Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE Alletra Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

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
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
311
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Alletra Storage is 9.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Gianpaolo-Mazzola - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplicity in management and competitive performance
I use Pure FlashArray X NVMe for storing and managing data for my client projects Pure FlashArray X NVMe stands out for its simplicity in management and its ability to easily collect performance data for future implementation. Its scalability has met my organization's growth needs.  Overall, it…
Santhosh Sridhara - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrating automation and reporting while ensuring smooth workflow management
We purpose-built it for a specific requirement, consuming features like encryption and deduplication between sites. It offers good deduplication ratios, comparing well with Pure Storage. HPE Alletra Storage helps simplify storage operations, integrating with vCenter. Many modern storages provide a unified view, which we utilize. Overall, it has streamlined our analysis process, thanks to automation and reporting features.
Vladan Djurdjevic - PeerSpot reviewer
A powerful and flexible solution with good documentation and support
I have worked with Dell solutions. It is pretty simplified for end users, but it does not offer as much flexibility as NetApp. You do not know what is happening in the background. They have simplified their GUI, and it is easy to use. However, when you want to try something from the command line, it is not so comfortable. You have to read the documentation. The ONTAP command line interface is quite extensive. Dell's support is so expensive. We have a NetApp partner portal tool, which is called the TCO estimator. When we compare these two, Dell's support is expensive. It is good, but it is expensive. The support of both NetApp and Dell is good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The latency is good."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."
"We have improved storage performance."
"More deduplication and compression are valuable because capacity matters."
"It's easy to deploy and maintain and it's made everything faster."
"It is simple to manage and integrate with our virtualization platform. There is also the storage efficiency."
"It's really easy to use."
"Alletra has helped reduce the time spent resolving storage-related support tickets by about 40%."
"It's got an integration with InfoSight."
"The reliability is very good."
"The overall latency in our environment is very low because it's All Flash and we've got 10 Giga dedicated to the storage network"
"It scales well, probably more so than the FAS. Because of the storage density with the SSDs, we can't buy enough SSDs to max one out."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."
"The benefits of being on AFF are the phenomenal speed at which we're able to ingest data and index it, and the IOPS."
"It has improved performance for our enterprise applications, data analytics, and VMs. These improvements are a result of all-flash, throughput, reliability, compression, etc."
"One of the main features that we love about the system is the ability to create snapshots. NetApp makes a lot of snapshots in a short space of time. Also, the speed of data recovery with NetApp, at the time we need it, is an important feature that we love."
"AFF has improved my organization because we now have better performance. We can scale up and we can create servers a lot faster now. With the storage that we had, it used to take a lot longer, but now we can provide the business what they need a lot faster."
 

Cons

"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"We need better data deduplication."
"Some of the upgrades can take a while to come through. The release cadence of versions is a little bit slow."
"HPE Alletra Storage is considered expensive compared to competitors like Dell and Huawei. Many times, we lose deals due to price even though it is the best solution in the market."
"I cannot think of a specific area that needs improvement."
"I need the protocol expected. I want them to include NVMe protocol in VMware compatibilities."
"The energy usage could be further improved."
"The plug-in for vCenter and integration into vCenter is spotty at best."
"Everything is performing well with no major problems or complaints and complete data protection. However, it could benefit from integrating an AI assistant module to streamline data migration between different vendor arrays in a more automated fashion."
"I'd like to see a smaller chassis in the hybrid arrays."
"The SRA stuff that intergrades with SRM is a problem point. It's a pain point. The support personnel aren't always knowledgeable on that product. At times, they are not even aware what product is supported and what is not, when one has been deprecated and there is a new one out, and what the bug fixes of the newer version are."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
"NetApp can help in these endeavours by focusing more on security."
"A while ago, they performed quite slowly."
"When it comes to the cloud, they might need to improve in terms of making it clear why someone would use a NetApp solution over cloud-made storage."
"We don't have any challenges with NetApp. We only need to update it on emerging software and versions that are put out or any enhancements that they've included or things that they've deprecated. NetApp's product is superior, so our engineers must stay on top of all the features and things that they've taken away."
"I would like it to be an IP as our network is mainly IP-based."
"Some of the graphical user interface changes in the later versions of NetApp have not been as good as the older ones, like in the 9.5 era."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"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."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"It is fairly priced. It is in line with industry standard pricing and cost models."
"For us, its price is good."
"So far, so good."
"Its pricing is very competitive."
"Its licensing is good. Pricing-wise, there can be a little bit more flexibility. It would help to have different sizes. However, it fits into the budget that we have, so we are happy."
"It is reasonably priced."
"HPE was a clear winner on price per terabyte. It was very smooth."
"Overall, it was good. It had a good price per gigabyte."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"The total cost of ownership has decreased a great deal. As far as percentages, it's hard to gauge, but we did have quite a few personnel staying up, making sure batches ran well every night. Now, batches are being done by 8:00 in the evening, so we don't have to do that anymore. When you start adding the employee hours that we have for people working in the off-hours, and it is not an issue anymore, I suspect TCO might have gone down 25 percent."
"All features are included in the license, whereas with an EMC solution, you have to pay separately for extra terabytes."
"Other vendors may come in at a cheaper price point, but you will pay in the end with management costs and downtime."
"It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors."
"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."
"Disk level encryption is already in the solution, but it is very costly. Its pricing should come down."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
66%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

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.
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 ...
What do you like most about HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
Scheduling a Proof of Concept to demonstrate ROI - Will be a well documented way to portray Alletra's performance, ju...
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
I would say that maybe the user interface and experience could be improved. There are a few areas where enhancements ...
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 FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra Storage vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.