Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We are a reseller of Pure Storage FlashArray. Our customers use it for virtualization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

It has helped to simplify storage because it has a very easy graphical user interface.

Our clients see a reduction in total cost of ownership by around 40%. We have also found that the total cost of ownership of flash is lower than SSD implementations. I track a whole bunch of business markers on the cost of components. I do a lot of cost analysis for customers and I get pricing from all the component manufacturers; Ingram Micro, Toshiba, Seagate and then I compare the pricing. I do that almost every week. I constantly see that it's cheaper than SSD implementations.

The security operating system is its most valuable feature because it's very simple, easy to use, and operate. You don't have to do very serious training to operate this equipment. It's user-friendly and pretty straightforward.

The performance analytics are moderate. It's not the best performance platform out there but it's the easiest to operate.

They need to find another way of doing data protection, RAID is not working very well. It takes performance away from the SSD.

I would like to have multi-cloud integration.

Latency needs a bit of work. It's pretty good but it needs to get below 300 microseconds. Then the data reduction would be excellent. On average I see twelve to one data reduction.

It's very stable.

It's not so scalable. It's got moderate scaling capabilities right now. The clustering technology needs a bit of work, they need to improve that. 

I've used their technical support and would say that it's excellent. I would give them a ten out of ten. 

My clients know it's time to switch solutions because I run a proof of concepts where I test the manufacturer's equipment. If I find something that is a big difference then I let them know about it. Cost, performance, tools, and ease of use are all factors that we take into consideration when choosing to switch. We also chose this solution because of the Evergreen upgrade and the ease of use.

I also install Pure Storage for my clients. The initial setup is very straightforward and very simple. It takes me an hour to set one up.

My client's return on investment with Pure Storage is in about 7.3 months.

We also looked at Nimble, which is now owned by HPE, and E8, Dell EMC, and NetApp platform.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. Not a ten because nobody's a ten. We haven't achieved perfection yet.

I would advise someone considering this or a similar solution to push Pure Storage for multi-cloud integration.

The primary use case is block storage for retro machines running on VMware ESXi and Red Hat with Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVMs).

We have perfect run through times and latency. We have a cluster system using two machines on Active-Active with a synchronized mirror. 

The deduplication and compression meet all of our system requirements.

The credentials on the iSCSI interface are only available to type in with the Chrome browser, and not with the Firefox browser. Hopefully, in the next release, this will be fixed.

We are not using it at the moment in production. Therefore, I can't talk about the stability of the system. The PoC and tests indicate that the stability is okay.

At the moment, we have one data pack. We think that we may buy another data pack this year to scale the system up.

I have used the technical support through the phone and online tool. I used them to upgrade the software, which work okay (as it was designed).

The technical support team provided the help that we needed.

We have been using another solution, IBM XYZ. We plan to migrate away from the IBM system to Pure Storage. We are planning to switch because of cost and performance. Also, the Pure Storage FlashArray is an upgrade in technology. All-flash storage arrays will be the future.

The setup is straightforward, not complex.

It has a very simple installation. Installation took about three hours, not one or two hours, but three hours. We had an issue with our network during the first installation, but now it is up and running. 

We used a consultant from Pure Storage.

We did not evaluate other solutions since our partners were using Pure Storage, so we decided to move forward with Pure Storage.

We are not using predictive performance analytics at the moment.

We use it for VMware virtualization.

We have VDIs, virtual desktops, which users log into every day. On the old storage, they would sometimes have three, four, or five-minute delays; it just because useless for five minutes. They couldn't do anything when they were logged in, because of the slowness. Now, with Pure Storage, we have totally eliminated that problem. This was the primary reason we purchased it and it has performed very well. We're very pleased.

It has helped simplify our storage. It's small, it's fast, and it's very simple to manage.

In one of our arrays we had a 35-to-1 data reduction, which is very outstanding. Not many places have that kind of benefit.

We like the speed. It's very low latency. In virtualization, you can mask lots of problems, and even in code you can mask lots of problems, with low latency. It's just pure speed and low latency.

We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power.

Finally, we love the predictive performance analytics. It's an excellent tool. It's something we were asking for in the past. When they rolled it out, it made a difference.

We would like to see more cloud support, which we know is coming, although it's not out yet. It's going to be released in the next versions. That would be the biggest win, if additional cloud support is built into the array.

Both the stability and scalability are excellent. It's a very stable environment.

You can scale easily. You can extend it online, change controllers online. Scalability gets five out five stars.

Technical support is very good. We are very pleased with support. We think that it's probably one of the best vendors we work with, as far as support goes; compared to NetApp, for example. Pure storage support people are very responsive and knowledgeable.

The old systems we had were just not doing the job, so we knew we had to change.

It was very easy to set it up. No complexity at all.

We deployed it ourselves.

We haven't analyzed it in terms of numbers, but we have definitely seen a very good ROI. There has been a reduction in our total cost of ownership.

We looked at Pure Storage vs Dell EMC, but we thought Pure Storage has newer, better technology developed from the ground up, whereas Dell EMC is a patchwork solution. In addition, the price was more favorable.

Give it a try. Get a system in on a trial basis, make a deal, and try it to see if it's something you can use.

I rate Pure Storage at ten out of ten. We're very satisfied with Pure Storage. They are a very good company, doing very good things.

The primary use case is virtual machines.

We can now quickly roll out multiple instances of virtual machines or FlashArray storage, more than we could before.

