Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We are a system integrator and this is one of the solutions that we provide for our clients.

For our most recent customer, this solution is being used to host VMware workloads in an on-premises deployment.

Our customer has been able to migrate some of their cloud services back on-premises, which is of benefit because they were having some performance issues in the cloud.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its simplicity.

It is easy to deploy and it's all-flash, so it's very fast.

As partners, we should have the option to download the software, rather than have to go back through Pure to obtain it.

This solution seems to be fairly reliable. I haven't had any issues personally, or outages or anything of that nature.

The flash array scales up well, but it doesn't really scale-out. I think that's more where Pure's FlashBlade comes into play. You'd have to replace it with the next model up controller, in order to scale.

I haven't had much to do with technical support. Typically, we'll deploy it for our customer and hand it over, and then they'll manage it from there.

Prior to this solution, our customer used Dell EMC, but there were several problems. They were not happy with it because of the performance of the array, and also the complexities around engaging the support teams. Their solution had also reached end-of-life, so they had to move to a new platform anyway. Ultimately, they wanted to move to something simpler than their existing platform, so they moved to Pure.

This initial setup and deployment are pretty straightforward.

For the setup, it is very simple to populate the information. We had a workbook that was provided by Pure to give to the customer to gather all of the details. That made the implementation very straightforward.

The one thing that was a little bit annoying was the fact that we still had to come back through Pure to get the software. A lot of our other partners, we can just download it ourselves, and as long as we've got the process, we can go and do it ourselves. But, in this scenario, we still had to come back through Pure to actually get the software.

We implement this solution for our customers. We are a partner and we're certified to do deployments.

I think that our customer has seen ROI because their existing solution was getting into extended maintenance, so it was costing a lot of money for that service. Also, with less time spent managing that old array, they had more time to do other things.

In addition to this solution, our customer considered another Dell EMC option, as well as one by Hitachi. They chose this because of the simplicity, and the fact that it is all-flash meant that they didn't have to worry about performance. 

VMware benefits our IT organization because we are partners, so we deploy VMware services. It also helps our customers make their applications more readily available and reliable.

We are using the VMware plug-in for Pure. It's meant more rapid provisioning of volumes for VMware, and it gives the customer more visibility of the storage.

Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to consider that things are changing a lot in the industry at the moment. So, obviously, looking for things that are going to take less time to manage, are easy to implement, and give a good return on investment are important success criteria.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We use the private on-premise deployment model. Our primary use case of this solution is for virtual machines. We just use it as storage for our vCenter environment.

It has improved my organization in the way that we have high reliability and faster access to our data.

It has improved our IT organization in the way that we are able to provide systems to our customers quickly and provide high availability and reliability for their applications. 

We are running VMware on Pure. Our main driver was speed. The joint solution has helped our organization through speed of delivery and speed of applications.

The top-tier support and reliable storage are the most valuable features of this solution. 

In the next release, I would like to see file-level encryption.

It's highly stable. It's one of our biggest successes. 

It's been really easy to expand storage with no downtime. It's one of the things we like about it. 

Their technical support is great. 

We knew we needed to switch to this solution because the industry is going away from spinning disks. We were on spinning disks, and the whole industry is going away from that. 

We are still using IBM but we are not happy with it. IBM has taken old technology and tried to make it new. Pure has started from the ground up and built it.

The integration was straightforward. 

Pure Storage did the integration for us. 

Our costs are around $100,000.

We also evaluated Nimble, EMC, and HPE 3PAR. We ended up going with Pure because of the architecture, speed, and support.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for its reliability, speed, and support. The support is awesome.

We use the on-premises deployment model of this solution. Our primary use case is for virtualization. 

Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications.

It benefits our IT organization in the way that it drives down costs, allows us to migrate servers from one data center to another, and gives the flexibility that having bare metal servers wouldn't allow.

We run VMware on Pure and our main driver was for cost and performance.

The most valuable feature is the speed. 

We are taking advantage of the VMware integrations developed by Pure. 

As long as they always improve on IOPS speed, that's all we're really looking for. The faster the storage can be the more we can do speed of application and speed of use.

The stability seems good. It doesn't go down very often. 

I haven't contacted their technical support firsthand. 

At the time we were evaluating a whole bunch of different solution platforms, and a lot of times it came down to use case, workload, and cost. 

We are using this solution in conjunction with EMC. We might still be using both for different workloads. 

We used a reseller for the integration. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. It's a solid product but all products can improve. It's technology, it's not always going to do what you need it to do. It can go down from time to time, but it's been pretty solid so far.

I would advise someone considering this solution to talk to a Pure Storage engineer to see if it fits your needs. 

