Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays comparison

Huawei and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Huawei is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.8, while NetApp is ranked #26 with an average rating of 9.0. Huawei holds a 4.4% mindshare in AFS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Huawei users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and Huawei OceanStor Dorado compete in the storage solutions market. Based on user reviews, Huawei OceanStor Dorado has the upper hand due to its advanced features.

Features: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays offers high performance, reliability, and ease of use with seamless integration into existing systems. Huawei OceanStor Dorado includes AI-driven optimization, superior data reduction capabilities, and advanced features that set it apart.

Room for Improvement: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays could improve scalability, data protection features, and offer a more intuitive management system. Huawei OceanStor Dorado should enhance technical support responsiveness and provide better documentation for troubleshooting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetApp EF-Series is easy to deploy with clear installation guides and reliable customer service. Huawei OceanStor Dorado also has straightforward deployment but can suffer from less responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is competitively priced, offering a good return on investment. Huawei OceanStor Dorado, though more expensive, justifies its cost with superior features and higher performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

July 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 August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is 4.4%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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Saleem Ahmed

Cloud Architect at ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd.

A highly stable solution that provides features like SmartMigration, HyperReplication, and SmartPartition

Other Huawei mid-end storages, like 5600 and 5500, are very easy to use. Engineers with two to three years of experience with Huawei will find that Huawei OceanStor Dorado is a bit complicated to use compared to other Huawei storages. Unlike other storages, you cannot configure the disk domain and storage pool in Huawei OceanStor Dorado.

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Tayo Olubanke

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.

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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

"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."

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

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe has low latency and high Ops. It is an evergreen model."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"The latency is good."

"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."

"Pure Storage has signature security technology, which cannot be deleted, even if you are an administrator."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the price to performance ratio."

"The installation and management are very easy."

"Huawei has more features than other vendors. It integrates well with security management solutions, though not directly with databases."

"The platform's most valuable features are reliability, intelligence, and fast performance speed."

"The solution's pricing is its most valuable feature."

"Two things really stand out for me. First, there's group cloning, which is very nice. It simplifies managing multiple clones across the group. Second, Huawei's multi-controller architecture with load balancing is a good part."

"The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment takes about a day."

"The platform’s most valuable features are speed, accuracy, and encryption."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pros

"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 most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

"The main advantage of this solution is performance."

"The benefits are better up-time, better response time."

"Its performance is most valuable. This solution is much faster than other as well as older storage solutions. The performance of the system is very good. We are getting 50 times better experience than the older storages. We are using AFF 300. It also has native cloud integration and most of the features."

"Rapid deployment, easy integration management and cloning of areas."

"We do a lot of in-house, application-dependent type things, where we find the different niches to the different things. Certain things they do better. We've found that it actually does very well on some of our higher-end applications."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

Cons

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

"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."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."

"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."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

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

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"An area of this product that has room for improvement is the NAS capability."

"This solution does not support VMware VVols 2.0."

"The initial setup was very complex."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado's biggest weakness is its lack of cloud integration."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado could improve the integration, there have been some compatibility issues with some operating system functions."

"The technology and the features need improvement."

"The user interface of Huawei OceanStor Dorado could be more user-friendly. Other solutions, such as EMC, have a better user interface."

"The solution's price could be better."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado cons

"Better support technicians for CAPP."

"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."

"As far as the manageability, being able to port between the two and have to do less training in-house from a customer point of view, that would be the part to improve."

"We need a center related to NetApp in Egypt so that we can deal with them directly."

"The pricing could be cheaper and it should have documentation in more languages, specifically, Russian."

"This solution does not have any compression or deduplication."

"The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Its pricing should be better. Its price is competitive, but they need to improve the pricing. They have different licensing models, which they need to improve. My expectation was cloud integration, which they have, but it is a different license. Therefore, people cannot enjoy it. If I want to use it, I need to pay extra. There is a cost involved for everything, but it should reach everyone. It is similar to having a Rolls-Royce, but you need to pay extra for the key. If you want the key, you need to pay."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

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

"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."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"There are lots of features included with this solution and some of them require additional licensing, such as creating high availability storage using a cluster."

"The pricing is one thing that works for them. I think their pricing is more competitively affordable than these top competitors."

"Huawei OceanStor Dorado is more affordable than the competitor solutions"

"You need to pay for the license."

"It stands out as the fastest purpose-built storage solution available on the market, and the pricing is highly competitive and excellent."

"We saw ROI in terms of both money and time saved. It is worth the price."

"In price comparisons with alternative products, it stands out as a more cost-effective option."

"The price of Huawei OceanStor Dorado is very inexpensive, it cost approximately $5 per gigabyte."

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado pricing and cost advice

"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."

"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"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."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"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."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"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."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Performing Arts

10%

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.

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

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The product has the best compression and encryption features. The most valuable features I have found in the tool are...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

The products they offer are quite cheap. However, I do not have much information about licensing since we don't buy t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor Dorado?

Some customers have reported not understanding how the immutable part can be unlocked. From my perspective, it's not ...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 25% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerMax vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 16% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 12% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp AFF vs Huawei OceanStor Dorado

Compared 10% of the time

More Huawei OceanStor Dorado Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 26% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 15% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 13% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado

August 2025

Download Huawei OceanStor Dorado product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

August 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Also Known As

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

OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

Huawei's OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash storage is the ideal choice for enterprises' mission-critical business. It is the industry's first commercial use of NVMe all-flash storage, and it delivers high-performing, reliable, and efficient storage services.

Huawei

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Telecom Italia, Hi3G Sweden, KPN

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Buyer's Guide

Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

July 2025

Free Report: Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei OceanStor Dorado vs. NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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