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Huawei OceanStor vs NetApp AFF 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
Huawei OceanStor
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
39
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
312
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei OceanStor is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
ChukwuemekaOnyemelukwe - PeerSpot reviewer
Uses a proprietary technology with simple interface and has easy deployment
If you are not generating a substantial amount of data, the available storage space might suffice, making scalability less of a concern. However, if your data generation increases and you require more storage, Huawei OceanStor offers solutions to expand your storage capacity. Expanding storage resources can involve additional costs and configuration efforts. Acquiring more storage solutions and ensuring their integration with your existing setup might require a significant investment of time and resources. While this process can be complex, it allows for seamless scalability as your data storage needs grow. I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Ian Rousom - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible with great support and high-speed multi-protocol storage
Keystone offers flexible consumption models that go beyond just how much capacity at such and such a speed, et cetera. We don't always know what the profile of that data will be. However, if we can quickly agree on terms that meet our needs and make NetApp still reasonably profitable, we can confidently deploy, see how things go and adjust. That kind of service delivery model, that customer service model has sped things up and made contract negotiations much easier. It frankly made the owners of the system more confident. We've experienced faster time to market. It's hard for us to find and retain infrastructure staff. We're in a business where the firm fixed price contract reigns supreme, and so we can't always just offer someone more money. However, if they can dedicate their time to learning one company's portfolio and learning it really well, but be useful in a bunch of different places, they will do well. We've seen that in a lot of different places. We've been able to hire younger people and retain them, moving them from program to program based on their understanding of the solution its skill set, and its portability. It's been useful for high-speed multi-protocol storage in places with ever-increasing density. We have limits on how much power and cooling and rack space we have, and yet they've delivered every time. We needed a storage company that had mastery of multi-protocol, and this solution stands out. They especially stand out as a secure provider. We require solutions that we can run ourselves, that we can air gap since so much of what we do is either classified or very sensitive or cannot live in a public ecosystem. For us, the issue consuming AI has been the trust of the models given to us by third parties. We can't necessarily trust their provenance, what fed them, what originally trained them, or what gave them their worldview, for lack of a better term. We can't simply just trust that at face value since we know nothing about where it came from or what inferences it might make. We must assume that some AI inferences were made deliberately to damage or hurt national security systems. So the models that we start with tend to be very, very primitive, crude, and not well trained, so we have to train them much longer and not always with the availability of cloud that has inexhaustible capacity. A partner who understands this and provides consistency at all scales is very important.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability."
"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."
"The latency is good."
"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The setup and the price are the most valuable and not the features related."
"OceanStor is cheaper than Dell EMC, and its management interface is quite simple."
"The technology seems to be good, especially the performance on their all-flash storage."
"It is easy to implement or install the tool."
"Huawei OceanStor utilizes a proprietary technology known as RAID 2.0. This technology sets it apart from conventional storage solutions. RAID 2.0 offers advantages over traditional configurations. OceanStor's user interface is very simple and easy to use, featuring a graphical interface that enables quick and error-free setup of the storage system. This interface ensures that users can configure the storage efficiently and without mistakes."
"It is easy to use, deploy, communicate and manage this solution."
"The performance and ease of management are the most valuable features."
"Stability: The product is designed to have always HA (High Availability) with redundant network and processors."
"The usability of actually being able to scale it out has been great."
"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."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"The scale up version of it is the most valuable feature. You can go to 24 nodes, which is very cool."
"The tool's most valuable feature is efficiency."
"NetApp AFF is very good at cleaning up your storage."
"NetApp solutions are easy to maintain and upgrade."
"We can go through and do an upgrade without worrying about any issues with the process"
 

Cons

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"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."
"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."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"We need better data deduplication."
"The software layer has to improve."
"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"Based on what we were quoted, the stated capacity was not a true reflection of the actual capacity."
"Huawei OceanStor should work on its saturation level and should be able to take up more load. It should give the same performance that it gives at 20 or 30 percent load for 80 percent as well."
"From a political perspective, there are issues selling Chinese brands to Western companies, as some may not be permitted to use them."
"The technical support has been a let down for us. It's something the company has to work on. We haven't been satisfied with their level of service."
"The overall price of the solution should be reduced."
"Its data replication features work slowly for nodes."
"Based on what we were quoted, the stated capacity was not a true reflection of the actual capacity. The data store ran out of space, and Huawei had to send a new unit."
"The speed has room for improvement."
"NetApp should have a local presence in Pakistan."
"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."
"The graphical interface is still heavy and slow. Needs more improvement in this area."
"Its integration could be improved."
"I don't work on the technical side of things, so it's hard for me to highlight areas of improvement, but maybe the price could be a little better."
"Tech support is a place where there is room to improve the product experience. The response time when they are busy is not very good."
"I do not like the NetApp GUI. For example, the GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect."
"A graphical user interface displaying efficiency metrics, such as compression and deduplication rates, would be a great addition."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The product is expensive."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."
"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."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"Huawei OceanStor is a cost-effective storage solution."
"Huawei's prices are very good compared to those of its competitors."
"It's roughly affordable."
"Pricing is very fair."
"The price of the license is quite low, so it's not something special or expensive."
"Huawei OceanStor is priced very well but is a bit complicated."
"The product is cheap."
"Overall, the solution's pricing was cheaper."
"In addition to simplifying the management across a mix of solutions, AFF simplifies the cost. That was one of the main reasons we purchased AFF."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. But if you have to buy any more disk space, it can be quite expensive."
"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."
"Look at the different options that NetApp offers. Look for a model and option which fits your needs correctly. Don't buy a low-end product for a high-end job."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"The price of NetApp is very expensive, but we don't know how much Pure is, so we can't compare."
"Once we did get into the NetApp ecosystem, we realized that the cost effectiveness was greater than we originally thought."
"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."
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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
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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 Huawei OceanStor?
Huawei OceanStor has the capability of SSDs, high-performance disks, and higher disk support.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei OceanStor?
Huawei OceanStor's pricing is very aggressive, making it highly competitive.
What needs improvement with Huawei OceanStor?
Huawei currently lacks a solution for high-performance AI, unlike other companies like DDN, WekaIO, or IBM BlueStore....
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
OceanStor Dorado V3 All-Flash Storage System, OceanStor 18000 V3 Series Storage Systems, OceanStor 6800 V3 Storage System
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Piraeus, Clinique Univeritaires Saint-Luc
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei OceanStor vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.