Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

I had four or five Flash Arrays. I used it primarily for virtualization and video media, depending on the workload. 

It's simple to use. Upgrading is easy, as is the user interface. The connectivity is simple. 

The performance of the product is phenomenal. 

Pure was open to be checked out by any observability platform. It integrates well with Splunk, for example. 

Its single management pane of glass and dashboard are excellent. At first, it was hard to get used to since I was used to other types of dashboards. However, once I figured it out, it was great. It was very easy to work with. 

The benefits were realized right away. Between the flash array and the compression, you can really see how good it is. Our databases run a lot better now.

Pure hasn't helped us decrease our storage footprint. However, I was at a company that demanded storage when I was using it. We had different solutions for different storage needs. We always needed more storage for video, for example. The capacity was great in that sense. 

When I used Pure, I worked in an environment that was 24/7. Everything we ever built was designed to be damn near bulletproof. I wasn't dependent on a single unit at any point. Everything we did had to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled up. Sometimes, multiple sites with multiple doubles based on the requirements. We've never had downtime.

The evergreen architecture is great. You can interchange things and move up. That never happens with other storage solutions. 

Sometimes you don't realize that the capacity on offer is actually because of compression and all those things. It's just not as visible as it is on a NetApp or some other platform. You don't get the full view. You get the view that they give you, which is fine, but you don't get the full view. You don't get the nuts and bolts. Once you dig in and you learn how to read it, then it makes sense. However, when I first started, it didn't make sense to me.

For large storage needs, it is expensive. When we got too big, we didn't go for more Pure, we went with Isilon, since we were working into the petabytes range.

I've used the solution for three to four years.

I've contacted technical support to run upgrades. They are professional, easygoing, and answer me on time. They know their stuff. I've never had issues. I can contact the right people directly; I never had to roam around looking for someone. Sometimes it will take some time for someone to get back to me once I put in a ticket. 

Positive

We used HP Nimble. That was a full all-flash array. The difference between Nimble and Pure was that with Pure, the upgrade process had to be done by tech support, which I didn't mind at all. In the Nimble, it was just a file, and I could upgrade it. Upgrade-wise, Nimble was better. Beyond that, they were pretty on par with each other. 

I have a lot of experience with Pure and find the solution easy to deploy. 

The only real maintenance is upgrading. There isn't a whole lot we need to worry about. It's one of the easier solutions to deploy with the least amount of failures. Things seldom went wrong. 

Pure is not cheap. Of course, cost isn't everything. If you can buy a really cheap piece of hardware, however, when it comes to being able to get data, doing upgrades, navigation, and all kinds of stuff, you spend more time and effort trying to do that than just doing the work and letting Pure handle a lot of this stuff. So, you can pay it upfront or later. One way or another, you're going to pay for it.

Now, everything is coming down in price since there's more need and competition. I don't see a huge difference in the market. Everything is comparable, size-wise, and everything else is comparable in cost. Storage is storage. It's going to cost you no matter what. That said, those features, those extra things that they put out there, those extra parts are really where the expenditure really comes from. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

If a company has the money and they want to do it, I don't understand why they wouldn't. From an administrator's perspective, not from a business point of view, it's great. However, users need to check the numbers. 

From an administrator perspective, they handle the upgrades, they do all these things - you don't have to do it. That's a whole lot of time you don't have to spend. For the performance, you get better monitoring. You don't have to spend extra time, money, and effort getting an extra monitoring solution. You can get that from them. Observability and monitoring are extremely important when it comes to this. Pure gives you a great way of connecting it to anything and getting information. The API works great. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. The only issue is it is really expensive. 

I'm a Pure Storage partner and I have implemented two use cases for my customers. In one case, my FlashArray works like storage, but my CPU is in my other servers. In my other case, it works only as a backup.

FlashArray helps us reduce our storage footprint. FlashArray says that it can hold 10 terabytes, but I have 13 terabytes on one FlashArray in one case. We have 3:1 compression. When FlashArray says it's at 16 percent, it's a note, but it isn't helpful for our company and customers.

