Kaminario K2 [EOL] vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Silk and NetApp are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 94% of Silk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kaminario K2 [EOL] and NetApp AFF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage.

To learn more, read our detailed All-Flash Storage Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

All-Flash Storage

September 2026

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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

Everpure FlashArray

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV

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.

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Engineerdb78

Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

A solution with a simple configuration and good stability but it's quite expensive

Access to technical support should be improved for our region. Technical support is good, but they're very hard to access. When we have a problem with this storage, it's usually related to a very bad configuration. All-Flash Storage is very, very expensive. They are important solutions so I don't really have any ideas about how to rectify this. The device could use better monitoring tools.

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Mir Gulzar Ahmed

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.

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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

"The dashboard is nice. It is easy to manage compared to other storage solutions such as Dell EMC."

"Because of the encryption, we have different storage and the encryption can go over both, therefore we are NCA compliant."

"The scalability options are very nice because you can scale it much better and faster. The scalability was there in the previous environment also, but this is far better than what we had before. It basically helps the user in case they are looking for more storage. We can scale it much faster."

"The most valuable features in Pure Storage FlashArray are deduplication and active cluster."

"The reliability is very good."

"Everpure FlashArray has positively impacted my organization by increasing our agility and the ability to run our environment at high speeds due to the flash storage."

"After switching to Everpure FlashArray, we saw significant results, as whatever hardware we used before is now compressed to 80%, maximizing space utilization in a single system."

"It is an SSD array that has awesome performance, low submillisecond latency, and does what it is supposed to do. It just works, which is difficult for things to do anymore."

More Everpure FlashArray pros

"Scale out is a differentiator for them, especially in the enterprise market. It's key for a lot of customers."

"Kaminario allowed us a solid state solution with marginal incremental cost."

"Improved performance by more than 50x on our application."

"The GUI is very straightforward and easy to use."

"Our holdup was disk I/O, so we did a PoC with Kaminario and we reduced build times down to fifteen minutes for a full build from two hours."

"From my perspective, it is a huge success fulfilling everything we needed and more!"

"Looking at what changed at Kaminario the last couple of months (and the last couple of years, for that matter) I’m certain we’ll see a lot of great innovation from Kaminario in their upcoming releases."

"The capacity that we're saving by using Kaminario's K2 is giving us a four-to-one ratio for our deduplication."

More Kaminario K2 [EOL] pros

"The most valuable features are the performance and the storage efficiency, due to the compression and deduplication... The efficiency is very important because we can buy fewer disks for more data."

"We use All Flash for block and file storage, and our impression of NetApp has a long history; it's been good to us in providing the support and giving us the right solutions when we need them."

"I like NetApp's edge visualization and load balancing."

"Lower latency means faster end products."

"I would recommend NetApp AFF to other users because it's reliable and has a lot of features."

"The business copy solution has become faster using SnapMirror."

"AFF works well for VMware storage."

"For us, it's brilliant to have all the functionality that NetApp gives you out the box."

More NetApp AFF pros

Cons

"It was a little costly."

"The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier."

"It is a bit expensive."

"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. We want to be able to read through the encryption."

"In terms of improvement, Everpure FlashArray could have more attractive UI/UX design compared to other solutions."

"Based on my experience with various technologies like EMC, NetApp, and Pure Storage, one area for improvement is compliance certifications. NetApp excels in this area, particularly in the American Army or defense sector, where NetApp has approval, whereas others are striving to achieve the same. NetApp also delivers security, ransomware protection, and scale-up capabilities more effectively."

"The scalability of the solution is extremely costly."

"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."

More Everpure FlashArray cons

"There are some mid-market SMB customers that it may not fit the best for from a pricing perspective, but for the vast majority of our customers, once we aware of it and learned about the technology which it performed with, it fits a very useful metric."

"I would like them to improve the look of the product’s external casing and shelves."

"Improved scale and budget planning with flexibility of the solution for budget needs and efficiency for growth with the great optimization ratio due to the nature of our use."

"There are a few areas where the system could be improved. Examples would be that the system currently has a 15TB LUN size limit and that snapshots need to be scheduled through script API instead of the GUI."

"A single pane of glass to monitor/manage multiple arrays would be helpful."

"I would love to see capacity on its DRAM. I know it's not cost effective for them to do it, but I think that it could be a big differentiator and was a big differentiator from the beginning."

"I'd give it a perfect rating if I could push it to 300,000 IOPS like they promote; we just haven't been able to push that many IOPS out of our system."

"Replication and de-duplication could be better."

More Kaminario K2 [EOL] cons

"From my perspective, everything works well. They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment."

"Cleaning up false positives on alerts. We get a lot of those."

"We'd like to see them implement more subscription services into the base support model."

"We found NetApp support to be a mixed bag. Sometimes, it's real good; sometimes, it's real bad."

"The SRA stuff that intergrades with SRM is a problem point. It's a pain point."

"As a customer, the ROI is still not that great. I don't see a unique selling point for NetApp."

"We would like to have more behavioral reporting."

"There are little things that need improvement. For example, if you are setting up a SnapMirror through the GUI, you are forced to change the destination name of the volume, and we like to keep the volume names the same."

More NetApp AFF cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."

"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."

"Once you purchase Pure Storage FlashArray it is all-inclusive, you receive all the licenses needed."

"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."

"We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both."

"The price of the solution is not expensive."

"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."

"The licensing is $100,000."

More Everpure FlashArray pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is all-inclusive."

"Kaminario is very competitive on price. They also have a pay per TB model."

"All features are provided in the licensing. The cost of Kaminario was less than the cost of a hybrid array."

