Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

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.

We use it just for test purposes in our organization.

Data deduplication is one feature I found to be the most valuable in the tool. We don't use any special features in our organization.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about six years. Also, I am using Pure Storage FA-420. I am a customer of the solution.

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

I can't comment on the solution's scalability since we use it in a test environment. From a scalability perspective, it is a very small storage solution, so it's not very expandable. It is only me who is using the solution in our company.

The solution's initial setup process was easy. It may look like a lot of work, but it is easy.

The solution is expensive.

It is an old storage we use for testing, and our production storage is IBM. It will be five years old since we are using the solution. We are also planning to buy a new storage solution. So, we are looking out into the market to see what we can buy.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it since I trust it is a great storage solution.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We are using Pure Storage FlashArray for VMware data storage.

The most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray are management and administration user-friendliness, provisioning, and performance.

Pure Storage FlashArray could improve in the area of cryptographic information in the consoles. The user-friendliness could improve. The Pure Storage FlashArray team should come and log into the system with their maintenance credentials and then pull out the information as evidence of cryptography.

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

Pure Storage FlashArray is highly stable.

Pure Storage FlashArray is scalable, but it has a 5 GB ratio for data which helps with the reduced need for more investment for it to be more scalable.

We are using the solution with approximately 20 VMware hosts.

I previously used other solutions.

The initial setup of Pure Storage FlashArray is straightforward. The time it took for our complete implementation took one week. However, it could be done in one day but we had some challenges.

We used the Pure Storage FlashArray team to do the implementation.

I recommend this solution for production because it has good performance and capacity management. 

My advice to others is they need to fit the solution to their needs. There are many models available and the one they choose is going to depend on the front-end data that they're going to accommodate in storage. Additionally, the latencies needed are important to consider, such as how many milliseconds they can tolerate and overall performance.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

Pure Storage FlashArray is used for hosting applications, such as Vmware, HyperV, and virtualized applications.

The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the all-flash storage performance, low latency, and efficiency of their de-duplication technology. Additionally, the ease of use is good compared to other storage systems. The features in data protection, snapshotting, and replication between data centers and sites are superior to other solutions.

Pure Storage FlashArray could improve the recent file storage capabilities because it is lacking a lot of features.

The integration with other vendors, such as antivirus and security vendors they are lacking.

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

The stability of Pure Storage FlashArray is good.

Pure Storage FlashArray is scalable.

I have used the support from Pure Storage FlashArray.

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

Positive

The initial setup of Pure Storage FlashArray is very simple and it takes four hours for a new system.

Pure Storage FlashArray is not difficult to maintain.

My customers have received a return on investment.

The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could always improve. They are still more expensive than some alternative offerings. Cost is always a concern and when there is a battle they tend to be more expensive.

There are no licenses outside of the storage. When you buy the solution, you receive all the software capabilities and license with the box.

One of the advantages of Pure Storage FlashArray to other solutions is the Evergreen Program. The program allows you to never have to purchase storage that you already purchased again. For every terabyte that you purchase, you don't have to purchase it again, they will replace it. As you maintain the solution, even if the old storage becomes at the end of life, it will replace with newer technology as part of the maintenance.

My advice to others is they should try the solution, it works well.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for storage. 

It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit. 

The tool size is good. We have a tool size and then each size has one Pure Storage and they form the active cluster. We can just access the data on both sides with a uniform access design.

The scalability is good.

It can do some replications. They're very easy to perform. 

We're quite happy with eh solution overall. I can't recall coming across any features that were lacking. 

There was some complexity in the initial setup.

While they've improved a lot, many features have been released recently and they are not that mature just yet. My understanding is they just released some features, for some transport services over the NVMe and then the file service. However, the file service is not so mature. I had some problems with the file service when we used it. 

Other new features, such as the active clustering over the FC, and the verification over the FC feature, we didn't use. We have to have a trial on it first before commenting on it.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

It's very, very, very stable. There are no performance degrades during any upgrade or replacement of the parts. 

