Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We use Pure Storage for most of our databases, as well as for other application binaries.

Our biggest database is the Oracle ERP. Right now, it is around nine terabytes. It has grown from four terabytes in the last five to six years. Initially, we were worried because most of our functions and processes got slower. We thought we might have to add more  infrastructure and upscale it from a CPU perspective. Then, we moved to Pure Storage, and we suddenly saw some of the processes, which were running slowly, sped up automatically.

We have also seen a reduction in the latency.

The most interesting feature is the speed at which it executes I/O. After moving to Pure Storage, I have noticed that our databases are considerably faster.

Our performance has improved by at least four times.

The support for NFS protocols right out-of-the-box need improvement. I'm used to other storage vendors who have NFS support right out-of-the-box, and Pure Storage doesn't seem to have anything. We have shared APPL_TOP on our Oracle ERP, which would require an NFS type of storage. So, we had to resort to building our own NFS VM, then attach Pure Storage to it, and have it go through the server. This didn't really serve our purpose, as it's a lot slower because it's now going through a VM installer NFS server.

While we know Pure Storage supports snapshots, we haven't been able to implement databases or replication using them.

It has been very stable. I have not seen or heard of downtime storage issues after moving over to it.

It looks like it is scaling pretty well.

I have not used the tech support.

We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO). 

Use Pure Storage for databases. I have seen a huge increase in speed and performance on our databases.

I use the solution for the storage of our database and to run some algorithms to analyze data we retrieve from the internet.

I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand.

Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The solution is highly stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have five customers using this solution.

The technical support is very good.

The installation is the simplest I have ever done from any solution.

We did the implementation of the solution ourselves with the supervision of the integrator.

We have a team that does the maintenance and operations of the solution.

There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution.

I am very satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

We put the solution onto the VMware environment and all the Microsoft SQL servers. We do the synchronization between two data centers, so that is has a very low latency. We just have a few milliseconds of latency which is a ready performance, and near perfect. 

If I compare it to SAN Symphony, for instance, it's much faster, much reliable level. 

The maintenance is very good. The support is very, very good. If you do any maintenance on it you have the support, and it's nice to know they are there to assist.

It's a very good product. It's very easy to manage everything.

With a snapshot, you can schedule it and you can remove it afterward. You can do a kind of production cope. That's very, very good now, and it's performing very well. The storage is amazing. It's so fast.

The total reduction you can expect is excellent. You buy the bundle storage and they give you a ratio of what you can achieve within it.

The mobile app is very helpful. I have an application on my smartphone. I view the latency in real-time on my app. You can see everything on your smartphone. You can also set up alerts on it, and things like this. I don't think you can do this on Dell storage. 

The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore. It costs much more. 

The improvement I would expect from them is maybe more if there is integration with VMware. We are also using Amazon Cloud to provision snapshots or to move or to copy snapshots to Amazon. I would expect more integration within Amazon. Amazon has tree storage or last tier so we have that as an option instead of keeping it in Pure Storage as it costs a lot of money. If they offered a hybrid cloud, for example, it would be very helpful.

The solution needs to ensure they have good integration with VVol. VVol is the future of VMware. I have spoken with Pure Storage engineers and they have an integration with vVol. They have a kind of plug-in for VMware to work with VVol, however, it's not mature enough. It's my understanding they're working on it to get it done on that side. More integration with the Windows Server for snapshots would also be helpful. 

One year ago I found that instead of having the new Pure Storage FlashArray on-prem, you can have it in Tokyo or you can have it in Virginia - it depends where you are. You can just pay a certain amount per minute and you can have a Pure Storage that you manage from your prem, but have it on Amazon. That may be in production. It will be a useful attribute.

I've been using the solution since 2019 and therefore it's not so long. It's a little bit more than one year - nearly two years now as we have started in August, 2019. 

5.3 is the latest stable version. They have a version 6 now, and 6.1 is in production, however, it's not as stable as the 5.3. We are running to the latest best stable version.

