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Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs MinIO comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
Amazon EFS (Elastic File Sy...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (11th), File and Object Storage (14th)
MinIO
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
reviewer2784675 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Technical Account Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Serverless file storage has simplified multi-tenant Linux workloads and supports effortless growth
When I started working with Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), I faced a few issues. One issue was around the number of IOPS limitation. Initially, the number of IOPS that could be performed on the Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) file system was quite low. Later on, it has been increased, and now I believe it is at a level where only very specific workloads might not perform optimally, but otherwise everything should work smoothly. By the time I was there, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) was supporting NFS version 4.1, not 4.2. Currently, it is supported up to NFS 4.1. A notable limitation of Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is that it does not support Windows. If your workload is running on a Linux operating system and you do not want to manage it or even understand NFS at all, you should still be able to use it fairly quickly. There are scenarios where Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) might not work effectively. For example, database-type workloads do not run properly on Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) because at the end of the day, it is a network file system and requests must travel from one place to another and then return. This process takes time, so if you are running a database-type workload, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) might not be the right approach, and you would need to look elsewhere.
Abdelrahim-Ahmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Provides good object storage functionalities
MinIO should provide an easier subscription model for companies that don't have a huge amount of data. Our company has a maximum of 100 terabytes of data. The solution should provide more bugging tools in the open-source version to encourage people to buy the support services. It's not an easy decision. If I go to the management and tell them that I need to buy a service, there should be an easier subscription model for companies that don't have huge amounts of data. For me, getting a subscription for 15,000 a year for a system already in production might be a bit hard. I think MinIO supports a minimum of one petabyte or 100 terabytes of data. Since we don't have such huge amounts of data, buying a subscription for the solution is a bit difficult. Hence, we're only using the open-source version for now. If MinIO becomes really crucial for our business, we could ask the management to get a subscription.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The initial setup is very straightforward. You simply plug it in and turn it on."
"All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are all performed on-line with no impact."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"The most valuable feature is that maintenance is free."
"The administration is very easy and quite minimal, the performance is very good, the installation is pretty straightforward, and technical support is good."
"Service and support is phenomenal."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"Deduplication is an excellent feature. I also like the NAS and support."
"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is an excellent service that provides a serverless solution with unlimited storage and easy configuration."
"The solution is quite stable."
"We need our storage to expand based on demand but storage is a bit costly, so we start with a smaller amount and, as we grow, we use EFS on demand and it manages our costs."
"The automatic scaling functionality has helped manage fluctuating workloads because when we have 10 gigs of data and a customer needs to put even 10 times the data, no action is required as it will grow automatically."
"Its elasticity and flexible pricing are the most valuable. For Amazon EFS, you are charged based on the storage. It is also very fast and stable with a very simple and intuitive interface."
"The solution is scalable."
"We are not that big of a cloud user. We just use it for the storage of our bytes. The most valuable aspect is the storage."
"Elastic File Systems allow me to share data, provision, and manage capacity and performance in AWS."
"Saves a lot of time in generating and managing documents."
"The product does save time for our company."
"The initial setup was very easy - one click, and it was installed."
"Reliable erasure coding."
"The tool’s integration is very easy. This feature has helped us reduce development time. The solution also has many out-of-the-box features like versioning support and management of roles and permissions. The product also supports clustered deployment."
"MinIO is easy to understand, simple to implement and provides a good feature set."
"In terms of the volume, processing speed, and accessibility of data, MinIO was outstanding."
"The most valuable feature of MinIO is its ease of use, replication, and active directory. All the capabilities are in this solution."
 

Cons

"Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped decrease the total cost of ownership."
"We would like to be able to connect to data tape for backup, specifically to the LTO backups."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display."
"In some cases, we get into very in-depth conversations around the movement of specific data and, what's more, chunk sizes. The documentation lacked any description or information on that."
"Many high-end platforms from other vendors like Dell EMC or Hitachi, their backend has Active/Active architecture, unlike Pure Storage FlashArray which doesn't utilize an Active/Active architecture on the backend."
"It can go down from time to time, but it's been pretty solid so far."
"What should be improved in Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is the costing, as it should be reduced, but that depends on Amazon."
"Specifically, when it comes to the file system for the learning system, we encountered performance issues with both Azure and AWS."
"The lack of transparency in the costs attached to the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The initial setup requires prior experience and technical skills."
"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3."
"Elastic File Systems can be expensive due to the nature of data transfer costs, using services like SSTP, and potentially being costly in a rate-shift context."
"The deployment is definitely not an easy process."
"It could be better in connecting with Windows Server instances."
"MinIO has behaved strangely in the past. For instance, the application dropped connection to MinIO. It's not too significant, but it loses connection. We're trying to understand exactly what is happening when this happens."
"MinIO can sometimes crash because of the dependency in underlying OS software layers."
"With problems, visibility is hard because everything is in containers. Difficult to get to the logs in order to figure out what the problem was."
"There should be the ability to expand the size after it has already been deployed. Currently, you cannot do that. It doesn't support an increase in size. Each time we spawn a new MinIO, we need to track the particular MinIO instance or tenant that has the file. Therefore, we had to create a multi-tenant solution that tracks the MinIO that has our artifacts. It isn't in one single instance. It should have better multi-tenancy support."
"While using some of the advance features of MinIO we encountered the minor bugs but they generally get fixed in version upgrades."
"Lacks documentation for non-Kubernetes users."
"We've had a few crashes because of excessive use. We struggled a little to learn where the problem was."
"I think the product tends to be more oriented toward Kubernetes and lacks documentation for people who don't want to use it, so they could improve their documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's priced higher than the market."
"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. So, every year, we renew. We could do a three-year contract, but right now, we only do a one-year."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"Pure Storage has not helped us to reduce our licensing costs."
"The product's price depends on the services and the size and capacity at which it is used in a business environment."
"The main challenge with EFS is its cost, which is slightly higher compared to EBS or S3. For one GB or ten GB of data, S3 is much cheaper. EFS could cost around $30 to $50 per month for similar usage."
"The solution's price is mid-ranged."
"The product charges are based on the amount of data stored."
"Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) offers a pay-as-you-go model, so whenever you use its services, you need to pay."
"I would rate the pricing 7 out of 10."
"It has flexible pricing. You are charged based on your storage."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"MinIO is a free open-source solution."
"This solution is open source so it is free."
"My company hasn't tried the version of the solution where we need to pay to use it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"This is an open-source solution but I am using the licensed version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
Which file storage system is better - Amazon EFS (elastic file storage) or Azure File Storage?
Amazon EFS is easy to set up: you can use the AWS management console, API, or command-line. Amazon EFS can grow to pe...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
We don't need to purchase it; we are just using it and paying Amazon as per the utilization. We make direct payments ...
What needs improvement with Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)?
When I started working with Amazon EFS (Elastic File System), I faced a few issues. One issue was around the number o...
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What needs improvement with MinIO?
* Rolling upgrades, vs. upgrading and restarting all daemons at the same time, which is risky and impactful. * Remov...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Arcesium, Atlassian, Seeking Alpha, Zend
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) vs. MinIO and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.