No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

HPE All-Flash Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (3rd)
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
315
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.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
Unified storage has delivered efficient AI analytics and low latency for critical workloads
There might be some lag or response time with respect to support cases, but even then I will rate it 8.5 out of 10. All of this is the same for all product ranges, whether E-series, NetApp AFF, or FAS series, because they are very efficient to respond. The only reason I rated it 8.5 is because the warehouse for spare parts, when a problem comes, a spare is needed to replace it, for example, a disk. In Pakistan, they have only one warehouse in Karachi. This warehouse manages all the problems when a problem comes. They ship the part based on the customer use case and customer service request. That is the only reason I rate it 8.5 because they have only one warehouse in Pakistan, which is in Karachi. For example, if a problem comes in Islamabad, it will take time to deliver the spare because the part will be shipped from Karachi to Islamabad, which will take around maybe a day. Other OEMs have their warehouses in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi also. In terms of part replacement requirements, they are very efficient in that area because they have warehouses in multiple cities of Pakistan.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, Pure Storage FlashArray has never let us down in front of customers so far."
"The biggest return on investment for us is not having to do a swap out of the arrays every five years."
"All use cases for Everpure FlashArray are anything that requires a SAN should use it because it is the easiest thing on the market."
"It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is simple and easy to use. It offers protection when removing devices. It has the ability to undo deletes."
"We noticed a dramatic increase in application performance when moving it from NetApp to Pure Storage."
"The most valuable feature is how it simplifies the management of the SAN."
"The performance of the storage is just unbelievable."
"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."
"The solution is easily manageable."
"HPE is excellent, at least in this part of the world in Kuwait."
"The initial setup is easy compared to other vendors."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to process huge amounts of data."
"The storage has been very simple to use and offers high availability."
"What we like is the performance of the equipment; it's really much better than hybrid aggregate or machines with flash cache and it works perfectly."
"If you need a replacement part, they will provide it."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"The most valuable features are deduplication and compression, so we get more out of our storage. The replication is also important."
"The stability is solid; it doesn't fail on us, which is exactly what we want, and we have been dependent on NetApp for almost a decade now."
"We got rid of it, and invested in NetApp, and all those reliability and performance issues went away."
"The newest version of ONTAP has a bit of a learning curve because you need to learn where things are to find them. It is not impossible, but when you are accustomed to the older version of ONTAP, it just takes a bit getting used to it, but it is about the same as before."
"We have frequently used tech support, and they are one of the best departments at NetApp; without them, we wouldn't be able to operate the way we do."
 

Cons

"If they could make it cheaper, that would be something."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet. This might be an area for additional focus as it would play into scalability, because the very nature of object storage is that it's infinitely scalable."
"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"Pure will probably have to move to other layers of the stack, not only storage but, maybe, hyperconverged."
"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it."
"The backend of this solution utilizes an Active/Passive architecture, rather than an Active/Active architecture, which is a disadvantage, when compared to some of its competitors. Its storage capacity should be expanded in the next release."
"The scalability of the solution is extremely costly."
"More cloud connectivity would enhance the solution."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The support, visibility, and reporting features must be improved."
"The product’s ability to recover information and generate reports needs enhancement."
"It might be expensive."
"It might be expensive. If budgets are not a concern for any client, I recommend All-Flash."
"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."
"I would like to see if they could move the virtual storage machines. They have integrated a DR, so you can back to your DR, but there's no automated way to failover and failback. It's all manual. I'd like to see it all automated."
"The process for initial setup could be streamlined."
"I need faster Fibre Channel over Ethernet. They top out at 10GBs today and I would like that to go to 40 or 100."
"The initial setup was complex."
"Even though that product has come to end of life, we're unhappy about that."
"I just got through the session where it looks like they are going to support Oracle running on Linux with SnapCenter. That is one of the main things that we are hoping to get integrated."
"It would be much better if you had it more like the way they do Metro Clusters, where they have a switch, and the storage is all attached to a switch."
"I don't like the newest GUI. It needs more options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The guaranty that Pure Storage provides when you purchase it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs to provide extra storage, if needed. Thus, it is not meeting our expectations."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"The best features come included without any additional cost."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."
"All storage is expensive so any price improvement would help."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"The licensing and pricing are fine. As a reseller for the product, we need to make the differentiation in the minds of the customer. They are not just buying some tool that does only one thing, e.g., showing a LAN for a customer. The pricing is fair for what it is."
"NetApp AFF is an expensive product, although not compared to other vendors."
"We don't like the cost. We would like to buy more."
"The entry point for potential customers, who are looking at coming onboard for flash systems, it may be a bit expensive. It would be good if the price comes down."
"We would like it to be free."
"One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license."
"It definitely reduces costs because it simply takes less power to run these systems. While the SSDs don't take power, they are in general very big right now. So, the running cost has decreased for a lot of our customers."
"I think the pricing and licensing are a little high, but compared to those of other storage vendors, it's within reason. After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Music Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
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?
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...
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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.