NetApp FAS Storage Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashArray

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
NetApp's FAS series systems offers a storage array system for enterprises.N/A
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage in Mountain View, California offers all-flash array data storage promising affordability, high availability, and consistent performance.N/A
Pricing
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Considered Both Products
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
We had chosen NetApp FAS series because of its high performance, deduplication, manageability, and backup features. Although I have been able to use these NetApp FAS series features, the implementation of them has not worked as well as with other storage providers. There was …
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
Like most other unified solutions, NetApp excels in one particular area, unstructured data. Whilst it can, and does support the presentation of block-based volumes, I do not view it as a strong suit for NetApp. When comparing to other products, the two Unified products that I …
Chose NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
NetApp is best as a Windows file server virtual machines alternative and is perfect as a native CIFS server. We backup with NMDP protocol.
Pure Storage is the winner for virtual machine storage with its incredible performance.
Pure Storage FlashArray
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
NetApp has a lot of issues. Its software is clunky and complicated. It wastes much capacity in the storage operating system. It doesn't do deduplication and compression that well and takes a CPU hit when it does. And all-flash storage was never really an option. At just about …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage stands head and shoulders above their competition. Not only is performance and usable capacity better and faster respectively, but the predictable support costs also make this a "no-brainer." Having used other storage arrays, from setup to support, Pure is by far …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
When updating the software with NetApp it is a pain staking process since you have several components to update (Controllers, Hard Drives, RLM, Shelves, etc.). During the upgrades you also have to bring your CPU and disk utilization down to 50% before you can perform the …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Although more expensive, the FlashArray's performance, dedupe, simplicity of configuration, and support all blow the other arrays out of the water.
I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with the techs at Pure Storage, and they've been plenty helpful and supportive (both …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
FlashArray provides higher throughput and less latency compared to others.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
At first, they most of our selection criteria but were missing some key components. We could use them for specialized deployments but not shared systems. They worked with us and added the components we required and we now are moving all storage needs to Pure Storage systems. …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We considered Nutanix HyperConverged systems, EMC XtremIO, NetApp SolidFire; evaluated HP Nimble All Flash & Hybrid, NetApp AFF series and VMware vSAN. The former 3 were ruled out for being too expensive and in some cases offering too little for too much money. The later did …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
FlashArray just works. They set it up with us and it works. The interface is simple. Things are easy to do. We use it as a backend for VMware and sometimes as a backend for Linux-HA-based NFS/SMB serving. It's just there and easy. IBM's V7000 was cool but required …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We used to have Violin which definitely is very fast, but it is just not very pleasant to use. The performance was a little better with Violin, but the support and features didn't stack up. We also use Netapp FAS for file shares and non-critical workloads, here Netapp has more …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Nimble, NetApp and VSAN are all products that were evaluated and with which we had previous experience.

Nimble and NetApp at the time were both promoting hybrid systems rather than all flash. In both cases, we favoured all flash since it had become affordable and is much more …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure Storage FlashArray beats all the mentioned storage products in terms of performance, price, and support.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell and Netapp require constant touching and management in our experience. The Flash Array is the opposite of that. The monitoring that PureOne provides for free is also awesome and costs money from other competitors. The other vendors really didn't have a great answer to the …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
None of the arrays that we had in production could touch what Pure is capable of doing. I evaluated the EMC and NetApp AFA offerings at the same time I did the Pure POC. There was no comparison. That is why we now have 20 Pure arrays.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We have twice the deduplication on our Pure Flash as we do our Tegile. Even the flash on the Tegile can get to 5 or 6 ms, while the Pure rarely gets close to 1 ms and never crosses it. Our Tegile has both flash shelves and hybrid, so that is impacting the latency as the hybrid …
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
We have used NetApp for SAN and NAS, the experience is very different for the learning curve, NetApp is much more complicated, the integration with other software like backup and replication is simple, you don't need an orchestrator like DFM.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
EMC needs a trained engineer to manage it. NetApp was our first HA storage device. It lacked performance. Pure Storage FA is our first all flash storage. No more worries about performance, and hassle-free management.
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
The NetApp was extremely difficult to setup and it is a full time job just to learn and maintain it
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure wins easily with ease of use and predictable pricing against all competitors we reviewed.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
-
Ratings
Pure Storage FlashArray
9.3
154 Ratings
2% above category average
Flash Array Performance00 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Flash Array Integration00 Ratings9.0144 Ratings
Data Compression00 Ratings8.0153 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades00 Ratings9.9148 Ratings
Simplicity00 Ratings10.0154 Ratings
Power Savings00 Ratings9.0131 Ratings
Best Alternatives
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