We see the benefits maybe a week after deployment. In that week, the publisher has to do data reduction. We have to work with FlashArray, but FlashArray has to do its work. After a week, I can see FlashArray is reducing the storage usage.

FlashArray's data reduction and NAS features are incredible. Its performance is the best I've worked with. FlashArray's admin page offers a single pane of glass view. It's the best administration page. It's the easiest to use and understand. 

If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things.

I have used FlashArray for around a year. 

I rate FlashArray nine out of 10 for stability. Our uptime has been 100 percent for the past year. 

We don't use Evergreen to scale up Pure Storage, but it can help us if our FlashArray is old or full. When that happens, it enters Evergreen and allows us to renew our architecture without downtime. 

I rate Pure Storage support 10 out of 10. We called support with one problem. Technical support was fast. 

Positive

I previously used Dell Data Domain. I switched because our Data Domain was old and FlashArray provided better service than the new Data Domain, so we decided to switch.

FlashArray is the easiest thing I've ever deployed. You just rack it and connect it to the network. There isn't any more configuration. Including pre-deployment, one of my more complex jobs took two or three days. I deployed it with one teammate. 

FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price. 

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray 10 out of 10. Pure Storage is the best in the world for IT companies. If you want the best performance, you have to choose Pure Storage.

On-premises

In terms of Pure Storage FlashArray, I am using the iSCSI protocol. We are building virtual machines on it. It is like a data store on the ESXi hypervisor. VMware virtual machines are built on it.

Its compression ratio helps to reduce the storage footprint. We have bigger models such as FlashArray XL 150 for one petabyte of requirements in my organization. In a single pane of glass, I can see latency, IOPS, and performance data for 24 hours.

We can easily register the hosts and host groups for clusters. If there are multiple hosts in the cluster, I can group them. There are also features for volumes and volume groups.

We were able to realize its benefits after some time. If there is enough data, you can realize its benefits quickly, but when data is not enough, it will not give the expected results. It can take four to six weeks for the data to be added by different business lines.

The deduplication and the compression, particularly the compression ratio, are important features.

The dashboard is nice. It is easy to manage compared to other storage solutions such as Dell EMC.

Currently, Pure Storage support does health checks. It would be beneficial to have a health check command that can be run from the CLI to ensure that all hardware components are functioning properly rather than having to enable remote access and connect to support for a health check.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about one year.

I have not seen much downtime with Pure Storage FlashArray.

Scaling FlashArray is not difficult and is relatively easy.

The support is very quick, with account managers available around the clock due to the global nature of the company. They are spread across the US, EMEA, and APAC regions. We have multiple account managers available and designated support engineers as well. We get an initial response to our email within 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

Positive

I have experience with Dell Storage solutions like PowerMax and PowerStore, which use FlashArray disks. Dell's Extreme IO was a product similar to FlashArray that I used in the past, but its success is uncertain.

Dell has more hybrid solutions. Pure Storage is mostly focused on the FlashArray line of products. The firmware upgrades with Pure Storage are seamless and pretty quick. Pure Storage might also have an advantage from a cost perspective.

The initial setup is not difficult. After I have the management and other things in place and the box is available, with the help of Pure Storage support, it just takes about 45 minutes to an hour for a small capacity storage, such as 100 terabytes. For a larger capacity storage, it takes a couple of hours.

I have done the re-IP as well and moved the storage from one data center to the other data center. It is not that difficult.

The hardware maintenance is taken care of by Pure Storage support. We do not need to do any maintenance ourselves.

One person is sufficient for deployment, handling tasks like management and connectivity set-up.

Dell and Pure Storage offer competitive pricing, but Pure Storage might have a slight advantage.

As primary storage for structured data, Pure Storage FlashArray with the NVMe protocol is great. It works well for enterprise databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database.

