Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

I use Pure Storage FlashArray to provide LUNs or volumes for end users who want to work on a database for zoning, enabling them to operate effectively with end-user arrays.

The device gives us a lot of protection in maintaining our data in the storage. It gives high throughput across many locations.

We have faster data processing with low file consumption. This includes multi-terabyte databases in memory with read-write speed four times faster than any HDD. 

Pure Storage FlashArray offers numerous valuable features, such as low latency and high throughput. It has significant data protection in the form of snapshots. It allows data portability around the cloud and on-premises devices. Performance backup is also a key feature.

The support that we received from the vendor during upgrades has been very good. They instructed us very well through the remote connection.

I have worked with two types of Pure Storage FlashArray. So far, I have not found any issues. There is not a great need for improvement, but better pricing could be beneficial.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for three years.

It is stable. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

There is always downtime when working with production servers. I have to plan downtime of three or four hours when launching new servers or logging into new servers with new LUNs. If a lot of people are logging into a FlashArray server, it will require downtime if we have to modify anything.

It is scalable. I would rate the scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

It is being used at a single location. We have 30 people using it.

Their support is too good. As soon as I log a case with them, they are always available. They are very fast. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with different storage boxes such as Quantum, NetApp, and HPE, but they are different. They are block storage. Pure Storage provides a unique compatibility when working with LUNs and volumes, offering a totally different SAN product. It is also easier than the others.

The initial setup was straightforward and took about 40 minutes.

The solution has saved us time and resources. It has saved about 20% of my time.

I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing. It could be improved.

I would recommend Pure Storage FlashArray to anyone because it offers great resilience, high throughput, and excellent storage provision to users on SAN boxes. It simplifies the process of zoning or taking backups.

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

This solution has been part of a POC. We've been evaluating the solution. 

We went through many renditions of testing with a full load. Even if we pulled a controller out, there was just a blip of response, and it was still extremely acceptable within the limit of what we would consider acceptable - and we're talking about one millisecond here.

This code was mature. We found the hardware to be extremely robust. 

It worked flawlessly.

The deployment was fast. 

The plugin for the ESX, the VMware, was great. That integration is just perfect. They're enhancing it all the time, from what we can tell, so it works flawlessly.

Support is excellent. 

It was a very good proof-of-concept experience.

In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation. 

It's going to be a hard one to manage. They have most of what we were looking at, including some things that we're looking at down the road. The growth on this particular array is almost unlimited for most shops. I would say they still need more enhanced speed, however, that's always a thing with storage.

I've used the solution for six months. 

The stability and reliability are excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten in terms of stability.

The scalability was great. I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

We have 20,000 people who were virtual machine users that were just on the test load. 

There is potential to increase usage in the future. That said, it's not up to me right now. We're working with the vendor. 

They have very good technical support. The support model was great. They usually had things resolved in under four hours. Service is very fast.

Positive

The deployment is easy. It was implemented in 15 minutes, including SNAP policies. The process was extremely fast.

It required two people to set up the solution. 

We had the whole thing up and running in 20 minutes and probably was done in an hour for everything, including end-to-end connectivity and having ES6 running on it. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using the solution. 

The pricing is okay. It's somewhere in the middle. I'd rate it five out of ten overall. 

We are using an all-flash X-series deployment. 

I'd advise people to test it and give it a try. They need to pay attention to their data reduction rate while doing so. 

I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

We put the solution onto the VMware environment and all the Microsoft SQL servers. We do the synchronization between two data centers, so that is has a very low latency. We just have a few milliseconds of latency which is a ready performance, and near perfect. 

If I compare it to SAN Symphony, for instance, it's much faster, much reliable level. 

The maintenance is very good. The support is very, very good. If you do any maintenance on it you have the support, and it's nice to know they are there to assist.

It's a very good product. It's very easy to manage everything.

With a snapshot, you can schedule it and you can remove it afterward. You can do a kind of production cope. That's very, very good now, and it's performing very well. The storage is amazing. It's so fast.

The total reduction you can expect is excellent. You buy the bundle storage and they give you a ratio of what you can achieve within it.

The mobile app is very helpful. I have an application on my smartphone. I view the latency in real-time on my app. You can see everything on your smartphone. You can also set up alerts on it, and things like this. I don't think you can do this on Dell storage. 

The solution is not cheap. It's much more expensive than DataCore. It costs much more. 

