Pure Storage FlashArray.. Its time to get on board
Updated March 23, 2021

Pure Storage FlashArray.. Its time to get on board

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Pure Storage FlashArray

It has consistently provided sub one second response times for all of our applications. Pure Storage is being used as the primary storage for our virtualization platforms supporting the entire company.
  • Speed and response time.
  • Ease of management and Powershell support.
  • Replication, Pure Snap independence and offloading are very useful.
  • Add better support for file protocols to directly access the array.
  • It was massively cheaper than the old guard, EMC, HP, IBM. And has performed as well if not better than their much more expensive products.
It's faster and more affordable.
At the price point, it is hard to find somewhere it is not suited to be used.

Pure Storage FlashArray Feature Ratings

Flash Array Performance
10
Flash Array Integration
10
Data Compression
10
Non-Intrusive Upgrades
10
Simplicity
10
Power Savings
10

Upgrading Pure Storage FlashArray

Yes - No downtime. No issues. You login to Pure1 Portal, select Support > Schedule Array Upgrade. Then select the array you wish to upgrade, the code level you want to upgrade to, and select a date/time that Pure Support Team has open to perform the upgrade. From there you open the Remote Assistance connection to Pure Support and an engineer will pre-check the array and send an email for sign off to proceed at the scheduled date/time. Then at the date/time scheduled, they will remotely connect and upgrade the array as planned. It's seamless, I have upgrades multiple arrays, multiple times each and never had a single issue. Not even an attached host dropping path's and not re-establishing (hosts are all ESXi and AIX).
  • Security Improvements
  • Purity Enhancements - File Protocol Addition
  • Continuous Replication Technology and Unified Block and File Capabilities.

Simplicity

Using Pure Storage FlashArray

All of the applications for the entire company runs on FlashArray; We have multiple FlashArrays across various datacenters.
1 - I am able to support multiple FlashArray storage array's by myself with very little effort and time investment. It is an easy to use management system. Purity is always evolving and makes life easy.
  • VDI
  • High Performance Virtualization
  • Ease of Snapshots
  • Ability to offload standalone snapshots to cheaper storage
  • They recently introduced file protocol access to the FlashArray; So some potential NAS replacement opportunities now exist.
We have already renewed our first round of evergreen upgrades and plan to continue doing so for the forseeable future. The array's have been bullet proof and with the evergreen upgrade the controllers are able to keep up with the newest technologies. (NVMe, etc.)

Do you think Pure Storage FlashArray delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Pure Storage FlashArray's feature set?

Yes

Did Pure Storage FlashArray live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Pure Storage FlashArray go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Pure Storage FlashArray again?

Yes

Evaluating Pure Storage FlashArray and Competitors

Yes - EMC ExtremIO - Support renewal costs were outrageously high.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Price and usability. Pre-Sales experience was also impressive. They were able to let us test-drive a unit and provided training on Purity before purchase commitment.
would have still settled on Pure. Even today I would buy it as my first choice still

Pure Storage FlashArray Training

  • in-person training
I have 20 years storage experience, so an informal online session to run through the mangement interface was all I needed, but it's an easy to pick up system

Pure Storage FlashArray Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes we have full support for the arrays. It is necessary to ensure quick break/fix resolution and support.
The support team is great. Pure1 portal allows customers to easily manage support cases and schedule code upgrades. The support team will remotely connect to the array and perform the code upgrades at the scheduled time, with or without your involvement (your choice). They also proactively monitor the array with AI and ML technologies and quickly alert you when anything is skewing off the normal expectation. The experience has been refreshing.
Upgrades are always seamless;
Disk replacements are rare, but when necessary they happen within hours on the same day.
They have proactively alerted me to SFP issues on the array that I hadn't noticed myself and we swapped the optic out the same day.

Using Pure Storage FlashArray

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Snapshots - Protection Grouping, Offloading (optional), and rollback to snapshots is a breeze. They are each fully independent and recoverable. No chain to break or worry about. Also no need to use external software to quiesce the volume prior to snap creation.
  • Code upgrades - just schedule in Pure1 portal; complete pre-checks sign off, open remote assist connection to Pure and let them do the upgrade at the scheduled time.
  • Replication - Volume and Snapshot/Protection Group Replication over Ethernet to other Pure FlashArray's is simple and works without the complexity of FCoE routing.
  • Volume Creation and Host Path validation is easily confirmed via the port maps
Its extremely easy to use and works like you would want. It also eliminates alot of the complexity of volume snapshotting and array to array replication.
Yes - There is a mobile application to view array health / performance metrics and support cases, but not to manage the actual array.

Pure Storage FlashArray Reliability

The product suite scales well and the FA in particular can service any need for all but the most demanding file protocol environments
No outages over the last 4 years using FA
no performance issues; All LUN's run sub <1ms, most sub<500us. Performance is great. I have yet to have a single application team complain about storage performance. It is no longer a potential bottleneck in our environment.

Relationship with Pure Storage

Pure is a great partner, and fun too!
They continue to be great to work with. No pressure sales and they stay engaged with our business needs.
be upfront about your needs and expectations.