Cisco MDS Series vs Everpure FlashArray comparison

The compared Cisco and Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #4 in ES , with an average rating of 10.0, and holds a 10.0% mindshare in the category. Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) is ranked #3 in AFS , with an average rating of 8.9, and holds a 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 99% of Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) users who would recommend it.

Cisco MDS Series

Read 10 Cisco MDS Series reviews

1,955 Views
1,857 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Everpure FlashArray

Read 231 Everpure FlashArray reviews

19,172 Views
16,680 Comparison Views

99% willing to recommend

Cisco MDS Series

Everpure FlashArray

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco MDS Series and Everpure FlashArray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Enterprise SAN

August 2026

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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

Cisco MDS Series

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise SAN (4th)

Everpure FlashArray

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

231

Ranking in other categories

All-Flash Storage (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco MDS Series is designed for Enterprise SAN and holds a mindshare of 10.0%, up 6.2% compared to last year.
Everpure FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.9% mindshare, up 6.6% since last year.

Enterprise SAN Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco MDS Series	10.0%
Dell PowerStore	14.0%
Dell PowerVault	12.3%
Other	63.7%

Enterprise SAN

All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray	6.9%
Dell PowerStore	9.1%
NetApp AFF	7.3%
Other	76.7%

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Vipindas K.P

Product Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Reliable storage networking has ensured seamless multi-protocol access and continuous redundancy

Currently, I do not have any major suggestions for improvement as everything is working well without issues. If additional functions could be introduced to simplify usage, I would suggest that AI functionality or better integration capabilities would be advantageous for Cisco MDS Series. Any new AI-related features or functionality added to Cisco MDS Series would represent a positive advancement.

Read full review

Sowjanya MV

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"MDS's reliability is at a high level, the issues with these switches are extremely rare, and the whole product line is very predictable and stable."

"The product is easy to use."

"The stability has been commendable with no major performance issues and the system consistently provides users the ability to access the network without any problems."

"It enables us to integrate and load balance between multiple layer one fiber vendor links, which is very useful."

"Cisco MDS 9148 SAN switch model is the best product, highly reliable and low cost, easy to deploy, easy to upgrade, easy to configure, easy to administer, and it gives effective performance when used for SAN switch connectivity between hosts and storage boxes."

"The product is very stable and performs well."

"The most valuable feature of the Cisco MDS Series is security."

"SAN switches in Cisco MDS Series are a valuable feature of the solution for our company."

More Cisco MDS Series pros

"For me, right now, it is the best storage solution in the market, by far."

"The Direct FlashArray stands out as one of the best features in the market. The Pure1 storage management lets us see the details about utilization and everything else for all 40 storage boxes in one place."

"The predictive performance analytics are good."

"From the performance that I've seen, the simplicity of how to use it, the responsiveness, and customer experience, it is one of the best companies that I have worked with so far."

"Once we solved the data reduction and what Pure does we were hooked."

"We were actually able to do multiple upgrades, including head upgrades and moving between the platforms, M20 and M50, over the years. We have never once lost a ping and have never had an outage due to an OS upgrade or a complete head upgrade."

"Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."

"Even if it costs a little bit more, you do get more for what you pay."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

Cons

"Cisco MDS Series can improve by having SAN Manager with life cycle management features and Integration with 3rd party storage monitoring tools."

"Cisco MDS Series could improve by adding more gigahertz. However, they are doing this over time."

"Data Center Network Manager is good but it is not free and requires purchasing a separate license."

"It is quite a stable product. It should be shipped with the latest firmware to avoid download and upload schema at the beginning of the initial setup. There should also be the possibility of downgrading the firmware when required. WebUI needs DCNM instead a web-based GUI should be made available like Brocade san switch."

"The GUI client is Java-based and we know that Java is not secure, so everyone disables it."

"The solution's management interface and GUI need improvement."

"The product is very expensive."

"Webui needs Data Center Network Management tool licensed copy for accessing Cisco Switches instead a web-based GUI should be made easily available the way Brocade san switch is managed."

