HPE Alletra Storage vs NetApp AFF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
14th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)
HPE Alletra Storage
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
281
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

JB
Jul 12, 2022
Problem free scalability, reliable, with straightforward setup
It has good, reliable, and fast storage. We really like snapshot features and how automatable and programmable it is. It is all managed with ad sport and playbooks We have been using Pure FlashArray X NVMe for about a year now. Scalability has been great. We have run into a couple of instances…
YE
Apr 17, 2024
Simple to manage, stable and offers high speed for transferring data
My experience with it has been good. I primarily use it as a storage backend for my applications. I like it for that purpose It's been important for automating some of our workloads. For example, we had some heavy processes that would sometimes crash. Alletra has made managing those easier.  I…
SaneeshC - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 14, 2023
Low latency, ease of migration, and excellent support
Most of our business-critical systems are provisioned from the NetApp AFF system. Compared to others, we have a minimal latency. Configuring the DR for high availability or migrating the volumes from one box to another is pretty easy with NetApp AFF. One of the features that I like in NetApp is cluster configuration where multiple systems can be configured in a single cluster. Its advantage is that we can easily migrate the workload from one system to another without any downtime. With zero downtime, we can migrate the systems. That is one of the advantages of NetApp AFF. NetApp AFF reduces operational latency depending on the systems, the SAN infrastructure, and the server. It is a maximum of one or two milliseconds, and some of the systems do work in 0.5 milliseconds latency. For performance tuning, there is a tool called Unified Manager as well as the Active IQ system. The initial troubleshooting is very easy. From the administrator front directly, we can log in to Active IQ. It analyzes the logs in the system and suggests what needs to be improved. From a performance point of view, there is a tool called Unified Manager that shows us a clear picture of the historical volume latency. These tools help us to manage the system very easily, but if there is still something that we are not able to figure out through these tools, then we reach out to the support team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."
"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."
"It is very easy to install and configure. It has got excellent diagnostics. If you really need to see how the box is performing, the console gives you a lot of information. You can set thresholds as well as alerts based on the thresholds, which is a very powerful functionality. They are very proactive. They know how to monitor and manage the systems. They see a problem, and they are all over it before us. They see the problem before we see it, which is very good."
"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."
"It's helped us because we've changed fundamentally what we talk about. We don't talk about storage and different tiers of storage anymore nor do we talk about servers. We talk now about applications and how applications impact the business and end users."
"We're able to get higher-density workloads on the same infrastructure, and we have a smaller physical footprint. The performance is excellent – during our test the bottlenecks are never on the X array, it just keeps picking up the pace to match what you need. The real-time visibility is a differentiator in my opinion."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"The tool's notable feature is that we don't need to log a case directly with the vendor. The tool has access to all the logs on-premises. This is an on-premises solution. Additionally, we can provision data as thick or thin provisioned. Moreover, it includes data grid duplication and compression features."
"It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data."
"Performance. Mostly with our default settings it's good. All of the factory settings are fine. We don't have to tune it."
"It simplifies data management for NAS environments with its ease of management, ease of share creation, and Active IQ feature. These features are good overall. It helps us manage data quickly and sufficiently. Also, compression features, like dedupe, give us a good ratio."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"We are a large-scale company, and our growth has been pretty significant over the last five or six years. We like the scale, and the way NetApp grows, so that's why we use it. It's mostly for block storage."
"Batch times went from approximately seven hours down to about two and a half. Functionality during the day, such as taking or removing snapshots and cloning instances, is higher than it has ever been."
"This solution has reduced our data center costs because when we went from the 8000 and 3200 series that took us from 20 racks of storage down to two."
"The overall latency in our environment is very low because it's All Flash and we've got 10 Giga dedicated to the storage network"
"NetApp AFF's flash technology offers great performance. This feature has been my go-to for managing data and ensuring speed and reliability."
 

Cons

"One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution."
"Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe."
"If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure."
"It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking."
"We need better data deduplication."
"The UI for this solution needs to be improved."
"We had some issues while installing it on our servers. It required more resources while cross-checking. So, the initial setup process could be better."
"It would be better if there were an option to incorporate the NVMe feature alongside other storage tiers. Currently, the system operates on Autotier but can manually peer and mix different types of drives, such as SAS and SATA drives."
"Technical support is a little lackluster. Some of the issues that we've had were opening up tickets. They seem to be routed in the wrong direction or it takes one or two days to get a call back for simple tasks."
"We installed NetSender to test it. I think it could be a good solution. It is very small now, but will probably become bigger in the next few months to years."
"The initial setup was a little complex, because we weren't very knowledgeable in the NetApp at the time. We were using a third-party, and they didn't have a lot of technical individuals, so it took a while to get it out."
"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."
"I would like to see a little more flexibility in customizing some of the SnapMirror stuff. We have been having a little trouble and, in the first round with tech support, they say, "Well, this is how we do it." It's not exactly throttled but it's limited in the number of connections it makes. We would like to be able to tweak that, to increase it a little bit, because we don't have half a dozen large areas that we are protecting, we have more like 40 or 50 areas. They run into each other a little bit and I don't want to spend time on them."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
"It would be nice to have better integration between SRM and VMware, as I've had some issues with that."
"NetApp could focus even more on the configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."
"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."
"The tool's pricing is cheap; I rate it a six to seven out of ten. Most of our sales are not subscription-based. We sell the hardware, and customers keep using it. They only renew the service part annually. The support can be a bit pricey, but the solution is more cost-effective than anything else out there."
"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."
"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"The solution is expensive and can cost around five lakhs."
"There is a license. HPE Alletra uses a cloud-based model."
"NetApp is getting too expensive."
"I understand the cost is less than many other storages of same/similar performance benchmark."
"If you go for Replication, Vault, and NAS, please ensure that the license has been ordered at the very beginning. However, licenses can been added or modified without rebooting the system at any time."
"We would like it to be free."
"I am able to store two times more data than what I'm purchasing, which affects the way funds are being utilized."
"The pricing is not a lot considering what you get and it bundles hardware and licensing."
"You need to be careful with the licensing since it can become expensive."
"The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit."
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Comparison Review

it_user186357 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Educational Organization
61%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.
What do you like most about HPE Alletra?
It offers rich features and high speed for transferring data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Alletra?
There is a license. HPE Alletra uses a cloud-based model. This means I'm focused on procuring on-demand resources for...
What needs improvement with HPE Alletra?
We had some issues while installing it on our servers. It required more resources while cross-checking. So, the initi...
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 FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
No data available
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
Accenture, Aetna, AIG, Airbus, Allianz, American Express, ATT, Bank of America, Barclays, BASF, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Comcast, Credit Suisse, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Google, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, L'Oreal, Merck
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Alletra Storage vs. NetApp AFF and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
790,002 professionals have used our research since 2012.