NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure Storage FlashArray

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
The NetApp® EF-Series is a family of entry-level and midrange all-flash storage arrays that accelerate organizations' access to data and help derive value from it. These systems offer NVMe flash storage and provide more affordable to extreme IOPS, boasting response times under 100 microseconds and bandwidth up to 44GBps.N/A
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage in Mountain View, California offers all-flash array data storage promising affordability, high availability, and consistent performance.N/A
Pricing
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Features
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays
8.9
Ratings
1% below category average
Pure Storage FlashArray
9.3
Ratings
4% above category average
Flash Array Performance9.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Data Compression9.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Simplicity9.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Power Savings7.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
User Ratings
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetApp EF-Series All Flash ArraysPure Storage FlashArray
Likelihood to Recommend
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays should be used for critical system backups, databases, for critical applications due to different write allocation algorithms. These systems have faster underlying SSD drives comparing to older types, so in result, Inline data de-duplication in these systems are not noticeable. The idea for these types is valuable for MetroCluster configuration within switchover, in terms of disaster recovery. Performance and response time of EF-series are really exceptional, but comparing to the costs this the rpice for it.
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When you need speed, it's FAST, especially for MS SQL databases. If you are having bottlenecks, you can spend your time finding it in the code because it's not Pure Storage. Love the data reduction and duplication. We can store so much more on this unit than the base physical size. Love the data snapshots. When you need to complete copy your entire environment for testing etc. Nothing is easier, a few clicks and you are done. Extremely helpful for testing and training.
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Pros
  • Good to use for Hyper-V Shared volume
  • Good to use for passthrough DISK
  • Very Good for NFS share
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  • Support - I've never had a call passed off to a different party that I then have to wait to get back to me. The person responding to my support ticket has been able to help me every time.
  • Non-disruptive upgrades. We were able to transition from a SAS based //m series array to a NVMe based //x series array with zero down time. This gave us greater performance and capacity with minimal disruption.
  • Simplicity - Pure Storage aims to automate the complicated steps of storage management with superior software. You know they are still happening under the surface, but the administrator does not have to deal with keeping the process just right with a given vendor's command set.
  • Licensing - All-in base licensing instead of expensive add-on licenses for additional features. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
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Cons
  • NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays basically provides high bandwidth that's basically used for high end application , but still there are lot of application needs to be run on low/medium bandwidth , for that , there some low/medium IOP's disk need be integrated in storage.
  • NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are accessed NetApp SANtricity Web Services Proxy. which is separate tool or agent , its better we can access the GUI vi browser without any tool or agent.
  • NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays, need to perform additional configurations for multipathing that's not required in other storage
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  • The GUI could be more intuitive. It takes a little getting used to if you're coming from other vendors.
  • More performance statistics could be made customer-facing. Something simple like CPU utilization is not even available.
  • Asynchronous replication could use improvement. Instead of sending the replication on a time schedule, just asynchronously replicate when possible.
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Likelihood to Renew
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It has so far been a very fast and stable product. We have had wonderful support when we have needed it and the account manager and engineer attached to our organization have been very responsive with any questions and concerns we have had.
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Usability
HW and SW of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays are easy to use, with very good support.
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From the day our first array was put in (2017) we have had very little issues using it the way we wanted to and none of the setup or processes we incorporate this into have ever been complex. All of the interfaces in the GUI are very intuitive and do not require any CLI experience to do what we need it to do.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
We have never had an outage with Purestorage. Yes we have had 2 drives go out but replacements were installed so fast there wasn't any issues. We have had a NVRAM module replaced but were noticed from Pure they were sending a replacement because they were predicting a failure so pure was proactive preventing any issues. Knowing Pure is monitoring our device 24x7 gives us peace of mind.
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Performance
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The corporation has a very diverse data load and when we migrate from a hybrid storage to pure all-flash, significant gains have already been observed. Latency always remains below 1 ms regardless of the load and volumetry used. Application performance also depends heavily on whether or not the code is more permormatic and network access infrastructure. The product has been meeting expectations
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Pure Support is timely and communicative. They are always ready to assist and very skilled at what they do, no matter the time of day. Even at 12:10 a.m. on New Years Day when your array has a hiccup that causes some errors in your environment, they will be on the phone with you in an instant. If they are unable to determine the cause right away, because things appear to be normal, they will take your environment's configuration, lab it up in their support environment and then research until they figure out what caused the problem. Even if it takes 3 months. True story.
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In-Person Training
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Excellent training and really you don't need that much. We received training at the Pure offices and also on site when the product was installed. Simple things like how to login to the GUI interface, how to setup users, how to create volume and mount it. How to make a snapshot, how to copy it and mount it. Really is pretty self explanatory on how to do things with the GUI interface. We were expecting complicated base on other vendor products, we got super simple.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Great videos and documentation. There is a common theme with PureStorage, "Keep it elegantly simple". They have great support network and great support user groups. Documentation has been very helpful with providing auditors with methods and procedures on security and other ways the product works. Great documentation on setting PureStorage to be the most effective with VM's, SQL Server, and other products.
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Implementation Rating
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The install was very quick. The engineer that Pure sent said that if we started by 10 am we would be done by lunchtime, and he was not kidding.
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Alternatives Considered
NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays provide high IOP's , data protection and other features which makes this storage different from other storage in the enterprise segment , I also worked on IBM DS8K storage and IBM flash storage , But If i compare both of them on basis of performance and feature , I feel Netapp EF series is far better in this segment , I highly recommend Netapp EF series storage , where we required highly IOPS and bandwidth.
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Pure Storage FlashArray came up as being the most cost-effective of the lot plus the extras added like call-home support were very welcome. The competitors' options were a lot more expensive and the call-home support added a lot more to the already high costs.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
We run what seems to me to be a crazy number of hosts (800), backed by 2 pure arrays. Around 400 hosts per array, including database servers, render farm, application servers, etc.
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Return on Investment
  • Positive Impact on Business where application and database need high IOP's ,data processing speed.
  • Its well designed for high end application and database
  • Its not well suited for small mid-rang organization because of price.
  • Stability and reliability
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  • We have moved from a couple of older XtremIOs and a Unity array to 2 Pure arrays. This has saved us a great deal in power, as well as rack space, etc.
  • In addition to our savings our end users have been impressed with performance.
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ScreenShots