DDN IntelliFlash vs Pure Storage FlashBlade comparison

DataDirect Networks and Pure Storage are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. DataDirect Networks is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0, while Pure Storage is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. DataDirect Networks holds a 0.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to Pure Storage’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of DataDirect Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Pure Storage users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

DDN IntelliFlash and Pure Storage FlashBlade are two leading products in the storage solutions market. Pure Storage FlashBlade seems to have the upper hand due to its higher scalability and easier management, despite its higher costs.

Features: DDN IntelliFlash is noted for its robust performance, multi-protocol support, and efficient data reduction. Pure Storage FlashBlade is favored for its high scalability, advanced analytics, and easier management.

Room for Improvement: For DDN IntelliFlash, users suggest improvements in scalability, automation capabilities, and compatibility with third-party tools. For Pure Storage FlashBlade, users recommend enhancements in compatibility with third-party tools, broader support for different file systems, and more advanced automation options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DDN IntelliFlash users report a straightforward deployment process but mention occasional complexities in customization. Customer service is rated highly. Pure Storage FlashBlade users experience a seamless deployment and proactive support.

Pricing and ROI: DDN IntelliFlash is appreciated for its cost-effectiveness and reasonable setup costs, providing a strong ROI. Pure Storage FlashBlade, while being a higher upfront investment, delivers enhanced performance and future-proofing, justifying its cost per user reviews.

To learn more, read our detailed DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

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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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DDN IntelliFlash is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature

One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Good customer service and support and suitable for large environments

It is very easy to install. Users don't need to remember anything while deploying IntelliFlash because everything will be taken care of by tech support. They can easily modify the installation or change the password with the help of the tech support. It is very easy to integrate IntelliFlash with other solutions. We have plugins that can be integrated with other solutions. It will require maintenance. It is the same as any other storage solution: updates and upgrades, firmware upgrades, and drive upgrades.

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Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"The solution is scalable."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"It has reduced our electricity usage by reducing the amount of disks needed for the virtual environment."

"EasyTier/hotcaching: Valuable because it allows greater performance than standard SAS disks"

"High performance and ease-of-management are the most valuable features."

"It's very fast. We were seeing read latencies of less than one millisecond. It is robust."

"It provides a combination of all the protocols that you need, without losing deduplication and compression."

"We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"It performed great originally, and when it performed great, it was awesome."

More DDN IntelliFlash pros

"The product is scalable and easy to expand."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"It has also helped to simplify storage for us in the way that it's easy to manage. Their automatic monitoring really helps when things break or are about to break. They see a problem coming and alert us even before our own system does."

"Speed and ease of use are the two most valuable features."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

Cons

"It is on the expensive side."

"We need better data deduplication."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."

"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"Performance is horrible now. Our original intent was to buy new storage in about two years. But since it became a critical urgency for us, we decided to purchase a new one in two or three months."

"In future releases, I look forward to more AI features."

"Technical support is bad. It'd grade them at 30% or 40%. The response time is terrible."

"In the proxy section you can’t choose a user account and password, so it is not allowed at the moment to go out, if customer has such constellation."

"It only keeps one hour of real-time data without the ability to do deep analysis of each element."

"It's somewhat scalable, but maybe not so much as some of the competition."

"We had just one small stability problem with power flapping and it did not start up again automatically. We had to access service ports and manually restart the storage processors."

"Snapshots are not as easy to access as on a NetApp device."

More DDN IntelliFlash cons

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"I have not seen ROI."

"The documentational aspect of FlashBlade needs improvement."

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"The technical support needs to improve. When we open a case, it is auto assigned to a support tech person. Nine out of ten times, we get an email right back saying that person is off until tomorrow. I cannot handle that. They just did this over the weekend to us, too. I had to call our rep and have them do something about it."

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."

"I would like to see more monitoring capability included in the next release of this solution."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."

"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The product is expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"I recommend the full bundle software in order to have all the functionality. It is more expensive to purchase it one by one."

"I think we pay around 100 grand per year for three arrays or four arrays."

"The price could be cheaper."

"It is within reason for what you get. From what we have found comparing it to other vendors, it is in the same range as others. Given the choice, we would definitely redeploy it based on the cost."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"The price is a little high."

"We used a reseller for the purchase."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IntelliFlash?

It is a bit cheaper than other products, 10% to 20% cheaper.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IntelliFlash?

DDN IntelliFlash should improve in terms of sales. In future releases, I look forward to more features about AI and M...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IntelliFlash?

We use IntelliFlash products for larger environments, like Qatar Airways. They have large scalability and use more th...

See all answers

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 16% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerMax NVMe vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

VAST Data vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 29% of the time

NetApp AFF vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 15% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 15% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs DDN IntelliFlash

Compared 14% of the time

More DDN IntelliFlash Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Tegile, IntelliFlash N-Series, IntelliFlash T-Series, IntelliFlash HD-Series

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Western Digital through its IntelliFlash arrays delivers high-performance storage with a complete range of features and connectivity options, including inline compression and deduplication, application and VM consistent snapshots, replication, RAID, data encryption, VMware vCenter integration, and multi-protocol support for SAN (FC, iSCSI) and NAS (NFS, SMBv3). IntelliFlash arrays deliver high availability through dualredundant and hot-swappable components, active/active or active/passive controllers, non-disruptive software upgrades, eMLC flash, and proactive cloud-based monitoring, analytics, and intelligence. A RESTful API provides scripted or programmatic control.

DataDirect Networks

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Bank of Stockton, Barnsley College, Boyes Turner, Brigham Young University

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Buyer's Guide

DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

March 2025

Free Report: DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

Find out what your peers are saying about DDN IntelliFlash vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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