Speed: Things function pretty quickly for our SAN management team. We have seen a good reduction in the amount of total storage space that we're using because of the deduplication.

It runs fast and is easy to use, and our SAN manager likes it.

The way Pure Storage does the controller storage warranty or replacement has been an issue for some people who just replace the controllers every couple of years, and that's where some of the confusion with pricing and support has come in. They should be clear on the way the controller replacements happen, as it is important to know whether or not you can get a good return on them, because it can be a little confusing.

I rated the solution as a nine out of ten because I knew about a disk failure. Other than that, it would probably be a ten. Disk failures are out of anybody's control. 

The stability is good.

It seems highly scalable.

From what I have heard, the technical support has been good.

We went with Dell EMC first. When we had a ton of trouble with it, we dumped it for Pure Storage.

We are fairly new to using it, so we'll have to wait to see what our data usage is over the next year or so.

The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments.

It simplifies storage. Data deduplication features make it easier to manage storage and forecast growth.

We run our production Oracle workload on it.

We have been able to scale it to ten terabytes. Whereas, before we were stuck.

The most valuable feature is it never goes down. We can expand and create volumes.

I would like to migrate to the cloud in the future and know how that would actually work with this product.

Stability has been really solid.

The technical support has been fantastic.

We were previously using Dell EMC.

We used an integrator for the deployment.

We have seen ROI. Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks.

It makes things ten times easier.

VMware is currently our main use case because it dedupes really well.

Because we were able to afford to go all flash, we don't manage tiers, we're not moving data up, and we're not waiting for overnight cycles. 

Firstly, dedupe is the most valuable feature. Hands down. Simplifying storage is also a big win overall. As far as the monitoring with the latency goes, we're not monitoring the apps to see how they're doing at different periods, which saves us time. We're just setting thresholds, walking away, and waiting for emails if they're broken.

The big thing would be to simplify the compatibility to Openstack. The Openstack going into Nova works really well, but if Pure had a few more of those features that would be my win.

It's been rock solid.

So far it seems good.

We've used them a few times, mainly with upgrades. They are quite responsive and our local team was pretty good.

They gave us the rundown and was simpler than expected. They gave us the sheet and sent us off saying, "Hey, if you need us, give us a call." We just plugged it in and up it came.

We used a reseller, but then we did our own deploy along with their help. They came in and gave us a training course so that we could maintain it ourselves.

There are a lot of companies that give a solid performance and a lot of places you can get flash. The pricing wasn't that much different, It's really the simplicity that makes a difference. If the data starts flowing too fast, it slows things down and does it later. Those features are the winners for us.

We're constantly on the hunt, and we always keep three to four vendors in. Usually, it's been the bigger players, the IBM's, the EMC's. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but we were looking for something a little different this time around.

We're a service provider, so it's the primary storage for hosting our customers.

Pure Storage is easy to use it has helped simplify our storage. 

vSphere integration and DevOps are our most valuable features. 

Also, one of our customers used to have a rates run that ran for eight hours, and when we migrated them across to Pure that went down to under two hours.

Still implementing.

The stability of Pure Storage is very very good.

Good to very good.

Excellent.

We switched to Pure Storage mainly because of the frustration of dealing with performance on the old platforms that we used to use.

The initial setup was very straightforward and very quick. It was up and running in our data center within 24 hours of receiving it.

The biggest return on investment for us is not having to do a swap out of the arrays every five years. We've been through three Evergreen refreshes now of arrays already deployed, and that's working out really well. 

The main solutions on our shortlist at the end of the process were NetApp, EMC, and Pure Storage. We ended up buying both NetApp and Pure Storage because we always like to have at least two different vendors involved in our data centers. The decision not to go with EMC was because of the design that they'd done for an all-flash storage solution. It didn't fit with what we were trying to do.

I find that the total cost of ownership to actually be lower than the fee implementation. We record and meter everything; electricity consumption and staff time spent looking after the arrays. Our figures put it somewhere between 40% and 50%, depending on how long we run the rates for.

The data reduction rates vary for us. Anything from 6 to 1 down to 2 to 1, because it depends on our workload. Latency is always good and it's generally less than a millisecond across all the arrays we run.

Our primary use case of this solution is for Microsoft SQL. 

This solution was installed at my organization before I got there but having worked with it in the past, I would say that the responsiveness with any SQL applications has remarkably improved.

It has simplified our storage. It's a "set it and forget it."

It's too early to tell if we've seen a reduction in total cost of ownership. The solution is expensive. It's hard to monetize the difference in performance that we're seeing, but it's obviously there and measurable.

Performance is the most valuable feature. 

Very stable. I'd give it a ten out of ten. 

We've got two arrays. Capacity-wise, we've over-subscribed on storage, so we haven't had to expand them at this point. 

Technical support is very responsive. We had an SSD fail and they replaced it within 24 hours.

Previously, we were on Dell EMC. We went with HyperFlex in a hyper-converged environment. We switched because we really wanted our SQL on SSD.

It's expensive, but it's worth it.

I would rate this solution a nine because I've worked with NetApp in the past, and other vendors as well in storage. I didn't find the content quite as intuitive as what I got in NetApp but in terms of hardware and all that, it's a 10. It's just that one little issue. 

I would advise someone considering Cloud flash storage that it's the way to go, with SQL. Definitely, Pure Storage is at the top of the game for that.