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NetApp FAS Series vs VNX [EOL] 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
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
NetApp FAS Series
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (6th), NAS (3rd), Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) (2nd)
VNX [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
GM
Analyst at Sutherland Global Services
Unified storage has protected critical data and supports smooth admin work for diverse workloads
In my experience with NetApp FAS Series, I found the CLI commands to be very valuable and easy to understand, unlike other storage products. I can use just the show command to see something, and it helps me narrow down issues quickly, which makes CLI easy for me. I use snapshot technology in NetApp FAS Series. The snapshot technology has helped me in data protection. For example, during an upgrade of our ONTAP version at my workplace, it did not reflect properly despite the upgrade being completed. I had a VMware snapshot from another team, and that was helpful for me to retrieve the data right after the failed upgrade. I use snapshots frequently, maintaining a snapshot policy of 28 days which allows me to help users retrieve files they are unable to access. In maintaining data integrity in my operations with RAID DP, I see that it helps me significantly. If two or more disks fail, it gives me time to work on replacements. If only one disk fails without RAID DP, I would lose data and connection, but with RAID DP, I have that time to act without losing or making data unavailable to users. The data management features of Data ONTAP are highly valuable for my organization in terms of data security and compliance. I have not experienced data loss or unavailability as I have SnapMirror, Snapshot, and SnapVault in place. This helped prevent escalations. While I faced some access issues or slowness, severe data loss has not been an issue, and I resolve issues within one to two hours with the data integrity these tools provide.
AZ
Works at AIT
The Nimble CS-Series has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime
When we started the process of looking for a SAN vendor I had four primary criteria: reliability, performance, cost, and simplicity. We were really looking for a unicorn and were fully expected to have to make compromises in one of those areas. The Nimble CS-Series was recommended by our solutions provider, and we were blown away. Not only was it the most affordable option, but it was the easiest to deploy, had the best performance, and has proven to be reliable with 100% uptime.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a great return on investment, based on the mission."
"It simplifies storage."
"Once we solved the data reduction and what Pure does we were hooked."
"The amount of throughput that we're getting is really nice."
"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases, and the scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray."
"The best features of Pure Storage FlashArray are its ease of use and user-friendly interface, and the performance allows all types of services to be visualized from a single point of interface, making it more robust and user-friendly."
"The stability and performance are the best things about the solution."
"If you need reliability, definitely go for NetApp."
"Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."
"In NetApp FAS Series, I appreciate the visibility."
"It is a scalable solution."
"You really can't go wrong with NetApp products, They perform well, are rock solid, offer good space saving technologies, and the support is above par."
"Saves space with deduplication"
"It’s a decently mature product that has a lot of documentation and standards and is something to be relied on."
"The most valuable feature of the NetApp FAS Series is the snapshot and the FlexClone for Oracle and Microsoft SQL environments. Additionally, the integration can be done with most all on-premise and cloud providers."
"We moved from CX with FC/SATA to VNX with SSD, SAS, NL-SAS and using SSD as Fast Cache we have seen huge performance gains in certain operations."
"EMC storage has the best performance and functions."
"Technical support is fast and always fixes the issues."
"Good performance for VM environments"
"It’s amazing, you can add and stack, and add more elements."
"Since implementing VNX, we achieved a 10 times increase in the performance for its end users."
"It is a good product with a simple setup and easy administration."
"The most valuable feature is the tight VMware integration, due to the migration from bare metal to virtualized environments and then on to the cloud."
 

Cons

"Currently, the solution fails to support file screening."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"Pricing could be better in comparison to other solutions."
"It doesn’t provide enough information on performance analytics. For example, Nimble Storage has Infosight, which provides data; Pure Storage doesn’t have an equivalent."
"The initial setup was a little complex. We had some initial issues with the design and had to help correct some of the white papers for it, but it wasn't your standard use case."
"When we were doing some tests, we found that there was an I/O freeze when they were switching the controller."
"It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups."
"The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contract clarity."
"I have found it to be expensive."
"Currently, the newest release is not HCI friendly."
"NetApp FAS Series could improve by being more secure."
"Dedicated storage efficiency accelerators could improve the overall performance of the system."
"The biggest issue we face is parts delivery. There's no local warehouse in Myanmar, so if a customer encounters a technical problem like an IMEI issue, they have to wait a long time for replacement parts."
"One of the issues that we have had with NetApp in upgrading over the years is that migrating data from one system to another is one-way only."
"The performance needs to be improved."
"As I see it, there could be more interfaces, more cache, etc., but those challenges are solved by just getting some other model."
"They don’t quite provide enough security in the data centre."
"The administrative console (Navisphere/Unisphere) needs some improvement, especially on their Java-based GUI. The updated version of Java is not compatible."
"It only supports 10Gb copper, and cannot do 10Gb fiber."
"It would be very helpful to get an automated report that shows you the size of the checkpoints and get warnings when a checkpoint is reaching either maximum capacity per a file system or hitting the ceiling on the SavVol pool consumption."
"Based on our workloads, we see repeatedly in performance reports that the built-in controller (SP) cache of our VNX model is not sufficiently large, resulting in forced cache flushing."
"VNX can improve by offering flexible upgrade options."
"I do not recommend the Gen 1 VNX to anyone in this day and age."
"EMC VNX needs to support bigger SSDs. Next generation EMC Unity will do this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"Pure Storage has not helped to reduce our HANA licensing costs."
"We do not incur additional costs beyond the licensing fee."
"We purchased a license to use this solution and we pay for the storage ourselves."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"There are no licensing fees or other costs."
"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is reasonable for its performance."
"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."
"The price, compared to competitors, is quite high."
"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."
"There are products available in market with comparatively lower costs."
"The price of the NetApp FAS Series is reasonable and it provides value for the money with the feature sets. NetApp FAS Series are competing with Huawei storage which has an office and does aggressive marketing with a discount. However, we found that if our customers do a technology refresh they are happy with the performance of the NetApp FAS Series."
"I don't recall the price, but in general, pricing can always be better."
"it’s not an inexpensive solution and it may not be for the cost-sensitive customer."
"Over time, VNX has become pricier than its competitors, and we have turned enthusiastically to Unity."
"Pricing is somewhat higher, especially in Zambia, perhaps due to the low sales volume."
"Make sure you understand how the licensing works and that you are getting the right set of licenses if you need array-to-array replication."
"While EMC tends to be on the expensive side, the stability and support of their products are top-notch and I feel are worth the cost."
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable, the yearly EMC is more expensive"
"The initial pricing and licensing are reasonable. Yearly EMC is more expensive."
"​Reducing dependency on JavaServer Pages​ (JSP) could improve the administrative overhead.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise59
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
Regarding its pricing, I believe it is high. I utilize both HDD and SSD, where SSDs are more cost-friendly, yet HDDs ...
What needs improvement with NetApp FAS Series?
Regarding improvements for NetApp FAS Series, I think everything is generally good. If there is a need to improve som...
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
VNX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
Samsonite, Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Kindred Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, IBM and others in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.