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NetApp AFF vs NetApp ASA comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
17th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
3rd
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
314
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp ASA
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
20th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise SAN (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 8.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ASA is 1.9%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetApp AFF8.8%
Pure FlashArray X NVMe1.4%
NetApp ASA1.9%
Other87.9%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256
Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
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.
Punit Waghela - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at Softcell Technologies Limited
Runs smoothly and provides excellent performance and throughput
I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features. SnapMirror is used for replication purposes in a DC/DR setup. If something goes wrong with the data center or production DR, the data automatically gets replicated to the DR site, and the DR site becomes operational, allowing continued access to data. Autonomous ransomware protection helps recover data in case of any threat or ransomware. Ransomware is increasing daily, and according to Gartner, most companies have to pay a ransom if a ransomware attack occurs in their environment. NetApp provides a ransomware guarantee program where they commit that if data cannot be recovered in case of ransomware, NetApp will provide compensation, which adds significant value.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Pure FlashArray as ten."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"The initial setup was extremely simple and straightforward."
"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."
"The latency is good."
"The standout features for us in Pure FlashArray X NVMe are its robust DDoS protection, seamless transparent failover, and failback capabilities ensuring high availability."
"The mirroring of two different sites is great."
"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."
"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."
"The Snapshots and just the overall flexibility of the product have been great."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and configuration, as well as the speed of deployment."
"The speed, inline deduplication, and compression are really nice. It's also just easy to manage. We use Snapshot and SnapMirror offsite, which give us some good recovery options."
"The file-based protocol supports NFS and CIFS."
"This solution helps accelerate demanding enterprise applications. VMware workloads, the database, and Oracle Solaris are hosted on AFF, which means that our primary priority workloads are on AFF and that the secondary ones are on FAS. That includes the SAN national cloud."
"I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features."
"Their dedupe functionality is probably the best in the industry. We also find their support model to be good. When we purchase something, we have a very good understanding of how long that product will be supported by them. That helps."
"I love the SnapMirror and autonomous ransomware protection features."
 

Cons

"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."
"In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems."
"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."
"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"We have run into a couple of instances recently where we are running out of space. So we have had to buy some more packs for it and they have deployed fine and it has increased smoothly."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."
"It is on the expensive side."
"I do not like the NetApp GUI. For example, the GUI of ONTAP Command Manager could be better, but the CLI is perfect."
"Its technical support could be better."
"NetApp should offer more training so everyone can learn about the products. Other vendors have a lot of training options. It would be great if NetApp would highlight how to use the features more so that every admin or person can gain more knowledge about this technology."
"In terms of improvement, the support could be a little better."
"The stability is good but there is room for improvement with other options."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"The quality of technical support has dwindled over time and needs to be improved."
"We would like to have more behavioral reporting."
"I would like to see more in terms of replication between storage classes. They provide different lines of storage. They have a lower class. They have a capacity class. They have their enterprise class. Currently, we have interoperability at the same plane with ONTAP, but we would like to see some more mix-and-match features."
"From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow."
"I'm handling pre-sales and post-sales. From a partner's point of view, the tools that I'm using to create the quote or do the sizing are very slow. The tools, such as hardware universe, fusion.netapp.com, and partnerhub.netapp.com, operate very slowly. These tools should be more efficient as they enter a hung state repeatedly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."
"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."
"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."
"They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"It's expensive. it's in the hundreds of thousands. It's beneficial, but at times, I feel compared to other vendors, we are paying a premium for the licensing that other vendors include."
"The total cost, the pricing of it, has gone up quite a bit."
"The pricing is not a lot considering what you get and it bundles hardware and licensing."
"I think the pricing and licensing are a little high, but compared to those of other storage vendors, it's within reason. After the three-year prepay, the extended warranty is a little expensive."
"The pricing is good."
"It depends on how you look at things, but they are in a higher price range."
"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"
"Obviously depending on the price point, NetApp is obviously a little more expensive than your generic Dell SAN solution or whatever."
"It's more expensive than other storage vendors such as Dell, Pure Storage, HPE, Lenovo, etc. It provides the value, but some of the customers don't look at the value. They first look at the cost. It should be reduced by 20% to 30%."
"It is pretty good. It is definitely cheaper than Dell EMC. It is cheaper than Pure. It is cheaper than VAST. It is definitely cheaper than HPE. The only one that is on par with NetApp's pricing for enterprise customers is IBM."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
5%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise242
No data available
 

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 price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...
What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ASA?
I am not much aware of the pricing of NetApp ASA, but I estimate a NetApp ASA system could cost several hundreds of t...
What needs improvement with NetApp ASA?
The areas of NetApp ASA that could be improved include features such as the active sync feature that allows a custome...
What is your primary use case for NetApp ASA?
The most common use cases for NetApp ASA are VMware infrastructures and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization, and in gene...
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF vs. NetApp ASA and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.