Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We use the private deployment model of this solution. In terms of our cloud provider, we use Azure, we are signing on with AWS, and we'll be using vCloud in the next quarter.

It replaced an earlier tier. It replaced 3PAR Storage and gave us faster performance than the single databases.

VMware has benefited our IT organization because we're 100% VMware, everything is running on it.

We are running VMware on Pure. Our main driver was the performance for SQL servers. The joint solution has helped my organization in the way that the databases run faster. 

My organization is taking advantage of the VM integration developed by Pure. We've deployed it. I think it gives the storage administrator some additional insights on metrics. I don't think we're using it to actually manage the data stores. He's getting more insights on metrics. Pure has a VAAI plugin that allows you to manage the data stores. We're not doing that, but I think it gives them heightened analytics in addition to SD-Pure1, a web interface. The integrations have helped in the way that they're another dashboard to have. Somebody could think that the databases are running slow and our database administrator can look at that tool and say, "No, it's unique to your SQL databases, it's not the other VMs on the data stores."

The ease of management is one of the most valuable features of this solution. I would have also said that it's pretty fast but now our SQL servers are starting to beat it up pretty bad.

A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption.

It's very stable. 

It's scalable. You can hit a point where you fill up enough drives in the shelves. We're at that point now where we've got to expand. We've got to add another shelf.

Their technical support is good.

We have switched to EMC. They gave us more array for less money. 

The initial setup was very simple.

We used an integrator for the deployment.

Our ROI is that we're still running. It's been two years later, and we're still up and running with no downtime.

We looked at HP, NetApp, Pure, and EMC. EMC gave us better-performing storage for a better price. 

I would rate this solution a 7.5 out of ten. To get to a perfect ten they should be more competitive in their pricing. It's expensive. It's premiere storage but there are other premiere providers out there as well that are beating them on price, at least in our case.

The encryption is another area that needs improvement. It was huge. Right now we're at 82% on the Pure array. If they come up with that and pass to read through the more metric encryption, we would probably get 30 or 40% available disk space back, so it's huge.

The primary use case is SAP. It work very well.

SAP is very important to our business. We are running all ERP solutions. Our configurations are run on-premise. 

It has easy implementation.

The most valuable feature is its simplicity. It simplifies the administration and backup.

The predictive performance analytics works well.

I would like to have support available in Spanish.

The stability is perfect. The reliability is 100% and the latency is always lower than 1 millisecond.

The speed is very high on SAP from running it on Pure Storage, and the power on SAP HANA is much faster.

The scalability is good.

I would rate the technical support as a ten out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed directly with Pure Storage.

The ROI is very positive for the reductions in HANA.

We have seen a 5:1 reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). 

We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations by 2:1.

It's a simple, robust solution, which is very stable.

Pure Storage is very good and quick for backing up SAP HANA.

It has allowed us increased performance along with massive consolidation of space and power. We went from a two cabinet EMC VMAX to a 12U racked system. Very impressive.

Compared to Pure Storage, the IBM V7000 has not improved anything yet within our environment.

The Pure Storage system is, of course, very fast and completely redundant. All updates, upgrades, and hardware work are performed online with no impact. The Pure Storage customer service is by far the best part of the product and organization.

We have found that the NAS portion of the software has limitations. For example, the number of Filesystems is limited, which is not the case on the EMC VNX. 

The service team assigned to the project has good, hard-working people, but we are not receiving the kind of care we should receive to get the project done.

As for IBM, they could increase the maximum storage capacity so more disk shelves can be added.

There have been no issues with the stability of the Pure Storage solution. By contrast, with IBM we have had performance and spiking issues for which IBM applied a workaround patch.

There have been no issues with the scalability for either Pure or IBM.

Customer Service:

10/10 for Pure Storage.

6/10 for IBM.

Technical Support:

Pure Storage is excellent, while IBM is only average.

The IBM V7000 was bought for just NAS and secondary storage and for use as storage for our AS/400 platform. We switched to Pure Storage because of the way the system performs and the fact that it does everything in 32K sizing. The IOPS are high and the support and customer service are exceptional.

Setting up the Pure Storage solutions was simple. It took 45 minutes to rack it and get it online. The IBM system was also fairly simple, taking about two hours to rack and get online.

Both devices were installed through one of our partners who did a good job.

We feel that the pricing is fair and the licensing process was easy for both.

We evaluated EMC (which we already had), Dell, and HP.

The Pure Storage FlashArray is very good. Everything that Pure Storage told me is exactly what we have found to be true. It is the best production and implementation experience I have ever had.

Regarding IBM, the sales team was great, as was the technical team. I now feel that EMC VNX and NetApp are both better NAS systems. If I had to do it over again, I would stay with the EMC VNX for NAS.