More Cisco MDS Series cons

"It would be beneficial to have a separate pricing point for environments with lower performance requirements or less workload."

"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."

"CIFS and SMB Shares cannot be mounted directly."

"With scalability, I have run into a little problem with our last upgrade. There were some undocumented limitations to the number of drives that our controller could run on. So, instead of putting in a new data pack as we had anticipated, we had to keep adding and removing to get up to the capacity that we needed to be. What should have been a one day process (or a few hours) turned into a month and a half process."

"Reports of performance and LUN utilization could be improved."

"I would love to see a true one click upgrade solution. Right now, you have to click and schedule an appointment with Pure Storage to be able to upgrade. I would love for it to automatically download, install, and fall-over every controller as it updates."

"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services. There are increasingly more and more services coming out from AWS but there are also certain constraints where we can't move everything over to a cloud as well. We would like for things that are on-premise to be easily integrated with AWS."

"I would like to have support available in Spanish."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing cannot be considered an advantageous trait of the solution since it is expensive. I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."

"The price of the Cisco MDS Series is high."

"It's perpetual licensing and maintenance is a recurrent cost."

"Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive."

"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."

"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 would rate the pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of ten. It is expensive but not too much."

"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."

"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."

"There are no fees for licensing. The hardware is paid for only once."

"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	71
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	159

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco MDS Series?

The pricing could be improved as the solution is very expensive. I am on a yearly payment basis.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco MDS Series?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco MDS Series?

Cisco MDS Series is primarily used for connecting storage arrays. The multi-protocol feature supports all protocols and functionality working seamlessly. Virtual SANs operate without any issues. Pe...

See all answers

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 Storage. It may be more expensive, but it should pay for itself for its functionalit...

See all answers

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 reliability and features are commendable. Most organizations are currently seeking this ...

See all answers

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 such as Safe Mode and Evergreen contribute to top-notch performance. Everything is...

See all answers

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Compared 10% of the time

HPE B-series SN6000B Fibre Channel Switch vs Cisco MDS Series

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp ASA vs Cisco MDS Series

Compared 4% of the time

More Cisco MDS Series Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

VAST Data vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

More Everpure FlashArray Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise SAN

August 2026

Download Cisco MDS Series product report

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

August 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Also Known As

Cisco MDS 9100, Cisco MDS 9222i, Cisco MDS 9700

Pure Storage FlashArray

Overview

Cisco MDS Series integrates and load balances between multiple vendor fiber links, offering seamless SAN connectivity with ease of deployment, management, and configuration. It features VSAN technology and supports LDAP, SNMPv3, and AES for a secure and reliable network environment.

Cisco MDS Series is recognized for its performance and stability in SAN environments, enabling effective fiber channel connectivity across data centers. Adopting its technology ensures simplified deployment and management with options like WebUI and CLI. Its ability to support active-active storage paths fosters efficient server connections in both single-site and metro-SAN setups. While it offers robust features, improvements such as integration with IBM Brocade SAN switches, more intuitive GUI, and lifecycle management are needed to enhance user experience.

What features set Cisco MDS Series apart?

VSAN Technology: Separates fiber links into different groups for enhanced network management.
WebUI & CLI Support: Streamlines deployment and management processes.
Secure Protocols: Supports LDAP, SSHv2, SNMPv3, and AES for secure connectivity.
Performance & Reliability: Known for stable operation in SAN environments with minimal performance issues.
Data Compression: Offers efficient data transmission through cost-effective techniques.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Scalability: Easily adjusts to expanding network needs with reliable infrastructure.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces operational costs with efficient resource utilization.
Quality of Service: Ensures high data transfer quality at layer one.
High Stability: Maintains dependable performance during updates.

In industries such as finance and healthcare where reliable data center operations are critical, Cisco MDS Series supports complex SAN configurations, providing effective connectivity between servers and storage. Its ability to facilitate long and short-distance ISL configurations makes it suitable for diverse operational environments.

Cisco

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Sample Customers

National Rugby League

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

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