"The "extra" costs associated with features and options that are available off the shelf with Kaminario, make their value proposition extremely competitive."

"Licensing is very straightforward. The cost was considerably lower than other products we looked at."

"The Kaminario setup is simple and there are no hidden licensing fees so this area is a relief."

"I would like them to come down in price. It is as expensive as EMC, Hitachi, and other major vendors."

"If you go for Replication, Vault, and NAS, please ensure that the license has been ordered at the very beginning. However, licenses can been added or modified without rebooting the system at any time."

"The pricing is not a lot considering what you get and it bundles hardware and licensing."

"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."

"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."

"Our TCO decreased significantly because we were paying maintenance on nine different arrays throughout the country. We've condensed those down to three arrays, and our maintenance fees from the IBM product dropped by over a half million dollars a year, saving us $500,000 USD."

"NetApp AFF is an expensive solution."

"With other options, you need to buy a couple of different products to achieve the same outcome."

More NetApp AFF pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user186357

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Construction Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	71
Midsize Enterprise	38
Large Enterprise	159

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	242

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 10% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

VAST Data vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 6% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Everpure FlashArray

Compared 4% of the time

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Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series vs Kaminario K2 [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

Tintri VMstore T7000 vs Kaminario K2 [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Huawei OceanStor vs Kaminario K2 [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

Dell SC Series vs Kaminario K2 [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs Kaminario K2 [EOL]

Compared 9% of the time

More Kaminario K2 [EOL] Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp AFF

Compared 7% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp AFF

Compared 5% of the time

VMware vSAN vs NetApp AFF

Compared 4% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs NetApp AFF

Compared 4% of the time

More NetApp AFF Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Everpure FlashArray

September 2026

Download Everpure FlashArray product report

Buyer's Guide

Kaminario K2 [EOL]

September 2026

Download Kaminario K2 [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp AFF

August 2026

Download NetApp AFF product report

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray

No data available

NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS

Overview

The FlashArray family delivers consistent, high-performance data services across block, file, and object workloads. As part of the Everpure Platform, it provides the foundation for a unified data plane, enabling applications to reliably access, protect, and manage data across environments with simplicity and predictability. With built-in capabilities such as inline data reduction, snapshots, replication, and ransomware resilience, FlashArray ensures efficient operations, protected data, and consistent application uptime.

As the foundation of the (unified) data plane, FlashArray enables policy-driven automation, monitoring, and centralized management while integrating across cloud and on-premises environments. Built on an Evergreen architecture, it supports non-disruptive upgrades and continuous performance improvements over time while simplifying operations at scale.

What Key Features Does FlashArray Offer?

Simplicity and Speed: Easy management and rapid performance enhancements.
Data Reduction: Effective deduplication and compression.
Flash Architecture: Seamless upgrades and outstanding resilience.
VMware Integration: Excellent compatibility with virtualization platforms.
Predictive Analytics: Strong insights for proactive management.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Reliability: Proactive support with minimal downtime.
Efficiency: Reduced storage footprint and enhanced data management.
Performance: Faster processing speeds and low latency.
User Experience: Simplified management with Evergreen model.

In industries like finance, banking, and healthcare, FlashArray supports high-performance storage needs focusing on virtualization and database environments. Employed for VMware workloads, disaster recovery, and storage provisioning, it ensures application performance in private or hybrid cloud setups while enhancing management of virtualized environments.

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)

Kaminario K2 is the world’s only storage solution that delivers the predictability needed to handle the highly unpredictable world of modern businesses. This highly flexible all flash storage platform allows customers to cost-effectively scale capacity and performance to support their ever-changing business –seamlessly, on-demand and with no disruptions.

Data Sheet and eBook

Silk

NetApp AFF provides high-performance storage solutions, emphasizing speed and efficiency for demanding applications. Its features include low latency, inline deduplication, and seamless integration, making it ideal for businesses needing reliable storage and data management.

NetApp AFF stands out in offering rapid data access with features designed to meet the demands of high-speed environments. With capabilities such as low latency and inline deduplication, it ensures efficient data management. Data recovery and SnapMirror enhance its appeal for businesses focused on utility and integration with other NetApp systems. The clustered Data ONTAP enriches the user experience, making NetApp AFF a strong choice for those prioritizing usability and performance during migration. However, some users highlight the steep learning curve and high costs, along with the need for better integration, monitoring tools, and technical support. Improvement in migration, scalability, documentation, and automation is also desired, along with more competitive pricing.

What are its standout features?

Speed: Offers rapid data access for high-demand applications.
Low Latency: Ensures quick response times.
Inline Deduplication: Optimizes storage efficiency.
Seamless Integration: Integrates smoothly with NetApp systems.
SnapMirror: Facilitates efficient data recovery.
Clustered Data ONTAP: Enhances user experience.

What benefits should users look for?

High Performance: Supports critical applications with speed.
Reliability: Provides robust data management solutions.
Data Utility: Enhances data access and recovery options.
Efficient Migration: Ensures smooth transitions with minimal disruption.
Integration Support: Works well within existing NetApp environments.

NetApp AFF is commonly utilized in industries such as telecom, healthcare, and insurance that require high-performance storage. Virtualization, database management, file storage, and NFS/CIFS protocols are key use cases. It supports high availability and disaster recovery, serving as the backbone for VM and Hyper-V infrastructures. Organizations also benefit from its low latency and support for AI workloads, optimizing operational efficiencies.

NetApp

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas

Wargaming.net, El Rio Community Health Center, ECN, SpotOption, Ashkelon College, Clearwater Analytics, Intigua, Cobb EMC Customer Case Study

DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and others in All-Flash Storage. Updated: September 2026.

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