The product is extremely scalable. 

There is only one person using the solution currently. 

I've dealt with technical support previously. Their response is fast and mostly very, very helpful. We just need to enable the remote console on the array and then they just can easily troubleshoot by themselves. That way, we do not need more time to work with them. They just fix the problem for us.

We also use HPE Nimble. This solution scales much better. That said, it is a bit more complex to implement when you compare it to Nimble. 

There are two different classes in our design. We put more critical applications on Pure due to its stability and resilience. Less important or less critical applications or servers are on Nimble. However, the capacity of Nimble is far larger than Pure Storage.

The initial setup is more complex than the Nimble. Mostly the configurations must be done by the Pure engine at the back end.

It took two or three weeks to deploy the solution.

You only need one person to deploy and maintain the solution.

We handled the initial setup by ourselves. We did not need any outside assistance from any integrators or consultants. 

With Pure Storage, we buy the array and then all the features can be enabled on that.

It is more expensive than Nimble. The price is likely double Nimble's.

You do not have to pay for any extra features or add-ons. Everything is included. 

I'm a customer.

We use the Pure Array X model with a version of Purity 5. Recently, we bought the Pure C series.

We use it with a private cloud and on-premises as well.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Pure Storage Flash Array is used for data storage.

Pure Storage Flash Array has helped my organization by having the ability to have access to our data immediately.

The most valuable feature of the Pure Storage Flash Array is the blazing fast monitoring. 

The price of the solution can improve.

I have been using Pure Storage Flash Array for approximately seven years.

Pure Storage Flash Array is highly stable.

The scalability of the Pure Storage Flash Array is good and it is easy to do.

We have approximately 2,000 users in my enterprise that are using the solution. The whole company is using the solution.

The support from Pure Storage Flash Array is amazing. I have never seen a vendor support a product this well. They knew challenges even before my team was able to figure them out.

We were using another solution previously and we switch to Pure Storage Flash Array because we wanted the latest and greatest solution.

The initial setup of the Pure Storage Flash Array was of a medium range of difficulty. It was not easy or difficult. The full deployment was not very difficult.

I rate the initial setup of the Pure Storage Flash Array a two out of five.

We use a consultant from Pure for the implementation of the Pure Storage Flash Array.

We have seen a return on investment from using Pure Storage Flash Array.

The price of the Pure Storage Flash Array is too high and there needs to be more contact clarity. We went with the Evergreen plan and I don't have clarity on what am I supposed to pay each year or every three years. There was not much contract clarity.

We evaluated every solution at the time before we chose Pure Storage Flash Array.

My advice to others is to evaluate the Pure Storage Flash Array. Do a proof of concept if you can it is a fantastic solution.

I rate Pure Storage Flash Array a ten out of ten.

I help our customers build FlashArray. 

It is always out of the box, and ready to use. 

It is very simple to set up, and very simple to use.

The interface is easy to use.

It is very easy to implement.

It falls far short of protocol support. Our customers frequently ask us how we can use NFS or if we can use it as a copy or something similar. If you have any suggestions, I believe they could use more protocol, and have easier automation.

Automation could be simplified. For example, we can ask the storage to create a folder and then monitor it automatically.

I have been working with Pure Storage FlashArray for three years.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a very stable product.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a scalable solution.

I am also working with Pure FlashArray X series and Pure Storage FlashBlade.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The price is very reasonable when compared to other solutions.

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

Access speed and power consumption are most valuable.

It is way in excess of what we need. If anything, we could see a bit more speed. I'm just comparing it with what some of my colleagues who are implementing their own systems do.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable.

We did not have to do that, but it looks like it is.

It is very good.

It is our first solid-state array.

It is very easy.

It could always be lower, but it's okay.

I would advise others to have a go at it because it has worked fine for us. I would rate it a 10 out of 10.