Previously, you were not able to scale the snapshot. You had to do it manually.

For a flash array of 11 terabytes that you buy in a bundle, you can provision for 44 terabytes. We still have six terabytes free. We can come to a ratio of four on full storage. You can optimize four times what they give to you. They give you a ratio from three to four. It depends on the application you have running. Not everything is taken on the storage. 

If you would like to expand, you can always just buy more storage disks. We will have to get a new license in two years and we might increase our usage then. For the moment, we have enough space.

Technical support has been very helpful throughout the process. They can assist during the setup process. They make everything very easy.

We also use the Dell EMC Storage Suite.

This solution is easier than what we've used in the past.

For me, in terms of setup, the process much easier than Symphony, for example. Before, we had DataCore and Symphony. With this product, it was easier to do the zoning on the fiber channel side. On the network side, it was easier. Everything it's much easier than other products if I compare it to Dell or to DataCore and Symphony.

The maintenance, if you have to upgrade the firmware or the version, is very convenient. The support is good also. And they are working now to integrate more in Amazon which will be helpful for us.

While it is my understanding that the solution is a bit expensive from a financial point of view, I don't know the exact costs.

The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more. I don't have the details anymore. I know it was much more than HP 3PAR and Dell Storage Center or DataCore. 

We have a five-year contract. We would need to renew it in two years or so.

We are just a customer and end-user.

With Pure Storage, you have two versions. You have the Pure Storage version 50 and version 10. 50 is a little bit bigger than version 10. With FlashArray M50, it's an X50R2, it's full flash. 

We have the product currently on-premises, however, we would be more open maybe to Amazon or some other cloud. 

I would suggest new organizations go with the product, even though it is new. Some companies are scared of new products. It's more mature in the United States. However, it's working well for us here in Europe. Even if it costs a little bit more, you do get more for what you pay. We've chosen the most expensive option, however, we have no regrets in that sense. It's been worth it. 

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's very easy to manage and works very well. The maintenance is also excellent. I'd recommend the solution. You don't have to do anything on the FlashArray. You don't have to deal with tier levels, or build and optimize something. Everything is done from the Pure Storage side. You're just using it, and that's it.

Our primary use case of this solution is to keep our production and DR data in this storage.

This solution has improved our organization in the way that we used to see latency but now with this solution we don't. It also has good performance. Latencies have come down for our performance in the SQL databases. We can put a lot more in a lot less in terms of space savings. We also save data center space and have good deduplication. 

It has also helped us simplify storage in the way that it's easy to manage. It's the most simple storage solution. 

We like that there are good deduplication savings in terms of the usage in the data center and that the product itself works well. 

Scalability is good. We can do an upgrade in which both of the controllers will be on which has reduced the downtime. The scalability has definitely improved. 

I would like for them to do testing on their upgrades. 

This solution is stable. At times their product of grates could get a little tricky which can be problematic, but they quickly address it.

Scalability is going well. We have been expanding it and we have about five customers now. 

Technical support is very good. We have a dedicated person who helps us which has been a good experience. 

We switched because our old solution wasn't great and we wanted to replace it with a better solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward in the way that the configuration was simple. It's simple to manage. 

The reseller helps with all of the implementation processes. 

We also considered Hitachi and Dell EMC XtremIO. Pure Storage made the cut because of its PoC performance. 

I would rate this solution a nine because there's always room for improvement. They should work on their upgrades, they're not smooth. 

If you're considering this solution, I would tell you to do a PoC and if it meets your requirements, go for it. It's a good product. They're a good company and they have achieved good work. 

The Pure Storage array houses our entire production environment. Production consists of VMware 5.5 on three HPE DL360 G7 hosts.

I don't really need to worry about storage anymore. I can focus on more critical issues. I log into the array interface maybe once every month to see what my deduplication ratio is and that is about it. 

