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NetApp StorageGRID vs Red Hat Ceph Storage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
NetApp StorageGRID
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (9th)
Red Hat Ceph Storage
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), File and Object Storage (1st)
 

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.
Michael Lopez - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Systems Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved snapshot management for large data workloads
The advanced features of NetApp StorageGRID which our upper management wouldn't agree to use, include the S3 feature. We are heavy into AWS, and my thoughts were to develop a small dev environment or even a POC environment on-prem. That's still up in the air as we continue on. Currently, AI has taken over everything with a focus on AI. The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present a challenge. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade. The positive aspect is that it didn't take down the entire environment. The environment remained functional on two different versions. The scalability of NetApp StorageGRID has been proven as we've expanded twice. We started with six or seven nodes and have grown to 15 nodes. It does take time for synchronization to complete. From what I've seen, it took a couple of months for it all to sync up once adding nodes. However, it was transparent. It captured the addition and performed effectively, all happening in the background, steadily and surely.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Architect & CEO at Tirzok Private Limited
Offers reliable performance and availability for large deployments
I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process. I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It solved many problems and provided unexpected features that improved our business execution, making us more agile internally."
"Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput."
"The performance is very good."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use and support."
"My rating of Pure Storage is a ten out of ten because of the price for performance and footprint - the overall value."
"Technical support is excellent. I've had very good responses from technical support. We had a couple of cases where we needed support. Some of the communications were purely over email and some has been an actual call to the service desk."
"Its array houses our entire production environment."
"Before we used Pure Storage it took 93 days of employees who run the database to back up and restore databases. The scale of deployment basically went from several days to a few minutes."
"StorageGRID is designed for cloud-based, highly scalable storage. Think big names like service providers like Google who need massive storage volumes with scalability. It also offers cloud-enabled storage capabilities with cloud management functionality. So, if you prioritize scalability and cloud integration, StorageGRID is the way to go. Its object-based storage is built specifically for that purpose."
"The feature of NetApp StorageGRID that has significantly improved data storage management for my customers is the value of the S3 API because it allows developers who are not infrastructure-oriented to use it and write code against it."
"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent. Everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."
"NetApp StorageGRID is a great alternative to AWS S3 buckets."
"The ability to get to the StorageGRID from anywhere on my network. The solution is remote. You don't have to be at a physical location."
"The scalability is very effective for our customers."
"The most valuable feature is tiering."
"We definitely saw the benefits of NetApp StorageGRID immediately as our growth of snapshots and our internal customers, including Kelly Blue Book, AutoTrader, and HomeNet, required long-term snapshots, and we saw the results of having NetApp StorageGRID saving us on SSD space."
"I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs."
"High reliability with commodity hardware."
"We use the solution for cloud storage."
"We have not encountered any stability issues for the product."
"radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity."
"We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage."
"Stratus allows more reliability than all the other types of computers available."
"The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations."
 

Cons

"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"It goes at about 95 percent, so we have had some performance issues. It is hard to clear them."
"There are a lot of things to improve."
"A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad."
"Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex."
"I would like to see support for NVMe, end-to-end."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement. Earlier, Pure Storage FlashArray only had IP-based replication. There was no API-based replication, but they have enhanced the feature now. However, they need to work on API replication for C-type of arrays."
"I would like a feature to integrate with external or cloud solutions. For example, if I want to use this storage for a backup from the cloud, I want to have integration with the cloud vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracles, or Amazon. It could be available as an API to allow seamless integration. Additionally, the solution could improve by having native integration with a cloud provider, such as VMware or Microsoft, this would reduce the need to use third-party solutions to complete the task."
"The redundancy and reliability are great, but I also see room for improvement there. I would like to see more efficiency in the storage and dedupe/compression solutions."
"There was a small amount of confusion when working with StorageGRID and Active Directory for access. We had to do things three to four times resulting in our engineer troubleshooting a couple of things. The location of the menu, along with what is inside the menu: configurations, settings, etc., is not straightforward to users. Most users are Windows-based. So, when make logical changes to the menu which are not similar to Windows, users and administrators get confused."
"The integration with more apps has room for improvement."
"The user interface of NetApp StorageGRID might need some tweaks, and configuration is maybe a little bit confusing for those who are not so experienced."
"Data retrieval speed could be better."
"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space. It's not at the same level as the NetApp filer or the real NetApp cluster that runs itself on its architecture, as StorageGRID is a software solution that emulates a RAID level."
"It's quite complex, which is a disadvantage; it's enterprise-level, it's complicated to set up, and you need external support."
"I would like to see them integrate more with the monitoring platforms. It is a bit difficult to get automated monitoring of the system."
"The product lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication."
"An area for improvement would be that it's pretty difficult to manage synchronous replication over multiple regions."
"I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise."
"The management features are pretty good, but they still have room for improvement."
"The storage capacity of the solution can be improved."
"While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved."
"Some documentation is very hard to find."
"It takes some time to re-balance the storage in case of server failure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is always room for negotiation."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"It's priced higher than the market."
"You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is a really cool concept. As long as we maintain our subscription, we will get new controllers every three years and really never have a forklift upgrade like we currently are doing. Just that future-proofing is an ease off of my mind to know that I won't have to do what I'm dong right now again."
"The price of the solution can be a bit expensive. There is an additional fee for support."
"It's a good price point and it's a solid product for the price."
"We have seen a reduction in total cost of ownership."
"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."
"It is very cost-effective."
"The price is attractive."
"With respect to pricing, it is okay. This product is mid-range."
"We pay for a license annually."
"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."
"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."
"NetApp is not known for being the cheapest storage option on the market. Almost all of the other storage options we looked at were less expensive than StorageGRID. The price is one thing to criticize, which is what we hear internally and from customers as well. They find the cost of the terabytes in this class of storage a little bit higher than expected."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription​​ as a bundle.​"
"We never used the paid support."
"The price of this product isn't high."
"The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is reasonable."
"The operational overhead is higher compared to Azure because we own the hardware."
"If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty."
"The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

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 don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
What do you like most about NetApp StorageGRID?
The management portals have most significantly improved our data retrieval times. They've made it much easier to rest...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?
As an administrator, I was not involved in the pricing of NetApp StorageGRID. From what I understood, it was cheaper ...
What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?
The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node w...
How does Red Hat Ceph Storage compare with MiniO?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ceph Storage?
The high availability of the solution is important to us.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Ceph Storage?
Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about th...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Storage GRID
Ceph
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
ASE, DARZ GmbH
Dell, DreamHost
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp StorageGRID vs. Red Hat Ceph Storage and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.