For those considering FlashArray, ensure that from a networking standpoint, three management IPs are available. Determine connectivity requirements, whether using FC or iSCSI, and have the necessary switches ready.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

On-premises

We use Pure Storage FlashArray as well as FlashBlade. In Pure Storage FlashArray, we have the SAN and NAS storage models. 

We focus on performance when it comes to enterprises. We need both types of storage, one is for better performance and the other one is for larger space requirements. We use both types of storage at the same time.

Pure Storage FlashArray is helpful in meeting the performance needs of critical services. Different models are available, and each model has a different series. For example, you have the C model, and in this model, you have the 50 series and 90 series. Similarly, in the X model, you have the 70 series. We now get a lot more models of Pure Storage than before. Previously, not many models of Pure Storage were available, so we had to rely on other vendors, such as NetApp, but we faced performance issues with NetApp. It also required more troubleshooting. We started to get a better response time after we moved from NetApp to Pure Storage.

We have a single pane of glass for management. It is good.

With Pure Storage, the creation of LUNs is easier and quicker than others. We have not had any issues with it. The response time improved significantly, and the entire process became much more efficient, eliminating previously existing troubles.

Some storages do not provide an easy IOPS report, but with Pure Storage, we can see performance impact directly on the storage itself. That is the best feature.

Additionally, creating a replication pair is straightforward without the need for CLI commands. With other storage solutions, we have to use the CLI commands, whereas we do not need to do that with Pure Storage. We can simply create a replication pair. That is another good feature.

I like the performance. Performance-wise, it accommodates the needs of highly-critical servers. It is reliable. That is the third best feature. 

Awareness about Pure Storage needs to increase. Currently, people mostly think of Dell and NetApp when it comes to storage. More documentation and presentation would help reach new users. They need to come up with new ideas and ways to improve their brand awareness.

They also need to see if the system can handle creating a large number of LUNs at the same time. Any automation or a way of doing that could be helpful.

We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about two and a half years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability. It has been good.

We have a lot of applications with millions of users. There are five data centers. Three of them are in Hyderabad and two of them are in Mumbai.

We have 150 people working with storage solutions.

I would rate the customer service a seven out of ten. Depending on priority cases, the vendor's response time can vary. For P1 or P2, a case owner is assigned within 15 to 20 minutes. Everything is great from the vendor's side.

Neutral

In my environment, different types of storage vendors are there. We have NetApp, Hitachi, Dell, and other vendors. We have been using Dell PowerStore Storage and we have been migrating some of them too. We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray and FlashBlade for a long time, and we have seen a lot of differences compared to the other storage solutions. 

The performance, latency, and throughput of Pure Storage FlashArray are good. The throughput is 5 GB or 12 GB per second. Latency is also below 5 milliseconds.

The replication process is easier with Pure Storage compared to others. Replication was one task that I found difficult with other storage solutions.

The deployment and associated activities are handled by a different team. They take care of everything necessary for the new environment.

With proper approvals, we can implement it within a month. It does require some maintenance from our end, but the vendor takes care of all the upgrades.

Pricing is moderate. It is neither cheap nor expensive.

We are happy with Pure Storage. About six months ago, we had a Pure Storage event in my company, and I liked attending that Pure Storage event.

Pure Storage should focus on creating more awareness and providing documentation and presentations. It should also aim to reach lower-end clients who are currently focused on other storage types.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We use Pure Storage FlashArray as storage in our VMware environment.

Pure Storage FlashArray's single management dashboard is important to us.

We saw immediate benefits with Pure Storage FlashArray in the areas of ease of use and performance. 

Pure Storage FlashArray has significantly helped us decrease the overall storage footprint in our company by approximately 70 percent or more.

Pure Storage's FlashArray with Evergreen architecture is essential for our organization to maintain continuous uptime. Our previous experience with NetApp required costly upgrades and disruptive downtime. With Evergreen, we have non-disruptive upgrades at no additional cost as long as we maintain our support contract with Pure Storage. We have undergone several upgrades without impacting our customers, which has been a significant benefit.