It is difficult to say what features are valuable. It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore. 

I would like to see more detailed reporting on the data. Sure, it is great to see usage, trends, latency, and all the common stuff. However, it would be nice to know what are the exact VMs usage after deduplication and/or what that VMs actual latency and bandwidth is, outside of VMware.

I help our customers build FlashArray. 

It is always out of the box, and ready to use. 

It is very simple to set up, and very simple to use.

The interface is easy to use.

It is very easy to implement.

It falls far short of protocol support. Our customers frequently ask us how we can use NFS or if we can use it as a copy or something similar. If you have any suggestions, I believe they could use more protocol, and have easier automation.

Automation could be simplified. For example, we can ask the storage to create a folder and then monitor it automatically.

I have been working with Pure Storage FlashArray for three years.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a very stable product.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a scalable solution.

I am also working with Pure FlashArray X series and Pure Storage FlashBlade.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

This product is for database usage and consolidating performance.

The Pure Storage FlashArray provides us with faster data access. Our processing time is faster for tasks that used to take a long time before. Now, it's a lot quicker and more responsive.

The low latency and the performance, in general, are very good.

The compression and deduplication features help to make the best use of the capacity.

Replication and active-active features are available.

The system has dual controllers but does not have a high level of resiliency built-in. For what the peak says, I'm very happy with it. However, if you compare it to similar devices with multiple controllers that are scaled-out, it's not a true active-active.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately one year.

Over the past year that we have been using it, the stability has been good. That said, we're still testing it. It is very low maintenance; on the Pure side, they don't have much involvement apart from a bit of monitoring.

We've not had to increase the capacity yet but it does have the flexibility to scale if we need to. At this point, we have 25,000 end-users and we don't expect that to increase. Our user base is fairly static.

We have been in contact with technical support a couple of times. They are quick to respond and we are very happy with the customer support team.

The support plan makes it simple to plan ahead.

We have used other flash arrays in the past.

This initial setup is very straightforward. A couple of hours on-site is all that was needed for the engineer to complete it. It took that long to make sure that everything was in place and available.

Overall, it is very simple.

For the deployment, we didn't need many people but we do have a wider storage team that deals with it.

Installation was included with the purchase. We didn't do it ourselves.

There are no licensing fees aside from the support. The support plan is simple and quite easy to understand, and it covers issues such as hardware failures.

We evaluated all of the options that were presented to us at the time, and Pure won.

Feature-wise, there's nothing specific that is lacking for us at the moment. The features that are there now are really what we need.

Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Pure Storage FlashArray in a couple of backup products. Our DDP offerings, data platform offerings, is where we use Veritas with Pure Storage FlashArray. Then, we use the Pure Azure Service model with the secure multi-tenancy features. Pure Storage FlashArray can be managed centrally.

In individual file cases where most customers were looking for performance-based, minimum latency applications, we have deployed Pure Storage FlashArray.

The integration and migration features have been really good.

We're getting good performance, and the compression ratio is also very good in Pure Storage FlashArray.

It has an Evergreen model and always maintains the controllers, so the controllers never let you down.

I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays.

It would be good if Pure Storage FlashArray gave a library-type access.

Maybe, small box releases could be utilized for backup purposes such as Data Domain offered by other vendors.

I've been using Pure Storage FlashArray for the last two and a half years.

We have deployed it both on-premises and on hybrid cloud environments.

As for stability, Pure Storage FlashArray is definitely a reliable solution.

It can be easily scaled. I work with over 500 customers who use this solution.

The technical support is awesome, and there's a lot of documentation available online.

The initial setup is very easy.

My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing.

I think with other products, there are issues with support systems and warranty features. Even the maintenance cost can be very high. In comparison to those products, Pure Storage FlashArray is very good.

Overall, Pure Storage FlashArray has never let us down in front of customers so far, and I would rate this solution at eight on a scale from one to ten.