We use the hybrid cloud deployment model of this solution and use both AWS and Microsoft Azure as our cloud providers. Our primary use case for this solution is for mixed workloads. 

We are running VMware on Pure. Pure gave us the storage because we're a partner so we're running on it.

The seamless integration into the public cloud has improved my organization. It also benefits my IT organization in many ways. We sell it, we use it, and it makes us faster.

The joint solution, VMware on Pure, has helped our organization. It's tested a lot of stuff and been put in production. It's also used for customers.

Our organization takes advantage of the VMware integrations developed by Pure, any APIs that are available to be using.

It offers seamless integrations and has made it easy for us to do. It's a simple product.

The performance and the Evergreen maintenance are the most valuable features of this solution.

In the next release I would like to see integration into other third-party player providers like Google.

The stability is excellent. 

The scalability is excellent and is very easy. 

Their support is very good, first-class. 

We switched to this solution because of the timing. We are using this solution in conjunction with a solution from EMC. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It only took us a couple of days to set it up. It was so simple.

We are an integrator and reseller so we did the implementation ourselves on one team.

We also evaluated NetApp. It was between NetApp and Pure. The reason we went with Pure Storage wasn't a technical decision, rather, it was just purely cost and the Evergreen maintenance that Pure provides. It just makes it easier when we have a new drive and a new chassis every three years.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. It's simple. It's got great support and it's fast. It does what it's supposed to do. My advice to someone considering this solution would be to test it and build a proof of concept.

Our primary use for this solution is storage. We have a private cloud deployment.

Using this solution has improved our consolidation ratio and it saves us a lot of space. 

The most valuable feature of this solution is the support.

This solution is easy to use.

The price of this solution could be improved.

So far, the stability of this solution has been really good.

The scalability of this solution is really good.

Technical support for this solution is excellent.

Prior to this solution, we were using the IBM Storage Network. The support was not very good, and the feature set was very limited.

We needed something that was simpler to manage and maintain.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward.

We used an integrator for our deployment, and our experience with them was good.

In terms of space savings, we were able to save a lot of money.

We evaluated a second IBM-based storage solution, and after that, Pure was the second one that we looked at. We heard so many good things about it that we leaned towards that way.

Using VMware has improved our IT organization by providing a stable virtualization platform.

We are running VMware on Pure, which was driven by our interest in consolidation. It has helped us by saving space over using less dense storage.

We have the Pure plug-in for the VMware environment. It has helped us with information monitoring.

For anybody comparing this solution to similar products, my advice is to look into the numbers. This product is definitely worth the price, and it is easy to use.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use it as our primary application driver for all of storage reasons in our data center for both our corporate and production environments.

We just did all-flash, and all-flash is better than anything disk related.

This was our first all-flash storage enclosure, so we saw huge boost in performance for all of our servers. It has definitely helped us in terms of performance, which is what we needed it for.

We don't have to build any type of storage device, which takes a long time for an IT guy to do. For storage, this makes it much easier when it is set up, because it can be done almost the same day that it is purchased.

The deduplication and compression are its most valuable feature. They have done a really good job, as they were able to shrink down 15 gigs into five gigs.

It is pretty much just plug and play. There is not that much to do with it. It is very easy to use.

I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier.

It has been stable. It has been running pretty much flawlessly, except for one power supply which died, and that was it. That power supply was then replaced by Pure Storage. The replacement that Pure Storage sent us did have a bit of an issue when it was placed, but after a tech went in there and fixed it, that was it.

I try to go in there and at least keep an eye on it every once in a while, but it mostly runs on its own. There is no real need to do anything.

We haven't really scaled up.

The technical support did a good on the one issue that we contact them for (the power supply).

We didn't have all-flash. We needed a lot of performance for all of our production environment, and for everything else that was connecting to us. That is what basically drove us to Pure Storage.

The setup was very good. For my environment, which is a cluster environment, they were able to pick that up and do that (and iSCSI) very well.

I had no issues with upgrading our firmware controllers.

You are buying a premium product, and it is worth it.

We were looking at Dell EMC. We were looking at a couple of other vendors, including NetApp. We decided on Pure Storage because of the deduplication and compression that they were advertising.

If you are researching Pure Storage, make sure you are getting the right amount of space set up for what you are doing because the compression will affect how much you are getting overall. You might think you are only getting ten terabytes or fifteen terabytes, but it will be a lot less.

We use it for Hyper-V on my end and OpenStack on the production end. The integration for Hyper-V was very easy. There was pretty much no effort to do it.

The UI is pretty good. I don't use it as often as I probably should, but it usually just runs on its own.

