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Dell VMAX All Flash vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
227
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell VMAX All Flash
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 7.8%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetApp AFF7.8%
Everpure FlashArray7.4%
Dell VMAX All Flash0.7%
Other84.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
AS
Solution Architect at a agriculture with 10,001+ employees
Performance and interface improve data processing speeds but require complex configuration
The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface. We have seen significant improvements in technology over the last four to five years. The snap feature, along with deduplication, has notably enhanced our data processing speeds. We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution.
KennethEtsula - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager at Spartec
Offers seamless installation and efficient data handling with robust support
NetApp AFF provides an all-flash storage solution for unified SAN solutions, supporting both SAN and NAS functionalities. Data reduction capabilities such as deduplication, compression, and compaction are standard features included with the license in NetApp AFF. With the storage efficiency from a NetApp AFF installation, users can manage substantial data running on all-flash. The features such as compaction and compression provide storage efficiency guarantees in an all-flash environment.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"While all these products have their own uses, Pure Storage FlashArray is in a market of its own."
"The pricing of Pure Storage is all-inclusive; it is very fair, very easy, and the solution is a lot easier to install than the Dell EMC product."
"We've been using FlashArray's snapshot for backups. Their replication across sites and response time are also excellent."
"We also like the compactness, the small footprint. It takes up very little space in a data center and uses little power."
"Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications."
"Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors, as we've looked at some of the other competitors on the market."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"It works very well."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"The most valuable features are the IO performance that we get, the cluster part, and the increased workload and performance with the SSDs."
"It has definitely helped us bring our costs down and gives us a powerful storage at the back end to serve our customers."
"It makes the applications faster for production, there are no complaints from users about slowness, and performance is the main benefit of the All-Flash FAS, which has made us more efficient because we are an oil and gas company with 24/7 operations that cannot stop for any reason."
"It is a very robust solution; it doesn't break easily, even when we have power failures, and NetApp gives us the resilience we need so we know we can trust it."
"It provided an amazing response time for all apps, with websites getting better stability, and QA for all final users."
"Just the fact that it's been rock solid; we haven't had to sit there and baby it, fixing things, tweaking and tuning it – it just works."
"Technical support has been really good; NetApp support has been really helpful, and we have a SAM who helps us with issues that come up and bugs."
"The solution freed us from worrying about storage as a limiting factor."
 

Cons

"The negative aspect of Everpure FlashArray is that migrations can be somewhat complicated."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has not helped decrease the total cost of ownership."
"It needs to improve its price."
"I wish they could add more of a monitor on the machine itself so you don't have to rely on a KVM or something to look at the display, such as an onboard diagnostic display."
"Technical support needs improvement. With respect to them being able to respond, they're more marketing people, less technical."
"Data reduction is an area that needs improvement. There is a garbage collection service that runs but during that time, system utilization increases."
"Self-backup is the only feature lacking in this solution."
"The time-to-market could be better at times, but I think that's true for all vendors of hardware."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"I know we're looking at cloud solutions, so maybe if they have something cloud-based, that might be something."
"I would like to see more functionality with the external software, SnapCenter."
"The NetApp support could be better."
"From my perspective, everything works well. They've already announced that they have some features in their next release that make the existing investment more usable, by adding software features to your existing legacy hardware investment."
"The full bundle is too expensive. It's needed to implement native replicas (i.e. snapmirror) and backup (i.e. snapvault) features"
"AFF is definitely pricier than other solutions, but the price gets compensated by performance and the density."
"I know they're working well with Microsoft and VMware. However, they could integrate with more."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. There are a few things that cannot be done in the GUI. We do a lot of things through the CLI, but that's grown out of a lack of ability to do them in the GUI. An example is QTrees. You can manage them within the GUI, but the GUI is missing a few options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost-wise, it's been very effective."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"I'm good with the licensing. Of course, pricing can always be less... It's actually not a bad pricing model, considering I don't have to rip-and-replace."
"The price is reasonable."
"We have an Evergreen Storage subscription, which I think is a great feature."
"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."
"My organization has a yearly license, but I believe that Pure Storage FlashArray has capacity-based licenses as well. I'm definitely happy with the pricing."
"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."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"It is not a cheap product."
"It is relatively cheap compared to other vendors."
"It's expensive but we think over time all the prices are going to go down."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit."
"It consolidates a lot of our storage into one or two chassis, which makes money savings in our data center."
"It is pretty expensive compared to other solutions. I would give it a seven or eight out of 10 in price (where 10 is expensive) compared to similar solutions."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Jan 28, 2015
NetApp vs. XtremIO
Is there another storage platform as feature rich as NetApp FAS? I think it is fair to say that NetApp FAS running Clustered Data ONTAP is a very feature rich platform – the move to the clustered version of ONTAP has brought many next-generation features including Scale-out and Non-disruptive…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise157
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I do not have any improvements at the moment; I like how it is. I have nothing to add about needed improvements.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC VMax?
The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additiona...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC VMax?
We use the solution for SAP ERP applications. We utilize both VMAX and PowerMax for different aspects of our operations.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
Well, Is one thing NetApp Storage has vs other brand is the mix of protocol CIFS with NFS booth working together in t...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
This question is very dependent on your requirements. Both are among the best in the field. Of course, the intended c...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Dell EMC Unity and NetApp AFF?
The answer depends on your needs and budget. If you want high performance (who doesn't) or let's say the latency matt...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Information Not Available
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell VMAX All Flash vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.