We have not had any downtime with our storage systems since switching to Pure Storage, whereas with previous vendors, we experienced downtime primarily due to performance issues. 

Pure Storage FlashArray has allowed us to expand substantially over the last ten years with no downtime. The cost has been manageable, and we have encountered no issues with scaling.

The most valuable features are the ease of use and support. Specifically, the snapshotting abilities of Pure Storage FlashArray are features we like a lot. The FlashArray management pane of glass, or the dashboard, is also helpful for us and is considered important.

On the technical side, the way that the array performs cleanup and garbage collection sometimes pushes it close to 100 percent utilization, causing some stress. A little more transparency about what's happening and why, would help us feel more comfortable.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about ten years.

Stability has been great. We have not experienced any issues with stability, and we have not had any downtime in our operations since using Pure Storage FlashArray.

Pure Storage FlashArray has demonstrated excellent scalability, allowing for substantial expansion over the past decade without any downtime and at a reasonable cost.

Customer support has been excellent. We have used support multiple times for various issues, including failed disks, replacing failed FlashArray modules, controller upgrades, technical questions, and guidance for using their APIs and best practices. Their performance and speed have been outstanding, and I consider their customer service to be a ten out of ten.

Positive

Previously, we used NetApp and Nexenta, an open-source product. Our experience with Pure Storage has been better than NetApp, specifically around ease of use and cost.

The initial deployment of Pure Storage FlashArray was extremely easy. Deploying our first Pure array took about two hours compared to a week for deploying a single array with Nexenta.

One person is required for the deployment of FlashArray.

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable. We spend a lot less time managing storage than with other vendors. Compression and deduplication mean we need a lot less capacity to support the same amount of data. The Evergreen support model provides new controllers every three years at no cost, significantly reducing operational expenses.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray nine out of ten.

Pure Storage FlashArray maintenance is handled by Pure Storage and includes software upgrades, security patching, and replacing failed storage media. We monitor performance using Pure Storage's provided tools.

Pure Support and sales engineers are readily available to assist with defining best practices and optimizations, offering valuable guidance for configuration, especially with third-party tools like VMware. So don't hesitate to reach out to their support. For instance, they have helped optimize VMware configurations for peak performance.

On-premises

I use Pure Storage FlashArray for backend storage in our VMware environment.

The most valuable features I have experienced are the centralized management and redundancy under speed of the right disk. Everything is in one place with the entire dashboard, all alerts, and usage reports. I can expand the drive and take backups at the VM level to Pure Storage backup files seamlessly. I have also observed minimal outages.

The pricing needs to be improved as they offer very high budgeting prices. Searching is a big challenge in Pure Storage FlashArrays, especially when trying to restore a VM. I can only search manually, which is a required improvement.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for almost five years.

It was not difficult to deploy. I had help from Pure Storage and was able to migrate our storage easily.

I have not seen any instability. It's good.

The support is good, and the response time is satisfactory.

Neutral

I used Hitachi and EMC in previous projects.

The initial setup was easy. It was a project that took around four to five months because we had small sites that needed integration.

It required an entire team for deployment. Around four people were involved.

I don't have the billing details right now, but the pricing is high.

I like Nutanix better from the presentations I have seen, but I did not work directly with it.

On the scale from 1 to 10, I rate Pure Storage FlashArray nine. I have contacted technical support when there was a data restore challenge, and the support quality was good.

On-premises

We use FlashArray for enterprise block workloads, especially VMware databases. Everything is a virtual environment these days. We work with companies in partner countries in industries like telecom and banking. 

You can see Pure Storage's performance benefits as soon as you have deployed the solution. In terms of compression and deduplication, you can see the benefit once you've migrated 25 to 30 percent of your workload to FlashArray. The algorithm needs that much to see how much duplicated data is inside the array. It has reduced the client's storage footprint 100 percent. 

