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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
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
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 May 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Everpure FlashArray is 7.5%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell VMAX All Flash is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 8.3%, 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 AFF8.3%
Everpure FlashArray7.5%
Dell VMAX All Flash0.7%
Other83.5%
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

"Having fast storage allows actual servers to perform in high capacity so we don't have slowdowns on our applications."
"Pure gives us better compression, it's easier to manage, a lot less hands-on."
"Everpure FlashArray is very good with AI development and is very suitable for low downtime and critical mission storage, so customers who need critical mission storage and those chasing performance should consider this solution."
"We saw a vast improvement when we switched over to using the Pure Storage model over the XtremIO."
"The management is simple in Pure Storage FlashArray."
"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."
"We have perfect run through times and latency."
"The money I saved by not renewing maintenance on the Dell EMC devices paid for the Pure Storage devices."
"The product's initial setup phase was good."
"The snapshot feature has been precious for our testing processes, application development, and managing testing environments due to its efficiency and ease of use."
"It works very well."
"The ransomware protection feature is housed in a separate unit, specifically addressing the top twenty most critical threats."
"The most valuable features of VMAX are its performance and GUI interface."
"We haven't experienced any outages or core-level issues in the last ten years, making us comfortable with the storage solution."
"NetApp's features are easier, and the capabilities are a lot more advanced than Hitachi and other vendors that we look at."
"Going from mechanical disks to flash was a huge benefit, speed-wise."
"The usability of actually being able to scale it out has been great."
"If you are looking for long-term stability, performance improvement, and data compression, NetApp is the answer."
"We are spending less time putting out fires, so there's a tangible benefit right there."
"It has improved our organization with efficiencies for our developers and similar items; some of the work and the way they do it, and it has actually improved their speeds quite significantly."
"We are likely to consider them for our mission critical storage because we've been running on them now for eight years and they've been running our critical applications, so they've proven it to us."
"In comparison to other options, NetApp is the most complete; it is the single software choice that can give you every option that you need in the enterprise world."
 

Cons

"We have not seen a reduction in our TCO nor have we seen ROI."
"I can't see where they can make anything better, unless, of course, they lower their prices even more."
"Scalability is not an easy option for Pure Storage, so you have to be very careful when you are getting that product for you."
"We would like to see more development on their Copy Automation Tool (CAT) for Oracle, as well as better integration for our customers running Oracle VM."
"There's always an opportunity for new feature functionality."
"I would like some form of QoS implemented. As a service provider, it would be beneficial to have it."
"I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers."
"It would be nice to have a better view of the allocated capacity on their Platform as a Service solution because we have to do some manual calculations to understand how much we are going to pay every month to use the storage that is allocated."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability. We've had to procure additional engines to address this limitation."
"We encountered some challenges during large data migrations that could be addressed for smoother transitions."
"The scalability of VMAX is somewhat limited, especially in terms of cache scalability."
"Improvements are needed in both partition recovery and scalability."
"There is room for improvement in the centralized administration."
"The configuration part of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The certification classes are good, but they don't cover enough of the material, and the exams only test on what is covered in class."
"We would like to have a feature that automatically moves volumes between aggregates, based on the performance. We normally need to do this manually."
"I would like to see the ability to include more applications from applications to managed storage. If we can have more applications or more interface in more applications, that would be great."
"The process for initial setup could be streamlined."
"For other issues, NetApp support is not as good as it used to be."
"The scaling needs improvement. NetApp is limited for scaling options."
"There are things you can do from the command line that you can't do from the GUI."
"It would be great if they had a single pane of glass or a single dashboard where all the NetApp ecosystem storages could be viewed and monitored simply. That would help my Operations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When I last looked, the prices were reasonable, and we could get an excellent array for about $60,000."
"Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive."
"I would prefer that they lower their pricing."
"When you are paying more than you were paying for the storage space, you'd like the cost to be less. If they could get into the spinning disk kind of cost, that would be it."
"We lost a lot of customers because we couldn't compete on price with other vendors."
"We are finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations."
"There are no licensing fees aside from the support."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"It is not a cheap product."
"The price falls within the mid-range, neither inexpensive nor high-priced."
"We have been able to utilize and leverage equipment which was purchased a decade ago up until this past year. So, we were running disk shells for 13 years and all we were doing was upgrading the filings and controllers, and using the same disk shells. Therefore, we were able to do something where we didn't have to invest that much. Recently, we had to upgrade all our disk shells, but it was a lot less because the technology had changed a lot since those times. It is faster now, and we have SSDs. We have larger drives that are 4TBs and 6TBs. Everything can condense so we are saving disk shell space and rack space. We are paying less now than we did at that time"
"The solution is moderately priced."
"One of the reasons we like this solution is that all of the features are included with the one license."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"We would like it to be free."
"I would like the pricing to be cheaper."
"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."
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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
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only issue is the pricing. Because we have competition, our customers always take another brand and say they can ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Our customers using Dell storage also use competing solutions. Our customers who have Everpure FlashArray may also ha...
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.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.