Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We have our own hosted environment that utilizes Pure. We also use it for customers. We use the solution both internally and externally. We use the tool for data storage and backups.

What we had previously wasn't quite working for us. Pure Storage FlashArray gives us the required availability and sufficient performance. We use the secure snapshots for malware protection. We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.

Pure is not designed to be a backup storage. It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups. It would be nice to get specialized backup storage with immutability, multifactor authentication, and very high deduplication and compression without sacrificing performance.

I have been using the solution for about five years.

It is an extremely stable solution.

We can start with the base array. As we scale on the contract, we get the higher-end controllers. It's a zero downtime upgrade, which is also very nice. We have some large enterprise customers.

The support is amazing.

Positive

The implementation is easy. The time taken for deployment depends on the engineer. Typically, it takes less than one hour. We need one engineer for the configuration. The tool is very easy to maintain. It has no failure rates.

The ROI is good.

We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.

I am also working with Nimble and HPE Alletra. One of the pros of Pure Storage is that it deals with all-flash arrays. It's a lot simpler. The other advantage is the collaboration with Pure.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

The core use for us is to test development.

Simplicity and reliability are the most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray.

It would be good to have metrics of the box's performance so we can see what it delivers, but currently, I can't see what it's actually doing—things like CPU and how it's coping.

For the next release, I would like to improve on certain functionality. They have a thing called SafeMode. So, I'd like some kind of SafeMode Manager because the SafeMode is a good feature, but it's very basic in its functionality.

I have been using this solution for three years. We have the I3 and I2 versions.

So far, it's been faultless. It is a stable solution. 

For us, it is a scalable solution. Traditionally, with Pure Storage FlashArray, there has been a problem with scale at the high end, but that's not us anyway. So, it's not something that concerns us.

It's probably around 150 users in my organization. 

I have spoken a lot to technical presales, and it's been fantastic.

The reason my company decided to use Pure Storage FlashArray rather than something else was the simplicity and proper simplicity of the solution. 

The initial setup is easy. 

It's not cheap. It's priced higher than the market.

I would definitely recommend using the solution. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten because the team is great, and it simply just works.

We are using Pure Storage FlashArray for all of our SAN storage for our VMware environment

The solution has benefited our company because of the ease of use and the performance and reliability.

The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level.

The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately eight months.

The solution has been highly stable and we have not had an issue.

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

We have one person that using the solution to manage it.

We do not plan to increase our usage.

I rate the scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

I have not used support often but my experience was good.

I rate the support of Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

Positive

I was not there when the initial setup was done, but we recently we swapped the controller and it went smoothly.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a good investment.

The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive.

My advice to others is for them to plan and try the solution out.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

We are in the health industry and use this product for block storage. We have VMware hosted on our Pure FlashArrays and we have a Citrix environment. We also have Oracle running as our SQL database. Our VMs run from Pure.

We have also done a couple of PoCs with the Blade solution for using the file share system.

One of the requirements from our developers and test and development team is that from time to time, they want to clone the production environment. We are able to accomplish this within seconds, using a script. This is one of the best parts that I have seen. This feature is not available with other storage solutions.

Performance-wise, it is giving us a very good result.

We are happy with the data compression and deduplication capabilities.

The interface is user-friendly and very easy to use.

Taking a snapshot and cloning data is very easy to do. We can create a script and it will clone the environment. Similarly, we can replicate the environment from one site to another site, and we can restore the environment where we choose.

The management features are well organized and they have a very good dashboard. For example, I can see all of the utilization and it has port monitoring capabilities. With other storage vendors, multiple tools are required for this, and there is an additional charge.

Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases.

Integration with VMware tools can be improved.

The reporting can be better.

We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for between five and six years.

This is a very stable product and we haven't had any downtime. We use this product extensively and I have seen that we have a 90% I/O load in our environment.

This is a flexible system that is easy to scale.

We initially purchased two FlashArray systems. One of them was small or midsized, and the other was high-end. Then, later, we started upgrading. As per the Everygreen contract, we get free upgrades. Every three years, we get a new controller upgrade, free of cost.

We have also upgraded our capacity and now everything is on the X series. We have four FlashArrays in total and all of our database users are connected to them. The infrastructure and database teams are directly involved with it.

The response from the technical support team is very good. We have not found any difficulties with their ability or engagement.

We have worked with solutions from HPE, IBM, and Hitachi. We don't work with any of these vendors now. We switched because Pure storage is much easier to manage. It is also more stable and it is very easy to work with.

For example, there is no shutdown procedure. If you want to power down the environment then you just unplug the power and that's it. Once you reconnect the power, it is up. With legacy storage, there is a shutdown procedure. You have to shut down the host, then the SAN switch, then the storage.

With legacy storage, there is also a procedure to bring it up. You have to power up the enclosures, then the controller, then the SAN environment, and then the server. We had to follow a long set of steps with more dependencies.