One feature that's particularly valuable for our finance customers is Pure Storage's safe mode. It protects against ransomware attacks by taking snapshots. Our customers were very impressed with this capability. The data reduction is also impressive compared to other providers. 

The single pane of glass management is simple and easy to operate. It also seamlessly integrates with VMware and cloud environments. Pure Storage is hosted on the public cloud, so it's easy to monitor the array from your mobile phone.

Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. 

I have used Pure Storage for three years. 

Pure Storage FlashArray is reliable, and I've had no problems with hardware or software failures. 

I rate Pure Storage support eight out of 10. Their support is excellent, and they respond quickly. 

Positive

We recommend different solutions based on a questionnaire on the customer's needs. Are there performance or resource crunches? Is their current solution becoming obsolete? This isn't a problem with Pure Storage because it will last forever. 

Pure Storage builds its own drives using direct flash modules. Pure Storage has solutions for all scales from small businesses to the enterprise level. 

FlashArray is pre-deployed on hardware. It's very easy to deploy using one person. 

Pure Storage offers a good long-term ROI. You will get the new technology and the same level of support on an initial capital investment. It's a cost-effective solution for customers of any size for long term.

The Evergreen program is critical for our customers who would like to stay on this platform forever, control operating costs, and adapt to new technologies. 

The most important feature is that you get support services forever for a flat annual renewal cost.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray eight out of 10. 

On-premises

Our VMware infrastructure uses a Pure Storage FlashArray as its primary SAN storage solution.

Our organization values the single management pane of glass because it simplifies administration by consolidating all necessary tools and functionalities into one location, eliminating the need to navigate between different systems. This streamlined approach increases efficiency and allows us to manage our operations effectively.

The benefits of Pure Storage FlashArray were immediately apparent, with its speed dramatically reducing machine deployment times from several hours to mere minutes.

Pure Storage FlashArray significantly reduced our storage footprint. Moving from older three-point five-inch SAS disks to Pure's smaller disks and utilizing deduplication and compression, we condensed our storage from 12 racks to just four.

Pure Storage FlashArray reduces downtime compared to our previous storage solution. While our previous system was reliable with minimal downtime, it still required occasional maintenance, whereas Pure Storage FlashArray operates seamlessly without any maintenance requirements.

The Evergreen architecture provides a fantastic refresh cycle where storage, including the crucial controllers at the system's core, is replaced every three years during maintenance renewals. This effectively means that even after nine years, the system remains equivalent to a brand new one. This is greatly important to our organization's ability to maintain uptime. 

I appreciate the ease of provisioning storage on Pure Storage FlashArray. The deduplication and compression features make it cost-effective and remarkably straightforward to use.

Pure Storage FlashArray is fantastic. It shows and does everything I need, which is why I've used it for so long. However, improved reporting on the deduplication and compression functionality would be beneficial. While a general reduction in space usage is evident, it's impossible to determine the specific deduplication or compression rates for individual disk systems.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for nine years.

I rate the stability of Pure Storage FlashArray ten out of ten.

Although we haven't needed to scale significantly yet, the system appears capable of scaling.

The technical support always replies quickly, and the support quality has been fantastic.

Positive

We previously used HPE non-flash storage, but they did not offer the deduplication, compression, or SSD options that the Pure Storage FlashArray provides.

The initial deployment is straightforward, even for someone who has no experience with Pure Storage FlashArray. It takes less than one day.

Deploying a Pure Storage FlashArray can involve various infrastructure components, making it more efficient to use a team. In most organizations, a single person would lack the necessary access to all the systems involved in the deployment process.

We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price. However, the current retail price may be relatively high, and discounts may not be available.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray ten out of ten.

Pure Storage handles all maintenance. Upgrades are initiated by simply sending an email request to Pure Storage, which manages the upgrade process.

Pure Storage FlashArray offers fantastic performance and is easy to set up, but it's important to consider the types of workloads you'll be using, as this can impact its data deduplication and compression efficiency.

On-premises