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HPE Primera vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Primera
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 2.1%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
HPE Primera2.1%
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays1.2%
Other89.2%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
MR
Storage Architect at DXC Technology
Improved data compression has maximized storage capacity and simplifies daily operations
In terms of advantages, I don't see any improvements needed; however, when comparing HPE Primera with Hitachi and KvSP Harrison, it's not on the enterprise level, but we can go ahead with mid-level to enterprise cloud solutions. I don't have any specific ideas for additional features for HPE Primera in the next release; currently, all the features seem good, and I don't see any missing functionalities. I believe architecture could be scaled up to rate controllers, but I don't have any specific suggestions for improvements. Stability could be improved because maintenance-wise, issues with the controllers can sometimes be challenging; enhancements in high availability architecture could help.
Tayo Olubanke - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at GCET
Offers flexibility and top-notch technology
You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data."
"The speed is the most valuable feature, along with the ease of getting it connected. We were able to get it online in less than a day."
"We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power."
"Most of the problems that we had in the past with the performance in IOPS have disappeared. It has been a great improvement for our customers' services."
"The benefits were realized right away. Between the flash array and the compression, you can really see how good it is. Our databases run a lot better now."
"Redundancy and the fault tolerance of the platform are the most impressive."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"The money I saved by not renewing maintenance on the Dell EMC devices paid for the Pure Storage devices."
"HPE Primera is quite a stable storage system that provides good provisioning and allows for the changing of partition sizes."
"All of the capabilities of the hardware such as replication, snapshot, and the specific features are all included from the start as opposed to being on another license."
"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."
"HPE Primera has high availability and is stable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The scalability of HPE Primera is good."
"For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product."
"Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable."
"We know this solution's software, hardware devices, and support are very good."
"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides."
"I like the performance aspect of EF Series. It basically provides everything that we are looking for as a solution, very low latency and very high performance."
"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."
"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."
"This storage solution is both stable and scalable, and it works for our needs."
"For anyone who has critical workloads like Oracle databases or DB2, NetApp All-Flash Arrays will suit their needs, as long as it fits within their budget."
 

Cons

"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room."
"It can go down from time to time, but it's been pretty solid so far."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate with more AWS services."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"I would rate this a seven out of ten because it's a good performance storage, but the price is a little bit high."
"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."
"There are many features which need to be added, particularly on the replication side."
"One of the drawbacks of the model we purchased is that it is not running NVMe drives. Even though they say that it is NVMe-ready, it is still on the SSD drives. The model that we purchased has only eight hard drives, and only the ones on the top could work on NVMe. The rest of them are still on the SSD. Its competitors, such as EMC and Pure Storage, are moving or have already moved to NVMe. HPE should improve this solution for NVMe. HPE should also improve IOs in this solution. IOs in HPE are weaker than Hitachi and Pure Storage."
"There are certain features that require engineering-level access, which should be accessible to storage admins as well."
"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly in that sense that installation and management are still a bit on the high end."
"We cannot use this storage for critical applications and data."
"Like most storage, we want to see flash become more and more stable. Like any flash that uses MLC or TLC techniques, over time, the more writes you have, the less usable the storage becomes. They try to plan for this and have a lot of extra space in the arrays, but over time, their performance does degrade. This is true for any flash storage."
"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."
"There really isn't any aspect of the solution that needs improvement for the customer other than its price."
"Its pricing should be better. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve."
"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."
"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."
"It's very difficult to manage the CLI."
"From a manageability perspective, I like the look and the feel of the FAS series better than the EF. I think it's more straightforward and simplistic."
"The solution should really build out a more hyper-converged product."
"Here in Egypt, we do not have an official office or central point of support."
"NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"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 price is too high."
"Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"We would like them to improve the pricing, so we could put them to use some more product, like backup or long-term storage. In the future, if the price goes down, then we could buy different types of products."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"The solution is cost-effective. I rate it an eight out of ten, with ten being excellent."
"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."
"It’s a reasonable choice. When compared to other options, we've found it to be accessible and within our means."
"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The solution’s pricing is affordable and worth the money."
"The tool is expensive. I can say that HPE Primera is one of the costliest tools in the market."
"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."
"The cost is $75,000 for a three-year contract."
"They provide licenses upon purchase, so there's no need for additional licenses. Regarding additional expenses apart from the standard licensing fees, such as for support or maintenance, there aren't any. Updates take around twenty to thirty minutes, including rebooting the systems, and we haven't faced any problems with the NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. We utilize various other storages like Fujitsu, IBM, and Dalian SIP, but the NetApp EF-Series stands out as we've had no issues throughout the entire year of usage."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, considering the initial investment required...At the end of the product's life cycle, it could get cheaper, but the initial investment in NetApp makes it one of the most expensive solutions."
"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."
"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."
"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."
"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."
"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."
"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
14%
Performing Arts
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

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...
Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?
HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...
What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Primera?
I cannot recall the exact figures for pricing from memory, but it seems to be an acceptable and reasonable price.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...
What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...
What is your primary use case for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?
There are so many things to talk about around the use cases associated with the tool. There are so many reasons why I...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Primera
NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Primera vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.