After a power outage, the storage devices from the other vendors did not always come back online. For example, we implemented a PoC with the IBM FlashSystem and a power outage occurred. The management tool crashed and did not come back up. We had to wait for IBM engineers to come and fix the issue. Whereas, with Pure, when the power came back on, the system came back online immediately.

The other storage systems were not as user-friendly. For example, I had a Hitachi G600 and I wanted to extend the block capacity. I had to spend between 30 minutes and one hour to complete it. It's quite complex. With Pure, that would be taken care of in seconds by going to the console, selecting the volume, and performing the reset.

The initial setup is straightforward and very easy.

The day that we received the box, we unpacked it, racked it, and configured it. The next day, we were able to utilize it for production.

Upgrading the hardware, such as performing a controller upgrade, is a seamless process. We are planning to do a major upgrade and it will be done on the fly.

We engaged Pure to assist us with our implementation, and our experience with them was very good. The technical team came onsite for the deployment. If we have any problems then they will return to our site to help.

Only one person is required for deployment and maintenance.

You can pay extra for Evergreen support, which gives you free upgrades when new features are introduced.

We completed a PoC with most of the leading brands.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that I can recommend Pure. We were the first customer for Pure Storage in the UAE. It's stable, reliable, and you can trust it.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Pure FlashArray is that it's user-friendly, easy to manage, and very flexible. You can scale out and it's easy to upgrade. The upgrade process is not complex and it can be done on the fly, without any disruption.

My main complaint is that the garbage collection mechanism draws heavily on the resources. They have integration with VMware tools, although they can improve it slightly, and I would also like to see some improvements in the reporting.

We have been using it heavily and all of our people are happy with it. This includes the DBA team. Whenever we have a requirement of it, it's very easy and it can be done within seconds. With our previous storage solutions, we had to spend more time looking into problems and they were not user-friendly.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use our Pure Storage FlashArray system for all storage allocations and management tasks, accessed through its standard graphical user interface.

My team is responsible for operating and maintaining our storage applications, including hardware replacement and vendor coordination with Pure Storage. The implementation of Pure Storage FlashArray has been successful due to its reliability and user-friendly interface, which has minimized disruptions and allowed for efficient workload management.

Pure Storage FlashArray's single pane of glass simplifies administration, particularly for testing, offering benefits for all users.

The system's wide range of configuration options allows for the use of various products and adaptable cost structures for different storage scenarios. Pure Storage also presented opportunities for business growth and expanded access, with the primary benefits being its performance and user-friendly interface.

Pure Storage FlashArray simplifies maintenance and management with its intuitive GUI, making storage allocation and other processes easy to understand, even for beginners. This ease of use is a significant benefit throughout the entire implementation process.

From my limited experience with Pure Storage FlashArray, I haven't encountered any significant areas needing improvement. However, enhanced documentation and beginner-friendly guidelines would benefit users with less configuration experience.

I have been using it for almost three years.

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

Pure Storage offers a wide range of configurable products that can help expand our infrastructure to suit various scenarios, providing business growth opportunities.

I would rate the scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray eight out of ten.

Customer service is quite good.

Positive

At the time we were moving to Pure Storage FlashArray, we were also  using  vendors like Dell EMC and Hitachi. I'm not clear why the business chose Pure Storage as well for the storage deployment, as I am more into the administrative and supporting side.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray eight out of ten.

We have deployed Pure Storage FlashArray in various data centers across multiple countries and testing environments. We have over 1,000 users in our organization.

Pure Storage FlashArray requires maintenance to avoid issues.

I recommend Pure Storage FlashArray due to its simplicity and attractive features. There's no particular reason not to recommend it.

Pure Storage is located in manufacturing plants. Basically, we have VMware clusters and those clusters are supported by Pure Storage, and those clusters are intended to support those manufacturing plants.

The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using. They have excellent rates of deduplication and compression. To offer 20 terabytes of storage, we just need maybe five terabytes of physical hardware. That's great. At the time, there was a notable difference as it was the only vendor with those numbers in terms of deduplication and compression in real-time.

Today other vendor software offers something similar, however, when it was just Pure, it was the best thing. I want to check again, however, usually, we use the Gartner charts to make decisions and start looking for different vendors and maybe the vendors we want to test. At the time, Pure was the leader in every aspect in terms of flash arrays and deduplication and all of that.

I don't really have complaints about the solution. It works really well. We are using Pure for something simple, which is just running a small VMware firm. That's why I don't have any other impressions. It works and I'm happy with it. I don't have any problems with the storage we have.

I’m not sure if there are features missing. I'm the one who chooses the technology; however, after the implementation, I don't have too much contact. I'm not in the operations, I'm not working with the console, creating or putting up a launch. I'm not doing that kind of operation work, so I'm not sure what might be missing.

