VAST Data vs Zadara comparison

VAST Data and Zadara are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. VAST Data is ranked #20 with an average rating of 10.0, while Zadara is ranked #33 with an average rating of 7.5. VAST Data holds a 2.3% mindshare in AFS, compared to Zadara’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of VAST Data users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zadara users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Zadara and VAST Data are competing products in the storage solutions market. Users are happier with the pricing and support of Zadara, but VAST Data is favored for its advanced features, making it worth the price for many users.

Features: Zadara is highly appreciated for its scalability, intuitive management, and seamless integration with cloud services. VAST Data impresses users with its high-performance storage, low latency, and innovative use of NVMe over Fabrics technology. While both have strong features, users looking for cutting-edge performance might lean towards VAST Data.

Room for Improvement:Zadara could enhance its backup solutions and provide more frequent updates. VAST Data needs a more user-friendly setup process and better documentation. While Zadara's updates and backup could improve, VAST Data's onboarding experience requires refinement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zadara is praised for its straightforward deployment model and responsive customer support. VAST Data, while featuring a robust deployment model, is critiqued for occasional complexities. VAST Data's customer service, though generally effective, occasionally falls short of expectations. The ease of deployment favors Zadara, while customer service quality sees both products with room for improvement.

Pricing and ROI: Users find Zadara's setup costs to be more affordable and note a satisfactory ROI. VAST Data, although having higher setup costs, delivers substantial ROI due to its advanced technology. Zadara appeals to cost-conscious users, while VAST Data attracts those prioritizing high performance even at a premium price.

To learn more, read our detailed VAST Data vs. Zadara Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

VAST Data vs. Zadara

May 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 Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VAST Data is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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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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Kirubel Behailu

Cloud System Engineer at cloud251

Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience

Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

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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 main feature I have found to be product replication."

"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."

"It performs well and it is also very fast."

"It uses the same platform for connectivity so integration is seamless."

"The snapshots, replication, and the ability to have immutable blades are the most valuable features. You're putting data snapshots out in those blades, and they cannot be touched. Its performance is great."

"It's very easy-to-use."

"The ease of deployment and management has helped us simplify our storage. We also do not have to worry about capacity management as much. A lot of these things are native to Pure Storage."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

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

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

"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."

"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."

"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."

"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."

"Zadara saves both time and money."

"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."

"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."

More Zadara pros

Cons

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"In the realm of micro-services, I think that Pure Storage can do well if they start getting in there and making their arrays more micro-services ready."

"File storage needs a lot of improvement. Mainframe connectivity also needs improvement because it requires additional components to be integrated with Pure Storage FlashBlade. If you want to keep your backup data, then this becomes an even more expensive solution because Pure Storage FlashBlade will not be able to meet your backup needs."

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."

"I have not seen ROI."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

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

"There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive."

"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."

"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."

"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."

"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."

"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."

"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."

"The initial setup of the solution is complex."

More Zadara cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"I understand that it is competitively priced compared to other brands."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"In my opinion, we have paid the right price for the product. I don't think that it is too much or too little."

"The product is very expensive."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The price is a little high."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

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

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

"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."

"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."

"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."

"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."

"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."

"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."

"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

27%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

University

Computer Software Company

24%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

What do you like most about VAST Data?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VAST Data?

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

See all answers

What needs improvement with VAST Data?

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

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zadara?

The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zadara?

I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?

As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated mainte...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 21% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ECS vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 6% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

NetApp AFF vs VAST Data

Compared 10% of the time

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs VAST Data

Compared 10% of the time

Qumulo vs VAST Data

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs VAST Data

Compared 8% of the time

MinIO vs VAST Data

Compared 7% of the time

More VAST Data Competitors

MinIO vs Zadara

Compared 21% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Zadara

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon S3 vs Zadara

Compared 14% of the time

Wasabi vs Zadara

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud Storage vs Zadara

Compared 8% of the time

More Zadara Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

May 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays

May 2025

Download VAST Data product report

Buyer's Guide

Zadara

April 2025

Download Zadara product report

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

Innovation to break decades of data storage trade-offs.

VAST Data

Zadara is a powerful enterprise-level storage solution whose design enables it to handle every aspect of a user’s data storage needs. It can be deployed in any location, using any protocol, and storing any data type that an organization requires. With Zadara, organizations can do everything that they were able to do with more traditional systems in a cheaper and more efficient way.

Zadara Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Zadara include:

Security. Zadara is built with data security in mind. All of a user’s data is heavily encrypted by Zadara’s software so that it is safe both while it is in storage and while it is being transferred somewhere else. It comes with role-based access controls that prevent a user’s data from being seen by those who lack the proper level of authorization. It also comes with dual-factor authentication and other similar methods of identity management.

Reduced costs. While Zadara offers enterprise-level storage capabilities, the costs associated with utilizing it are far less than those of similar solutions. Some of the resources that it offers are totally free of cost. The model that it utilizes is a pay-as-you-go model. Organizations only pay for the resources that they use and nothing more. Users are not required to sign up for any particular period of time. They are in complete and total control of what they spend on the solution.

Storage efficiency. Zadara ensures that users are able to store their data in the most efficient way possible. It takes a number of approaches that prevent insufficient data storage. These approaches are:

1. Thin-provision volumes. This method only allows actually written data to be counted toward the storage capacity that is consumed.

2. Pattern removal. Zadara searches a user’s stored data for repetitive binary sequences. Once it identifies the repetitive binary sequences, it deletes them.

3. Inline deduplication (all-flash only). This method ensures that Zadara only stores unique data blocks in its system.

4. Inline compression. Zadara takes data that is stored in its system and compresses it. This keeps larger blocks of data from taking up too much room.

Zadara Features

Centralized management. Zadara comes with a centralized dashboard that enables organizations to monitor and control their storage operations from a single location.

File analytics. Organizations can leverage a powerful analytics package that can provide them with critical insights. These tools can help users sort through their data and make more informed data management decisions.

Remote mirroring. This feature enables users to replicate data in two remote locations at the same time. This makes it easy for data to be recovered in the event of an unexpected loss. It also aids remote teams in their collaboration efforts by giving them access to the same data at the same time.

Reviews from Real Users

Zadara is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its extensive suite of cloud solution integrations and its object storage capability.

Steve H., the chief technology officer at Pratum, writes, “One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage computer instances there. Being able to integrate with computing, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections.”

Mauro R., the CEO of Momit SRL, says, “The object storage feature is wonderful. With traditional storage, you have a cost per gigabyte that is extremely high or related to the number of disks. With Zadara Storage Cloud, you have a cost per gigabyte that you can cut and tailor to your needs independent of the number or size of the disks.”

Zadara

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Norwest Venture Partners, General Dynamics Information Technology, Ginkgo Bioworks

Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware

Buyer's Guide

VAST Data vs. Zadara

May 2025

Free Report: VAST Data vs. Zadara

Find out what your peers are saying about VAST Data vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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