Anytime that you need fast storage. 

The back-end data reporting for Pure Storage is phenomenal. The data that you can see on the performance of your customers' array, so you can be proactive about upgrades or enhancements, and is a phenomenal tool to have access to as a partner. I haven't seen this type of stuff out of anything of the other storage systems.

Pure Storage has a lot of statistics which help out with capacity planning.

As a partner administrating the solution, the back-end reporting has positively affected the time involved in managing and administrating.

Performance is its most valuable feature. There is nobody else who is coming close, not that I have seen. 

They are on the money with the predictive performance analytics. They claim high performance, and they do have it.

There are things that they are doing with the interface all the time to make it better. It is not the easiest to work with, but it is getting close. As far as interfaces, I always liked Nimble's interface the best. Though, Nimble's interface has been stuck in the mud for the last three to four years since HPE took them over. There hasn't been a whole lot of changes to Nimble. Whereas, Pure Storage has been continuing to improve, which is pretty good. It is not top of the market, but it is getting there.

The UI reporting is adequate. 

The setup needs to be improved the most. They can do a little more with the user interface, but the setup is what I would like to see made a bit easier.

I can't think of a time I've had a problem with a Pure Storage array. You might get drive fail once in a while, but it has never been a problem. Usually, that will get reported in the partner dashboard and we will get an alert. Pure Storage will also get an alert. 

Nimble used to be the best if you had a part fail. It would be on your doorstep the next morning. It just showed up, every time. No questions. They have lost some of that with HPE. 

Pure Storage is still pretty good. I haven't heard any customers tell me that they just had a part just show up without even knowing anything was down, like I used to hear about with Nimble. However, usually they will get some type of an alert from Pure Storage, such as, "Looks like you lost a drive. Do you want us to send someone out or a power supply?" Then, get it out.

They are at least 30 percent faster than their closest competitor. It depends always on the differences on how you scale. I had customers get NetApp, who couldn't get anything out of it. They finally added another storage shelf and started getting some decent numbers. Well, instead of adding a couple more storage shelves, I could do that with one Pure Storage array. What if I don't need that much storage and don't want to have five shelves? You don't need that with Pure Storage, because one shelf will strain.

I don't have any massive Pure Storage installs. Probably the biggest ones that I have been apart of are five or six arrays.

I have at least three customers who have had other stores solutions and installed Pure Storage. There is no comparison. Their old storage solutions have now been relegated to archive, or they have ripped them out.

The initial setup can be challenging. If everything works the way it a supposed to, which it often does, then it is fine. However, when your encounter problems and you have to get into those local admin accounts, that can be a pain. You have to call tech, they need to look up what the password is, then send it to you, which can be a pain.

I would like to see a bit different setup. It would be nice if they have something where you can plug into the thing and see an HTTPS address, like with a bench setup. A couple of other vendors has upped their own Layer 2 protocol for discovery. As long as you are on the same network segment, it pops right up  and you can do the base config, then you are ready to log into it in about five minutes. Pure Storage's process is not bad, but it could still be better.

I have never had a problem with a firmware or controller update.

With the pricing, they have, it is pretty competitive to spinning disk.

I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it.

The competing vendors are NetApp, Nimble, and IBM. I don't run into a lot of Dell EMC. Customers pick Pure Storage for performance.

There is no comparison performance-wise. I also install Nimble for storage, and Nimble has flash and all-flash, as well. However, if you are looking at the performance numbers, these Pure Storage is just killing it.

I have integrated the solution with vCenter. There is nothing remarkable about it. It works. I have no complaints.

I think all vendors have a pretty decent platform for inline deduplication and compression. There are always little differences here and there, but I haven't seen anything remarkable with Pure Storage.

It is storage for our database system.

The access in our system is more reliable and provides our users better speed.

For flash storage, the speed access is its most valuable feature.

The solution’s inline deduplication and compression is very good.

The predictive performance analytics is a very good feature, as our system is performing better than before.

There are a lot of things to improve.

They make a reliable storage. We use it as a very critical system, and we don't want any corruption on our system.

Since our design is a high availability design, it can work 24/7.

The product is scalable.

The technical support is very fast.

Previously, we used Oracle, Hitachi, and SAN storage. We switched because we needed storage that could be accessed and support our system very quickly.

The initial setup was straightforward in configuring the database and storage.

We used a Pure Storage partner for the deployment. They were very good, supportive, and responsive.

We evaluated Oracle and Hitachi, but Pure Storage had the better pricing.

The features that we wanted have already been added.

We integrated the product with VMware and vCenter. It was a very simple configuration to integrate the VMs and have them read our storage.