We have not had a good experience with the IBM device. The installation and service were very good. However, the services to help us migrate our NAS data from an existing EMC VNX system have failed once already due to ACL permissions issues, specifically on how the V7000 NAS works. I have had to involved IBM Global Support by actually contacting high-level VPs. As of January 26, 2016, we have not successfully migrated our NAS data.

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.

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.

We use Pure Storage FlashArray for databases.

Pure Storage FlashArray has helped our organization because it effectively (price/performance) stores databases and we do not need an every day/detailed  administration.

The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides.

The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better. 
I don't think NEW features are needed. And I want to point out that the Pure team regularly updates the functionality.

We have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately three years.

Pure Storage FlashArray is highly stable. If we experience any issues the support resolves the issue immediately.

The scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray is good. We are able to upgrade changing disks and controllers and it is simple to do.

The technical support from Pure Storage FlashArray is perfect. If we have some trouble or we need to change something, we need to ask for support and they are helpful and answered immediately. 

I rate the technical support from Pure Storage FlashArray a five out of five.

Positive

I previously used IBM, HDS, LSI Storages.

The initial setup of Pure Storage FlashArray was simple. The process took approximately one week. 

We did the implementation of the solution ourselves and when we had some issues we contacted the support for assistance.

All vendor support engineers are good qualified. In case of escalation it was quick and effective.

The cost of the array includes the cost of the basic functionality. The Evergreen support includes free upgrades. This is not an inexpensive solution, you need to understand the value of your data before you buy it.

We evaluated Dell, IBM, HP, and Huawei solutions before choosing Pure Storage FlashArray, which was the best (3 years ago!).

We are wanting to expand and we are looking at other solutions currently, such as Huawei, which is a very good solution from China. However, the documentation can be difficult to understand and their support was not very good but they successfully try to improve it now.

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 the solution for the vendor support. It's a banking software system. It's an IBM system and it requires some Pure Storage for the backend and SSDs for performance. The vendor supports Pure Storage. 

It saved a lot of space, as far as physical space in our data center. The old sand took up an entire rack and this entire system to about 6U. It's about 1/10th of the space and the power too. You get those power savings and space. The speed has also vastly improved. It's a lot faster than what we had before. We've been running VMware for over 10 years now, so we're all virtualized at this point. The solution has helped us to virtualize everything. 

Pure allows us to upgrade hardware anytime we want and not have to worry about converting everything. It makes everything easier to switch from one vendor to another if we want to. We just recently updated our sand from a Dell EMC. It allowed us to move it seamlessly without having to do anything with the software because it's all VMware.

The speed is the most valuable feature, along with the ease of getting it connected. We were able to get it online in less than a day. 

We're pretty complex. Back there, we've got three or four different systems. It's important that we have something that's easy to manage so we don't have to learn something completely new. This solution offers a GUI that you can just set up and it's ready to go. We had it up and running in three or four hours.

I haven't had any issues with stability. The solution has run since the first day we implemented it and so far has done everything they promised.

We haven't had to scale out yet because the solution is new to our organization, but I have heard it's pretty easy to do. Right now, we have a capacity of about 100 TB. We don't plan to scale right now. When we bought it, we sized it to allow for about two years of growth. So unless something unexpected happens, we should be okay.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed it in our VR site first. We got it set up in VR and made sure everything was working. Then we brought it into production and deployed it on the production side.

We tested it first on the VR site. We personally didn't test a unit, besides our VR site, which was about two weeks. Our vendor-approved it and they used it. We went on the advice of our vendor and got the system.

We implemented the solution with the assistance of a vendor. 

Our experience with that vendor was good. They had everything up for us and there were no problems. Everything worked. They pre-configured it before they brought it out and then they just set it up. 

So far, I'm not sure if there is an ROI, as the solution is brand new. It's too soon to tell.

We have a package deal on the solution because we bought it through a software vendor, so they packaged it with their solution. I don't know what the individual costs would be for the Pure side of it.

It was a little costly. The price was ultimately higher than both of the other solutions that we evaluated. I'd say that's the only downside.

We looked at two other solutions but we liked that Pure seemed a bit easier to use. That, and we had recommendations.

We are using the on-premises deployment model.

VMware was one of the primary drivers when choosing Pure. One of the banking vendors that we use as a primary banking system had limited vendors that they support for storage and Pure was one of them. It was also recommended by a different credit union, which is why we went with them.

I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten.

I would definitely recommend them. They're recommended for a reason. They're not the cheapest, but the performance is, from what I read, the best, and it's easy to manage, so it's worth the extra cost.