NetApp FAS Storage Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

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 FlashBlade
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage offers FlashBlade, a scale-out file and object storage – architected to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) while accelerating tomorrow's discoveries and insights.N/A
Pricing
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashBlade
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashBlade
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 FlashBlade
Considered Both Products
NetApp FAS Storage Arrays
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 …
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Chose Pure Storage FlashBlade
It delivers the following, see below, and this is why it was selected as the platform of choice.
*Supports CIFS, NFS, and object
*Speed and performance
Chose Pure Storage FlashBlade
Of all the storage arrays I've used in the last 20+ years, Pure Flashblade and Flasharray are by far the simplest and easiest to configure. By miles and miles, to be frank. Additionally, performing an upgrade to software or firmware on non-Pure storage platforms in the past …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashBlade
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
NetApp AFF A-Series
NetApp AFF A-Series
Score 9.6 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashBlade
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(13 ratings)
8.4
(29 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(3 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetApp FAS Storage ArraysPure Storage FlashBlade
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
If data storage, access, and security [are] of the highest priority to your business then Pure Storage FlashBlade is an excellent tool that must be considered. Analytics or sharing that requires the fastest speeds available will benefit from the NVMe solid-state drives they use which are far superior to spinning rust. It is less ideal for those who do not require such time-critical work.
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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
  • Speed. We are seeing large transactions take very little time.
  • Upgrades- In-place upgrades of both hardware and software are extremely easy.
  • Ease of use- I have several engineers working on this and from setup to day to day operations it is extremely easy to maintain.
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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
  • When reporting out a user has exceeded there quote, it only references the UID. It would certainly be nice it calls out the UID name that is clearly present in the Dashboard.
  • The ability to determine a snapshot total size would be helpful.
  • Proactive reachout to discuss new versions and assist in planning the upgrade would be a key win.
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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
Good API, multi-protocol support is great.
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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
Without exception, the contacts with support have been quick and extremely knowledgeable. I do not fear getting an underqualified engineer to assess or work on my arrays. In addition to this support structure, the sales engineers are top notch as well.
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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
The NetApp a800 we tested was 14% faster than Pure FlashBlade with NFS workloads. However, NetApp lacked ease of administration and performing simple tasks such as creating multiple NFS volumes required scripting from the command line. Our flashblade contained 15 baldes and our NetApp was a clustered pair with each half containing 24 nvme devices.
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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
  • We were able to consolidate 5 different storage platforms of lesser performance onto a single Flashblade and achieve much, much lower latency and higher throughput.
  • We've been able to reduce the amount of training and configuration required to just Pure Flashblade, instead of 5 different vendors and products.
  • In addition to our core use cases, Flashblade has capabilities that we are pursuing for some new projects, i.e. analytics data store and the object store features.
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ScreenShots