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NetApp AFF A-Series vs NetApp AFF C-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF A-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise SAN (5th)
NetApp AFF C-Series
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
3.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF A-Series is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF C-Series is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
NetApp AFF A-Series0.8%
NetApp AFF C-Series0.7%
Other91.1%
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.
Raymond Ciscon - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at MacLean-Fogg Company
Gives us the foundation to grow efficiently
We're a manufacturer. All of our ERP software is dependent upon fast performance and connection to this hardware. So when there was an issue years ago when something was wrong or slow, that prompted us to say, "Can we check storage? Can we check the network?" Ever since we've gone up to all-flash FAS systems, there's never any questions about performance when it comes to storage. There's been a huge leap from spinning disks to SSDs. I'm hoping with the next update, we'll go to NVMe and we'll have similar experiences. Last year, we refreshed the SAN at our headquarters. We signed a Keystone agreement with the ability to pay for storage as a service at an excellent price point yet still have the hardware on-prem. I manage the hardware, and, for me, it's the best of both worlds. We've just come up with a situation where, finally, after some time, we're going to need to buy some additional storage. In previous situations like this, it usually meant the purchase of an additional shelf at a large price. Now we have Keystone, and we're locked in at that price per tebibyte. We just have to say that we want to add 25 tebibytes and they take care of it. It's worked out really well. We work ISO 27001 certified. Since I manage the enterprise storage, we use SnapMirror, and we're currently using Veeam for backups. Thanks to what this tool provides, we are able to get through that portion of our certification without a problem. No changes, no rectifying. It's very slick. Our company's goals include maintaining a level of consistency. We're never going to be on the bleeding edge. We're never going to have the super fastest abilities. We want something that works, is easier for us to manage, and has a better growth path. For us, in the past, in the need for additional disk space, if we didn't do the sizing right in the first place, buying additional disks was incredibly expensive. Now, with Keystone, that's no longer an issue, and that's what we like.
Shailendra Choudhary - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Reliable flash storage has delivered strong data reduction and secured sensitive information
There is still some room for improvement when it comes to scalability, mainly in the interoperability and integration aspects. Every storage vendor has certain limitations, and this is not limited to NetApp; it applies to everyone in the industry. I do not see any other significant areas for improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series at this time. NetApp is working on their roadmap, which is solid, and they are developing certain features that are yet to be released.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Once we solved the data reduction and what Pure does we were hooked."
"The amount of throughput that we're getting is really nice."
"It's easy to use, and the maintenance upgrades to get free controllers work really well."
"The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on, and the biggest selling point for me was the replacement of the hardware, the controllers, without any major expense to the clinic."
"It worked flawlessly."
"It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive."
"The deduplication and compression options from NetApp AFF A-Series are good to use for efficient storage capacity."
"NetApp's inline deduplication and compression are unmatched compared to other vendors."
"We've reduced downtime. Without all of NetApp's benefits, we would have had to reconfigure parts of storage that would have required downtime. We have dramatically reduced our downtime through successive generations of NetApp, allowing us to get Five 9s availability."
"MetroCluster is the best product on the market. It synchronizes the storage. NetApp's update packages are a huge advantage because the firmware and server updates are in one package."
"NetApp AFF A-Series is faster and more robust compared to the all-flash storage of NetApp."
"NetApp helps us get the fastest output."
"NetApp's hot and cold storage are its most valuable features. We currently use the A series. Immutable snapshots are another advanced security feature that is positive."
"NetApp support is fantastic."
"NetApp AFF C-Series is a good product for entry-level flash storage, the system is competitive in terms of pricing, and the value proposition is strong."
"NetApp offers a cost-effective solution with very robust hardware."
 

Cons

"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"FlashArray's capacity for forecasting should be improved because it needs to be a bit more current. I think it's bundled with the deduplication and other compression factors. We need more user interfaces for forecasting in this software and more interfaces need to be integrated with this array management tool."
"For scalability, I rate it a six out of ten. We reach a limit. We never reached this limit, however, the architecture allows you to go until a certain size, and after that, you have to buy another array."
"I'd like to see a move towards individual VMs for what the performance of each VM is in a VD infrastructure. I can see the overall volume, but I would love to see things in a more granular level on the VM side."
"It would be beneficial to have a separate pricing point for environments with lower performance requirements or less workload."
"The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality."
"They are doing some stuff with containers and an object search. These could be improved, because containers is one of the main topics that we are talking with our customers about."
"The data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we move over, is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times."
"Pricing could always be lower."
"It would be helpful if our partner organized a yearly session with my team to discuss the new feature sets on our current solutions and other ways NetApp can help us. Perhaps we are missing some information to help us make the right decision."
"We have several problems with the limitations of NetApp systems in terms of volume shares. We have a brick in a 700 or a controller, and we sometimes make small volumes, but Kubernetes container volumes don't allow us."
"NetApp is shifting to the cloud and adopting AI, but it is not improving its core technology to deliver faster storage. We're still waiting to see if it improves speed with solutions like the 90 series."
"I really don't have a lot of complaints. In the past, there were issues, however, they've really done a great job of reaching out."
"NetApp AFF A-Series should work on cost. The solutions, especially enterprise-level storage, should be more affordable to improve their appeal to businesses."
"The solution's ransomware protection could be improved."
"We faced one bug that impacted our NetApp last month, and it took some time to identify the underlying issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a more expensive solution, but it is worth it. You are getting what you paid for."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"The solution is expensive."
"For pricing, you have to take into account their performance on deduplication and compression in a $/GB comparison."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

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?
I have knowledge about the licensing part, which we obtained for around 10 years from the time of deployment, but I d...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
When it comes to Everpure FlashArray ports shown in the GUI, it would be better if, when one of the Pure array ports ...
What needs improvement with NetApp AFF A-Series?
NetApp is doing great with cloud integration; however, there may be room for improvement in integrating with existing...
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF A-Series?
It would be great to see some automation from NetApp. I rate NetApp AFF A-Series a nine out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp AFF A-Series?
With respect to pricing, NetApp can be competitive but hasn't been explored to a large extent.
What needs improvement with NetApp AFF C-Series?
There is still some room for improvement when it comes to scalability, mainly in the interoperability and integration...
What is your primary use case for NetApp AFF C-Series?
I would recommend NetApp AFF C-Series for various types of companies depending on the use case. A small company, an e...
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp AFF C-Series?
I recommend Dell PowerStore to some of my customers, but usually the differences are taken care of. I focus primarily...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF A-Series vs. NetApp AFF C-Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.