The improvement I would expect from them is maybe more if there is integration with VMware. We are also using Amazon Cloud to provision snapshots or to move or to copy snapshots to Amazon. I would expect more integration within Amazon. Amazon has tree storage or last tier so we have that as an option instead of keeping it in Pure Storage as it costs a lot of money. If they offered a hybrid cloud, for example, it would be very helpful.

The solution needs to ensure they have good integration with VVol. VVol is the future of VMware. I have spoken with Pure Storage engineers and they have an integration with vVol. They have a kind of plug-in for VMware to work with VVol, however, it's not mature enough. It's my understanding they're working on it to get it done on that side. More integration with the Windows Server for snapshots would also be helpful. 

One year ago I found that instead of having the new Pure Storage FlashArray on-prem, you can have it in Tokyo or you can have it in Virginia - it depends where you are. You can just pay a certain amount per minute and you can have a Pure Storage that you manage from your prem, but have it on Amazon. That may be in production. It will be a useful attribute.

I've been using the solution since 2019 and therefore it's not so long. It's a little bit more than one year - nearly two years now as we have started in August, 2019. 

5.3 is the latest stable version. They have a version 6 now, and 6.1 is in production, however, it's not as stable as the 5.3. We are running to the latest best stable version.

Previously, you were not able to scale the snapshot. You had to do it manually.

For a flash array of 11 terabytes that you buy in a bundle, you can provision for 44 terabytes. We still have six terabytes free. We can come to a ratio of four on full storage. You can optimize four times what they give to you. They give you a ratio from three to four. It depends on the application you have running. Not everything is taken on the storage. 

If you would like to expand, you can always just buy more storage disks. We will have to get a new license in two years and we might increase our usage then. For the moment, we have enough space.

Technical support has been very helpful throughout the process. They can assist during the setup process. They make everything very easy.

We also use the Dell EMC Storage Suite.

This solution is easier than what we've used in the past.

For me, in terms of setup, the process much easier than Symphony, for example. Before, we had DataCore and Symphony. With this product, it was easier to do the zoning on the fiber channel side. On the network side, it was easier. Everything it's much easier than other products if I compare it to Dell or to DataCore and Symphony.

The maintenance, if you have to upgrade the firmware or the version, is very convenient. The support is good also. And they are working now to integrate more in Amazon which will be helpful for us.

While it is my understanding that the solution is a bit expensive from a financial point of view, I don't know the exact costs.

The price, in general, is around $100,000, however, I know it costs more. I don't have the details anymore. I know it was much more than HP 3PAR and Dell Storage Center or DataCore. 

We have a five-year contract. We would need to renew it in two years or so.

We are just a customer and end-user.

With Pure Storage, you have two versions. You have the Pure Storage version 50 and version 10. 50 is a little bit bigger than version 10. With FlashArray M50, it's an X50R2, it's full flash. 

We have the product currently on-premises, however, we would be more open maybe to Amazon or some other cloud. 

I would suggest new organizations go with the product, even though it is new. Some companies are scared of new products. It's more mature in the United States. However, it's working well for us here in Europe. Even if it costs a little bit more, you do get more for what you pay. We've chosen the most expensive option, however, we have no regrets in that sense. It's been worth it. 

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's very easy to manage and works very well. The maintenance is also excellent. I'd recommend the solution. You don't have to do anything on the FlashArray. You don't have to deal with tier levels, or build and optimize something. Everything is done from the Pure Storage side. You're just using it, and that's it.

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.

In our environment, we use Pure Storage FlashArray for VMware storage. We have a few hosts that are used for creating virtual machines (VMs) and provide storage to them. We also use it for providing storage to databases.

Using Pure Storage FlashArray has reduced downtime significantly. With its replication feature, the downtime is almost negligible.

Pure Storage FlashArray is much better than the traditional storage we had. It is good for reducing downtime.

We also have some traditional storage tools that are being used in our environment. We have some servers that are still using traditional storage. I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be much better than traditional storage because it has a GUI interface. It makes the process of allocating the storage much easier, and most activities are automated. It is like clicking a button for every task.

I like its simplicity. It is very user-friendly.

Currently, Pure Storage FlashArray is mostly being used for high-performance environments that have low latency requirements and high workloads. For environments that do not have such high requirements, it could be costly. It would be beneficial to have a separate pricing point for environments with lower performance requirements or less workload.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately 1.5 years.

I have not observed any crashes or issues with Pure Storage FlashArray. It has been running smoothly without any stability problems.