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Medium-sized Companies

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Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
NetApp AFF A-Series
NetApp AFF A-Series
Score 9.6 out of 10
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(13 ratings)
10.0
(207 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(25 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(3 ratings)
9.3
(75 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(6 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
NetApp
It is very easy to use with NFS. Creating new volumes and mounting to servers such as ESXi or Linux is a breeze. It does also support CIFS but it is far less intuitive and requires much more effort. Replicated data is also very simple and robust in the form of SnapVaults or SnapMirrors. This data is either immediately or periodically replicated to a peer FAS in the cluster for retention.
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Pure Storage
When you need speed, it's FAST, especially for MS SQL databases. If you are having bottlenecks, you can spend your time finding it in the code because it's not Pure Storage. Love the data reduction and duplication. We can store so much more on this unit than the base physical size. Love the data snapshots. When you need to complete copy your entire environment for testing etc. Nothing is easier, a few clicks and you are done. Extremely helpful for testing and training.
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Pros
NetApp
  • The selling point for NetApp FAS is the application and data protection integration capabilities they provide.
  • We have been able to use NetApp FAS in a variety of use cases with a standard set of management tools.
  • NetApp FAS has evolved over the years from just NAS to also include block protocols. At this time they support almost all industry standard protocols.
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Pure Storage
  • The Pure Array does data reduction particularly well. We've seen a 7x reduction on some of our volumes.
  • It is easy to get used to the system after coming from other storage arrays.
  • It has some welcome additions such as a smartphone app that makes it easier to view your cases, etc.
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Cons
NetApp
  • Deduplication job runs at certain times and creates a large CPU overhead for the system
  • Management of a volumes, disk groups, LUNs, etc. is a burden to manage and is not efficient with storage capacity
  • Upgrades are complicated and not "non-disruptive"
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Pure Storage
  • Reporting is too general. Being a tech nerd, I want to be able to see the nitty-gritty details. I also need to be able to define canned sets of reports for problem application systems.
  • Pricing is a bit higher then some of their direct competitors .
  • Seriously, I have nothing else.
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Likelihood to Renew
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
It has so far been a very fast and stable product. We have had wonderful support when we have needed it and the account manager and engineer attached to our organization have been very responsive with any questions and concerns we have had.
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Usability
NetApp
It does have a really nice and easy to use web interface to do pretty much anything you need with it. It was very simple to configure our volumes and luns and connect them to our VMWare environment using the interface. It has options to rename, shrink, grow, and other things with our luns and volumes. It was nice and easy to read graphs to see where you stand on your storage usage at a glance.
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Pure Storage
The install went smoothly, and the engineer explained every step along the way. The next couple of days he checked in to make sure that migration was running as planned. The user interface is designed with usability in mind. You don't need a dedicated "Storage Silo" to manage this product. For smaller IT departments that need to support many different workloads, this could not be a better feature
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Reliability and Availability
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
We have never had an outage with Purestorage. Yes we have had 2 drives go out but replacements were installed so fast there wasn't any issues. We have had a NVRAM module replaced but were noticed from Pure they were sending a replacement because they were predicting a failure so pure was proactive preventing any issues. Knowing Pure is monitoring our device 24x7 gives us peace of mind.
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Performance
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The corporation has a very diverse data load and when we migrate from a hybrid storage to pure all-flash, significant gains have already been observed. Latency always remains below 1 ms regardless of the load and volumetry used. Application performance also depends heavily on whether or not the code is more permormatic and network access infrastructure. The product has been meeting expectations
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Support Rating
NetApp
NetApp support in Brazil is managed by its partners. We know in other countries, such as the US and NO, they have support directly from Netapp. We have a very good NetApp partner working with us since the beginning, on both the implementation and daily support. Very few cases needed to be escalated to NetApp support, most of the cases are handled and satisfyingly closed by the partner.
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Pure Storage
Pure Support is timely and communicative. They are always ready to assist and very skilled at what they do, no matter the time of day. Even at 12:10 a.m. on New Years Day when your array has a hiccup that causes some errors in your environment, they will be on the phone with you in an instant. If they are unable to determine the cause right away, because things appear to be normal, they will take your environment's configuration, lab it up in their support environment and then research until they figure out what caused the problem. Even if it takes 3 months. True story.
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In-Person Training
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Excellent training and really you don't need that much. We received training at the Pure offices and also on site when the product was installed. Simple things like how to login to the GUI interface, how to setup users, how to create volume and mount it. How to make a snapshot, how to copy it and mount it. Really is pretty self explanatory on how to do things with the GUI interface. We were expecting complicated base on other vendor products, we got super simple.
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Online Training
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
Great videos and documentation. There is a common theme with PureStorage, "Keep it elegantly simple". They have great support network and great support user groups. Documentation has been very helpful with providing auditors with methods and procedures on security and other ways the product works. Great documentation on setting PureStorage to be the most effective with VM's, SQL Server, and other products.
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Implementation Rating
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The install was very quick. The engineer that Pure sent said that if we started by 10 am we would be done by lunchtime, and he was not kidding.
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Alternatives Considered
NetApp
NetApp stacked nicely and gave enterprise-level usability for snapshot-based backups. Our previous RPO was several hours. It was selected prior to me arriving at the company, but It was selected for the hardware refreshes due to its compatibility with several other vendors, like CommVault and VMware.
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Pure Storage
Pure Storage FlashArray came up as being the most cost-effective of the lot plus the extras added like call-home support were very welcome. The competitors' options were a lot more expensive and the call-home support added a lot more to the already high costs.
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Scalability
NetApp
No answers on this topic
Pure Storage
The product suite scales well and the FA in particular can service any need for all but the most demanding file protocol environments
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Return on Investment
NetApp
  • The speed of file recovery is the biggest positive impact. Recovering from a ransomware attack in minutes is something you can certainly brag about.
  • Integration with products like Exchange and SQL can certainly speed up normal day to day processes. Not just in backup recovery situations either.
  • Redundant paths make migrations and updates very easy with no downtime.
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Pure Storage
  • Thanks to the deduplication that is built into the product we are seeing great reduction in total space required by consolidating similar data types on the same array.
  • Our users are very pleased with the performance.
  • The replication allowed us to move our workload from to another data center with minimal downtime.
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ScreenShots