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HPE All-Flash Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
HPE All-Flash Storage
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (12th)
NetApp AFF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

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.
KK
General Manager at Zenith Business Solutions
Has reduced deployment time significantly and provides valuable data optimization features
I have provided feedback on various HPE tools including HyperConverged, Nimble Storage, GreenLake, and Alletra. HPE All-Flash Storage includes impressive AI features for data analytics and InfoSight capabilities. The solution demonstrates impressive speed and performance metrics. I currently work as General Manager with Zenith Business Solutions. Overall rating: 9 out of 10.
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time. I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes. Now, it takes thirty seconds."
"As soon as we introduced our first Pure Storage FlashArray, the first benefit was at least twice the performance increase. Our production databases simply ran twice as fast with no other change."
"The most valuable features are extremely low latency, high IOPS with VMware, inline deduplication and compression."
"Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space."
"It reduces space and the polar consumption. It also accelerates the application."
"This solution has helped my organization by cutting down on provisioning time; I used to have to provision a VM and it would take ten minutes, now, it takes thirty seconds."
"From an investment standpoint, the support staff I require for it is greatly reduced, so I don't have the in-depth requirements that I had on other products."
"Cuts VM deployment down to seconds and cuts latency under MS with amazing performance and very stable operation with no worries about how much it can handle."
"The storage has been very simple to use and offers high availability."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to process huge amounts of data."
"The solution is easily manageable."
"The initial setup is easy compared to other vendors."
"HP has its own software called InfoSight for the users. It performs predictive analysis and takes a proactive approach to identify issues even before failures occur."
"HPE is excellent, at least in this part of the world in Kuwait."
"NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage."
"It's helping us achieve our budget constraints while allowing us to work in other areas."
"We're able to treat more patients now because our workloads are performing faster."
"We are using the AQoS operating system, which allows us to get a lot more out of our AFF systems."
"High availability"
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of technical support."
"The file-based protocol supports NFS and CIFS."
"With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash, and the features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"We need to add more storage in Pure Storage FlashArray with the cluster mode activated for us to have better performance."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"The scalability of the solution is extremely costly."
"We would like more extended historical data to help with some of the capacity planning. This is something that we are asking for all the time. E.g., what was the historical performance of this particular volume? So, we would like more historicals."
"I would like some performance analytics which go deeper than today. It should be specific to some hosts and applications. This would be good."
"The negative aspect of Everpure FlashArray is that migrations can be somewhat complicated."
"It might be expensive. If budgets are not a concern for any client, I recommend All-Flash."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"It might be expensive."
"The product’s ability to recover information and generate reports needs enhancement."
"HPE All-Flash Storage does not have snapshot immutability, which is something I need. This was a significant factor in my decision to switch from HPE to Dell PowerStore."
"The support, visibility, and reporting features must be improved."
"The price of NVMe storage is very expensive."
"The SRA stuff that intergrades with SRM is a problem point. It's a pain point."
"Going forward, I would like improvement in the response latencies, capacity size, cache, and controller size."
"FC and ATTO bridges are still needed for cross datacenter replication."
"I would like to see better tutorials available, beyond the basics, that cover subjects like MetroCluster and automation."
"I would like to see NetApp improve more of its offline tools and utilities."
"On the fiber channel side, there is a limit of sixteen terabytes on each line, and we would like to see this raised because we are having to use some other products."
"The graphical interface is still heavy and slow. Needs more improvement in this area."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost has room for improvement."
"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."
"Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"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."
"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"The product is not cheap."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The product is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"Our space savings through dedupe and compression is over 50 percent, so we are saving. I think our 8080s has 20TBs. We are saving at least 10TBs and that's over 50 percent of the capacity that we're using."
"ATTO bridges add to the total cost of the system."
"Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
"I find the pricing to be reasonable, particularly with the recent inclusion of features like snap locking and ransomware protection within the ONTAP license instead of having them as separate licenses."
"I understand the cost is less than many other storages of same/similar performance benchmark."
"NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."
"It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors."
"When we bought NetApp, it was very reasonably priced. When you factor in the time savings, it's highly cost-effective."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Music Company
12%
Government
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

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?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE All-Flash Storage?
In my region, the pricing is good. We work with a local channel for HPE, which provides a good final price. The list ...
What needs improvement with HPE All-Flash Storage?
There are some areas that could be improved in HPE All-Flash Storage. The performance could be enhanced, as it is cur...
What is your primary use case for HPE All-Flash Storage?
The main use case for this storage depends on the organization. HPE All-Flash Storage is primarily suited for small a...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE All-Flash Storage vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.