Pure Storage FlashArray Review
September 05, 2019
Pure Storage FlashArray Review
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Pure Storage FlashArray
We use two FlashArray units to run our entire production server and VDI environment and provide a business continuity solution. We have a FlashArray m20 at our main office that provides storage backing several hundred mixed-use VMs - Windows and Linux servers, as well as Windows Desktop VMs for end users. A FlashArray x10r2 at an alternate location houses some redundant VMs for business continuity, as well as near real-time snapshots of all the data stored on the primary unit, giving us a great deal of comfort around our data and business security.
- Ease of use and setup.
- Deduplication/data reduction.
- Cloning data for lab environments/testing scenarios.
- Web UI can be a bit confusing when you're trying to perform an atypical task - it's not always intuitive. Sometimes less is not more.
- Over its life cycle, the Flash Array units that we have purchased will almost pay for themselves in power savings alone. Reducing from hundreds of always spinning disks to two shelves of flash has reduced our data center power consumption by 60% or more.
- The Free Every Three program with Pure has meant we've already received a new controller on our main FlashArray unit, just for renewing maintenance. This gave us an incremental increase in every stat - welcome, even if unneeded!
- We are now able to easily spin up in minutes copies of entire production application frameworks - database servers, domain controllers, etc., to perform complex testing against *the real systems*, isolated in a safe little bubble, and without consuming any additional disk to speak of, thanks to the de-duplication performance.
We previously ran EMC Clariion CX3 disk-based SANs, with FibreChannel back-plane. This setup worked for many years and provided reliable service. However, compared to FA it was slow, complicated, static (not easy to update or refresh), and consumed tens of kilowatts across many shelves of 10-15k rpm spinning disks.