In terms of scalability, we have enough storage allocated through Pure Storage FlashArray, and I believe it would not present any difficulties if more scaling is required.

The quality of support is good. The response time is good. They do not take much time to respond. They ensure someone is always available to address any issues. There is no leniency in their work. I find them good in terms of response.

Positive

I have used some traditional storage tools, such as VPLEX XIO. The difficulty there was that provisioning and reclaiming storage was very tedious and required a lot of human effort. Using Pure Storage FlashArray has made this process much simpler and efficient. I am happy to use it.

When I started using Pure Storage FlashArray, it was already being used within the environment. It was easy to learn and use. It only takes a short time to understand how to use it efficiently.

It does not require much maintenance. They do make frequent updates and the upgrades smooth. We can do the upgrades without any downtime. There is no impact on the environment when the upgrades are made. So far, it has been good.

I have not worked with other Flash solutions. I find Pure Storage FlashArray to be a reliable product. It has features for backup and restore and it integrates well with cloud environments. For high-performance environments, it is cost-efficient and user-friendly.

I have not spent much time using the dashboard that we get with Pure Storage FlashArray, but I know that if we have any performance issues, we can monitor them through the dashboard.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten. I have been using it, and it has been performing well enough. It has helped me with my work. It has made my work much easier, but there is always scope for improvement.

We have FlashArray and FlashBlade. We're using FlashArray primarily for VMFS storage tools for the VMware environment.

We have its latest version. It is on-premises, but we operate a private cloud.

We've had different types of storage, and three things of this solution are valuable. The first one is its outstanding performance. The second one is its stability. In the about three years that we've had it, we've had component failures, but we never had a service interruption or any data loss. The third one, which is really critical, is that it is super easy to use in terms of provisioning, storage, and managing the arrays. I'm able to maintain a multi-site environment with a couple of dozen arrays with a single mid-level storage admin.

We do a lot of data replication as well, and the replication features are all easy to set up. The networking controls for setting up interfaces and sub-interfaces are also easy to manage.

We understand that they're thinking about it, but one of the things that would be nice is if they added some basic file-level capabilities to the platform. The idea is that they would run a basic NFS or CIF share from the controllers. FlashBlade is the powerhouse for File and Object storage, but if you don't need all that power, a lightweight file function would make FlashArrays more versatile.

The other thing is multiple key support for encryption. The standard solution encrypts the whole array, but we also have certain tenants that use dedicated LUNs. So, it would be nice if, in addition to just supporting the VMware stuff, we could have a per LUN key. Even better would be interfacing with an external Key Management Server (KMS) so that tenants could manage their keys.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

It is very stable. There are no stability issues. The bugs we've encountered have been nuisances or minor things, such as how some metrics are reported, but there hasn't been anything that has affected our service.

It is very easy to scale. We have about 4,000 users.

They are very good, but we are a large enough customer. We always deal with the same people, so it's not like we're going into the tier one service desk.

We previously used Dell EqualLogic. It was going under life, and it was just a legacy spinning disk with an SSD cache. So, the main reason for switching was just a tech refresh and an upgrade.

It is very straightforward and very simple.

We consume it as a service, and that's actually something we really like, or at least I really like from the technical perspective. That's because it means there is no hassle when we need to upgrade arrays to add capacity. We just interact directly with technical counterparts, and we say, "Hey, we're filling up," and they say, "All right, here's another data pack." They ship it in, and we install it. So, the as-a-service model has worked very well. Given the outstanding data reduction rates, it has improved our profitability because we're selling allocated volumes as part of the cloud service or recovering those costs from our tenants. It is very efficient, but that has offset the premium price. It started out that way, but over time, as we've added capacity, the price per gig has gone down a lot because we have a lot of it.

If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of 10.

We use the solution for VM storage in a private cloud model. The main motivations we had to run VMware on Pure were the simplicity and cost.

We're using the M70 R2.

We went from a four-cabinet VMAX array, where we paid $16,000 a month for a pod just for the array to sit in, and we took that down to seven U's of rack space in our existing co-lo facility. Not only did we save time, but we saved money, power, and air conditioning; all of that good stuff.

We also use VMware integrations developed by Pure, their plugins in our vCenter environment. They help by allowing our non-technical operations teams to deploy new data stores and resize data stores without me having to involve myself all the time to do those simple tasks.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. It's really plug-and-play. It just works and it works really well.