When we start having some issues with transformer attacks and security threats, I had to contact Pure to ask about software patches. With other vendors, they contact us immediately. They would say, "Hey, we had these vulnerabilities. We need to install these patches, and this is super urgent. And we need to do it now." Yet, with Pure, in a couple of situations, I can remember we tried to go to them and send an email or open a support case to ask them, "Hey, I'm pretty sure you are aware of these threats. Are there any patches or updates available, so we can protect those systems?" There were patches available, however, for some reason, we had to ask. It was not proactive communication.

I want them to initiate contact and have automatic requests for their clients to get the patching. Especially if there are critical security issues. I would expect them to contact us immediately and tell us, "Hey, we identify the security threats, and let's plan together how to implement the security patches or whatever is needed to secure systems."

I've been using the solution for a couple of years. 

It is stable. We only had one issue during the last two years and the support team was able to help us really fast. For the most part it is reliable and the performance is good.

The solution is scalable. It's modular. You just need to put additional two unit expansions, and that's it.

The data storage is supporting a manufacturing plant. In the end, a lot of people are using those systems. I cannot say a number, however, there is a lot of people. There are probably more than 1000 per each side, considering the 24/7 roles.

Technical support was good. We’ve contacted them multiple times and they were great. They have been helpful every time.

It’s easy to set up and support is excellent. The administration console is super easy to understand and extremely intuitive. Even if you are not a storage expert, you can easily understand what you are doing. I like it - it's not complex at all.

We are just customers.

We have two different deployments. One is located in a big data center, and another two are in smaller remote data centers.

We have multiple data centers. We’re a manufacturing company and we need to keep a physical footprint in almost all our manufacturing plants and some of the branch offices. We try to put almost all of our workloads in the cloud, however, if there's a reason like latency or security or some stuff that prevents us from using the cloud, then that is when we put those systems in local data centers.

I’d advise potential new users to be careful during the scoping phase as some things will take up more room than you might anticipate or be hard to compress. Since this solution uses compression and deduplication, if you have a lot of databases or media files like videos or images, or that kind of information, it is not great when you try to compress and deduplicate. 

We have had some issues with that. One POC was supporting a call center, and this call center is recording the agents' screens as well as the audio of those calls.

That kind of information is extremely bad when you try to compress it. That's why, on that specific storage example, we had capacity issues. That specific application was eating almost all the storage. If you have different information, like application servers, a lot of repeated operating systems, if you have a hundred windows running on precisely the same version, that's great for deduplication and compression. That's something that the pre-sales team from Pure can help with; however, it is important internally to identify all those workloads as that could modify a lot, including what is the result in terms of the estimation of capacity required.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

We have a contract with Pure Storage, and we use it for VMware and database server storage provisioning.

We have multiple applications in the environment, and we are provisioning from Pure Storage.

The single pane of glass is important for us because we can view all the array details in one place. We can see the details about the capacity, utilized space, available or free space, alerts, and performance in one place. This overview is important.

It did decrease the storage footprint compared to other models and storage, but I do not have the metrics.

It helps to reduce the downtime.

We are not using any replication features. We only have storage provisioning, so the provisioning feature is good. The compression and deduplication are good.

It does not require much improvement. They can maybe improve the file services. The focus is on block storage. They can also include file services such as NAS shares and CIFS shares. There should be provisioning of the file shares from a unified array.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for one year.

There is no lagging or crashing. It is quite stable.

It is good in terms of scalability. We can scale up to a higher number.

I have interacted with their technical support. They were good at providing support when I requested.

Positive

We have different flash array systems from HPE GreenLake. Pure Storage is better than the HPE GreenLake flash array. Performance-wise, Pure Storage is better. The cost of Pure Storage might be high, but I am not sure.

It is on-prem. I do not know about its initial deployment because I was not there at the time of deployment. So, I do not know if its benefits could be realized immediately after the deployment. However, it has been effective in terms of utilization and capacity. We are now planning for different storage and doing the migration from Pure Storage to others because of the EOC limit that we have.

In terms of maintenance, there are firmware updates. We have to schedule a change window and then update the firmware.

It is good. Working with it is easy. Provisioning is smooth and good. The GUI and everything else is good. You can just do training with Pure Storage and get on with your storage tasks.

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

It's a very simple tool to use with extremely low latency and high performance.

Pure Storage FlashArray has improved the performance of applications.

Feature-wise, the solution provides direct flash storage.

Improvement-wise, Pure Storage FlashArray must support real-time incidents. I think that Pure Storage should improve its pricing.

Currently, the solution fails to support file screening. I want to see the solution supporting file screening in the future.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for four years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Presently, five people in my company use the tool.

I rate the solution's technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The solution's initial setup process was straightforward.

My company saw a return on investment using the solution as it helped us reduce the time it took to access applications and reduced the space required in our data center.

Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive.

When considering the use of this solution, I suggest evaluating the price and taking into account its performance and potential to reduce the space in the data center. I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.