NetApp E-Series vs VAST Data comparison

NetApp and VAST Data are both solutions in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category. NetApp is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.5, while VAST Data is ranked #13. NetApp holds a 2.9% mindshare in N, compared to VAST Data’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of NetApp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VAST Data users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

VAST Data and NetApp E-Series are competing solutions in the storage management category. NetApp E-Series holds the upper hand in data management due to its extensive features, while VAST Data is more favorable regarding pricing and support.

Features: VAST Data uses advanced architecture, ensuring high-speed performance and efficient data reduction technologies, making it stand out for its cutting-edge infrastructure. NetApp E-Series is notable for scalability, broad integration with enterprise environments, and a comprehensive set of features that enhance the adaptability of storage solutions to varied business needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VAST Data simplifies deployment with its modern infrastructure, reducing setup time and system management complexity, supported by responsive customer service. NetApp E-Series, although traditional in deployment, offers a comprehensive service framework that supports more complex environments with robust service support.

Pricing and ROI: VAST Data has lower initial setup costs, presenting a compelling ROI by reducing long-term operational expenses through efficient management and lower ownership costs. NetApp E-Series involves higher upfront expenses but offers extended enterprise features and integration advantages, justifying its price through increased long-term value and resource optimization.

To learn more, read our detailed NetApp E-Series vs. VAST Data Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetApp E-Series vs. VAST Data

December 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 January 2026, in the NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 4.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp E-Series is 2.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VAST Data is 6.2%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pure FlashArray X NVMe	4.0%
NetApp E-Series	2.9%
VAST Data	6.2%
Other	86.9%

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

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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Milan Budimir

IT-Techniker at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Have struggled with timely expert support and faced communication challenges during critical maintenance tasks

As an AZ3 technician with experience in that direction, when I call them, I do not call the first-level support as it is something I do not need. I call them because I am not able to resolve that mistake or when the behavior of the machine is not normal. If you need an auto support message from the customer machine, you can get them from the first level, but most of the time, they do not know what an auto support message is, and everything stops there. You have a few of them when you call, and when we are replacing something in NetApp E-Series. StorageGRID is different, but with NetApp E-Series, you need to grab information from the node that is actually down; in most cases, the node is not in loader. It is entirely gone. You can try to reseat it, maybe boot it up, but in most cases, when it is down, it stays down. You call support for that, and that is when you lose two or three hours.

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Alan Powers

HPC CTO at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Stability-wise, a device that has been up and running for years

The failover capability and resiliency are some of the solution's valuable features. The big thing is resilience because it has richer coding in it, so multiple devices can't fail. Also, one can still access a number of CBoxes that can allow one to access their file system. Once a device fails, it fails the transparency of the end-user, and it just starts using another resource. The encryption capability, the snapshots, along with a whole bunch of features make the tool valuable. VAST Data keeps adding more and more features all the time.

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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

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

"The solution is very straightforward to set up."

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

"What I really like about this program, is that it is easy to use and easy to configurate."

"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."

"The most valuable features of Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its superior performance compared to other flash tiers, as well as its ease of use, with an intuitive user interface that is simple to deploy and use."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"My customers are satisfied with the performance."

"The overall experience has been positive."

"The Snapshot feature is actually widely used; it is a feature that only NetApp E-Series has and it is quite good."

"If we select the best use case for NetApp E-Series based on its intended purpose, I would rate it a ten."

"Customers go for the E Series if they need backup storage because it is cheap."

"The product is easy to use."

"The solution is useful for machine learning and scientific applications, including computer simulations."

"This has been one of the most reliable storage systems that I have ever used."

Cons

"You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

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

"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems."

"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

"NetApp should add more production lines to the E series so we can make flexible solutions more easily."

"Getting through first level to second level takes two hours minimum."

"Regarding error handling in NetApp E-Series, because it is a cost-effective but not an intelligent storage solution, the error handling is not sufficient."

"With NetApp E-Series, when we are running active-active NAS4, sometimes due to either an issue or a bug, we experience failures. At least twice yearly, we have seen this issue. When it occurs, we lose critical systems such as MQ."

"The solution must provide more training courses."

"Though the performance is there, if NetApp wants to be competitive with the others, it must improve their business continuity."

"The write performance could be improved because it is less than half of the read performance."

"The read/write ratio is an area in the solution with some flaws and needs improvement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price is reasonable for NetApp E-Series."

"We acquired VAST Data as a one-time, capital purchase."

"Price-wise, VAST Data is not the cheapest, not the most expensive one."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

21%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	12

No data available

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...

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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 NetApp E-Series?

The product is easy to use.

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What needs improvement with NetApp E-Series?

Regarding scalability, I think there is no problem. While there is always room for improvement in any product, to my ...

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What is your primary use case for NetApp E-Series?

We sell NetApp E-Series as engineered machines like FlexPod, which is used where high throughput and native storage p...

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Comparisons

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Compared 18% of the time

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HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 8% of the time

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Seagate Exos X Series vs NetApp E-Series

Compared 24% of the time

NetApp ASA vs NetApp E-Series

Compared 22% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp E-Series

Compared 16% of the time

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform vs NetApp E-Series

Compared 12% of the time

NetApp NVMe AFF A800 vs NetApp E-Series

Compared 6% of the time

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NetApp AFF vs VAST Data

Compared 9% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs VAST Data

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs VAST Data

Compared 8% of the time

MinIO vs VAST Data

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs VAST Data

Compared 6% of the time

More VAST Data Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

January 2026

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp E-Series

January 2026

Download NetApp E-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

January 2026

Download VAST Data product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

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

NetApp E-Series offers a flexible, high-performance storage solution ideal for handling intensive data requirements. Designed to optimize capacity and improve data availability, it supports diverse sector needs.

NetApp E-Series is a purpose-built system engineered to deliver fast, consistent performance. It is best utilized in environments requiring high-performance workloads where speed and efficiency are crucial. Users appreciate its reliability and scalability, which contribute to effective data management. The system is known for its efficient storage capabilities, providing robust data protection and seamless integration with existing infrastructure.

What are the key features of NetApp E-Series?

Scalability: Supports expansion to accommodate growing data needs seamlessly.
Performance: Delivers high-speed processing for demanding applications.
Integrations: Easily integrates with existing IT environments, enhancing operational efficiency.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Cost Efficiency: Offers competitive pricing with long-term savings through energy-efficient designs.
Reliability: Provides consistent uptime, minimizing disruptions and improving productivity.
Flexibility: Versatile deployment options cater to specific performance and capacity requirements.

NetApp E-Series is widely implemented across industries ranging from healthcare to finance, where it supports critical data-intensive applications. Its deployment in environments such as scientific research and media production highlights its capacity for handling high-speed data access and reliable performance.

NetApp

Innovation to break decades of data storage trade-offs.

VAST Data

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Information Not Available

Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks

Buyer's Guide

NetApp E-Series vs. VAST Data

December 2025

Free Report: NetApp E-Series vs. VAST Data

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