I haven't really had a bad experience or something I think that they can improve on. I'm not saying that to be really nice. The way the platform works, the way that their sales team works, the way their support team works, everything just works really well. If they could make it cheaper, that would be something.

It's stable and we've never had an issue with it. The array has just worked. It's been a little workhorse. It's just perfect in every way that I can think of.

Scaling is easy. You just plug in new disks, it sees them and it works. I can't explain it any better than that. You just plug it in and it works.

I have used Pure's tech support quite a few times. It's probably the best tech support experience that I've had. I love that, by utilizing Pure's SaaS platform, they let me know about problems that they've seen with other customers who are using the same version of the software or the same model array. They reach out proactively and say, "Hey, we've seen these kinds of things happen with other customers. You should do X to fix this so you don't experience the problems." It's something that most storage companies don't do nowadays. They make my job easier by being really proactive.

We were looking to get away from Dell EMC to some other platform, and Pure was the number-one disruptor in the market. Their story, their price point, and what they said they could deliver are what sold us.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It took about 30 minutes from unboxing to actually being on the network and being able to utilize it in our VMware environment.

A Pure engineer was onsite with me to do it. It was very simple. He asked me about five questions about IP address and NTP, etc. Then he did the rest with a script.

We easily save, on just the basic costs for facilities, $16,000 a month.

We also evaluated Dell EMC, 3PAR, Nimble, Tintri, and NetApp.

Like I tell everybody else that I deal with, if you want to focus your time on doing more valuable things for your company, and you deal with storage on a day-to-day basis like I do, the best thing you can do is put Pure in your environment. It really is set-it-and-forget-it. I've come from the days of VMAXs where you're sitting there tweaking and turning knobs all the time to try to make sure that your storage environment is tip-top. With this, you literally plug it in, connect it and serve it, and then it does everything else itself. I get to focus my time on doing other things that are more valuable to the company.

On a scale of one to ten, Pure is an 11.

All of our production, development, and workloads run on it.

We were previously a legacy storage system. After moving to Pure, the stability and performance both dramatically improved. 

We don't have to worry about storage anymore. Previously, we had to babysit our storage system, doing things like managing the volumes, looking at the capacity, predicting when would we run out of space, and replication work. All of those created a lot of challenges with the previous system. Since moving to Pure, we no longer have to worry. We defined the policies once, and things mostly work.

Pure Storage simplifies the management, overall.

Flash is the most valuable feature.

Scalability is one of the best features. You can quickly add more. You can swap out the drives with larger sizes, you can add more shelves. All of that is perfect - the whole concept of keeping it modular, where you can keep replacing components. That was definitely new several years ago. I would bet competitors are doing it now as well, but when they started, it was an innovation.

The real need that we have is around other backups. Obviously, it has its own snapshot concept but beyond that, having a separate backup system in the Pure ecosystem itself, in that space, would make it all integrated within a single organization and we wouldn't have to deal with multiple companies. That's an area where we thought Flash Blade could serve our needs, but it seems it can't.

Also, for one of our systems, the data reduction that we had initially anticipated when we bought Pure and we moved over is way lower than the expected reduction. It depends on the workloads, of course. But that has been a challenge at times. Because of that, we now need more storage. We are going to have to use the guaranty that they provide when you purchase: If it doesn't meet the overall capacity needs, then they will provide extra storage.

The stability, in general, has been perfect. 

The reason I gave a nine, not a ten, is the upgrades. With most upgrades we have had some kind of problem. They haven't been as smooth as they should have been.

The latest problem with which we are currently dealing, literally today, is that after the latest upgrade, the utilization went up, especially because of the systems space, which is consuming much more than it should. The duplication is not happening on time. Pure acts like it is a bug and that they have a new version with a fix for it. It goes into a cycle often: You keep upgrading and that new upgrade may have some other problem.

That's the primary worry regarding stability. Otherwise, the system works.

Technical support is good, but not as good as we would like. We have to get our Pure account team involved often, and they are stars. That always solves the problem. Support is available 24/7, but sometimes they're not as detail-oriented as we would like in investigating problems.

The setup was pretty straightforward. We recently added two more areas to our ecosystem and the set up was pretty good.

We used a reseller, SHI. Our experience with them was good.

Pure is expensive. But it comes with features so you get what you pay for. It's expensive compared to our old storage systems, but that is balanced by the reduction in the amount of effort human effort involved in& babysitting the storage system. So if you factor in everything, I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us, at least.

You get what you pay for. It is expensive, but it really works. So I would really recommend using Pure Storage.