, where you can keep replacing components. That was definitely new several years ago. I would bet competitors are doing it now as well, but when they started, it was an innovation.

What needs improvement?

The real need that we have is around other backups. Obviously, it has its own snapshot concept but beyond that, having a separate backup system in the Pure ecosystem itself, in that space, would make it all integrated within a single organization and we wouldn't have to deal with multiple companies. That's an area where we thought Flash Blade could serve our needs, but it seems it can't.

Also, for one of our systems, the data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we moved over is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times. Because of that, we now need more storage. We are going to have to use the guaranty that they provide when you purchase: If it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs, then they will provide extra storage.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability, in general, has been perfect. 

The reason I gave a nine, not a ten, is the upgrades. With most upgrades we have had some kind of problem. They haven't been as smooth as they should have been.

The latest problem with which we are currently dealing, literally today, is that after the latest upgrade, the utilization went up, especially because of the systems space, which is consuming much more than it should. The duplication is not happening on time. Pure acts like it is a bug and that they have a new version with a fix for it. It goes into a cycle often: You keep upgrading and that new upgrade may have some other problem.

That's the primary worry regarding stability. Otherwise, the system works.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good, but not as good as we would like. We have to get our Pure account team involved often, and they are stars. That always solves the problem. Support is available 24/7, but sometimes they're not as detail-oriented as we would like in investigating problems.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was pretty straightforward. We recently added two more areas to our ecosystem and the set up was pretty good.

What about the implementation team?

We used a reseller, SHI. Our experience with them was good.

What was our ROI?

Pure is expensive. But it comes with features so you get what you pay for. It's expensive compared to our old storage systems, but that is balanced by the reduction in the amount of effort human effort involved in& babysitting the storage system. So if you factor in everything, I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us, at least.

What other advice do I have?

You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works. So I would really recommend using Pure Storage.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1027779 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user1027779Federal Account Executive at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor

Rujuswami, solid review! It's good to hear somebody at least talk about TCO over the life of an investment and when you mention how your upfront CAPEX expense is "balanced by the reduction in the amount of effort human effort involved in babysitting the storage system" it must be nice to experience that reality and more enjoyable work environment. You mentioned Pure being expensive and that you have been a customer for 3-5 years. I'd love to hear your feedback added to this review if you've kept track of other components of TCO. The first one I'd be curious about that you don't mention is energy costs of the Pure system vs your old legacy infrastructure. The second would be your experience with "forklift upgrades" during that 3rd/4th year that is almost inevitable with legacy storage vendors and how that high cost factors into the overall TCO and ownership costs. The third would be having all Purity software and features included from day one AND IN THE FUTURE. So any features that come out you will have for nothing. I'd be curious how that stacks up to your experience of buying SW features over the life of legacy systems and adding that to overall cost (SW purchase + add'l maintenance) over the years. Who knows what cool SW features will come out in the storage industry 5 years from now, right? With Pure you'll own it, with others you'll have to buy it. Pure is intended to last forever in your environment with non-disruptive upgrades, no forklift upgrades, no migrations, all with flat & fair maintenance for life and all SW included for life. So 10+ years from initial investment the system only gets better with the Evergreen model both technically and financially, stays modern to fit your needs as you grow, and TCO gets better and better. So I'd love your thoughts there to challenge your comment about Pure being expensive when considering both CAPEX and OPEX. Thanks again!

Manager of Technical Management at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Cost-effective and integrates well with VMware Site Recovery Manager
Pros and Cons
  • "Their support system has insight into errors on our SAN fabric that we can't see. They've brought attention to and raised awareness for us about things that we couldn't see, when we were experiencing problems."
  • "I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."

What is most valuable?

It does everything they say it will do:

  • It's very cost-effective compared to other big players.
  • Adding storage to it after we bought it was not a shocking cost surprise.
  • It integrates very well with VMware as we're using Site Recovery Manager from VMware.
  • It's also tiny, it doesn't consume very much space. We're saving power and space in the data center. 
  • It's really easy for us to manage.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason. I have other solutions that work, but I would use it if they had a little bit more fault-tolerance or if somebody explained to me that it's better than I think it is.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support system has insight into errors on our SAN fabric that we can't see. They've brought attention to and raised awareness for us about things that we couldn't see, when we were experiencing problems. They helped us figure out how to fix them, helped us coordinate. They did not need to do that. It's just stellar support.

They're taking really good care of us. Their support is on the ball. They're proactive.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using HPE 3PAR, which we liked, but this is much more cost-effective.

How was the initial setup?

We own five Pure arrays. The salesperson came in and set it up for us every time. Note that it was the salesperson who was able to set them up for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely recommend this product to a colleague.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
APAC System manager at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Ensures better application performance and improves the user experience
Pros and Cons
  • "This solution has improved our organization. In the past, we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour. The end users saw an immediate performance gain."
  • "I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case of this solution is for storage. We use it to ensure better application performance and to improve the user experience of the application. The cross-storage appliance improves the overall application experience. We have been using this solution as an on-premise solution. It has been useful for our critical applications.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has improved our organization in the way that in the past we had reports that were taking up to two hours and after switching to SSD storage the overall processing power dropped to half an hour. The end users saw an immediate performance gain. 

What is most valuable?

We like that there isn't a steep learning curve and it is easy to learn how to navigate. It's also quite scalable and easy to implement.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We see a lot of reliability coming from Pure Storage, mainly from the fact that over one and a half years, I haven't seen any disc failure especially compared to NetApp.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We use VMware but we have migrated most of the VM load to AWS. We also have Oracle ERP data warehouse and our internal lifecycle management system that is being stored on their storage. It's able to handle the entire load.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good. I get pre-preemptive notices from Pure Storage support. They will notify me to check certain parts because there may be a possibility of an issue arising with those parts. I'll know to take a look at the data center and from there I will be able to tell whether or not it's a false alarm or it's an issue that's about to arise. The pre-emptive warning is helpful for us. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also considered Hitachi Storage and NetApp. Our decision was ultimately based on two factors: simplicity of the usage and overall performance. We ended up choosing this specific product because we had good support from the application team and we liked the performance coming from the product itself. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight because it is very reliable in the way that it fulfills its key objective of being performance driven.

If you're considering this or a similar product I would advise you to do a PoC to make sure that this solution actually fits into your environment. For us, we go through a cycle of about three months to do the evaluations across our different storage. One of the greatest challenges that our company had was that our company was not using Pure Storage and they were quite skeptical of the solution. With the results of the PoC, we proved to them that it is something that is going to be very useful for our business.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Updated: March 2024
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