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NetApp AFF vs Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) 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

Pure FlashArray X NVMe
Sponsored
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
15th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp AFF
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
2nd
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
311
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS)
Ranking in All-Flash Storage
6th
Ranking in NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Public Cloud Storage Services (6th), File and Object Storage (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp AFF is 9.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to save money and resources with the data compression feature
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. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
Anna Sofo - PeerSpot reviewer
Since switching, our clients have reported improved performance and reduced latency
I like NetApp AFF's deduplication. The solution's AutoSupport feature is efficient and effective because customers are notified of potential issues before they experience problems with NetApp. The support is sold based on metro clusters, so they guarantee the client's business continuity. NetApp has an Active IQ app that allows you to get information on your smartphone.
Juan-Contreras - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures streamlined management, simplified infrastructure, and efficient data handling
It has effectively managed our unstructured data, including audio and video files. We've experienced smooth operations without any complaints regarding uploading or downloading videos. While video usage isn't as frequent, we primarily utilize it for downloading videos related to specific incidents for administrators or our police department. We've encountered no issues uploading files of any kind. Transitioning from VMware to Nutanix has highlighted the overall flexibility of Nutanix's platform. Unlike VMware's three-tier system, Nutanix simplifies the learning curve by streamlining operations. The update process, in particular, has been favorable, with no critical issues encountered. The resiliency of Nutanix hasn't been thoroughly tested in our environment so far. However, I routinely check fault tolerance settings to ensure they meet our requirements. During the update process, I've observed critical errors occur as hosts restart, but Nutanix's self-healing mechanism handles these issues seamlessly. The benefit of using Nutanix is evident in several ways. Firstly, we've effectively compressed our storage while significantly expanding our overall storage pool. Previously, our service had a capacity of twenty-five terabytes, but with Nutanix, we've scaled up to a hundred and twenty terabytes physically and approximately fifty terabytes logically. This expansion has been accompanied by noticeable improvements in performance, particularly with reduced latency and IOPS well within the boundaries of our equipment. All our resources are centralized in a single location for managing and running storage: our data center. We operate three Nutanix nodes within this center, effectively managing everything from one central location. We don't have any other locations outside of our data center running a Nutanix cluster. Nutanix's capability to eliminate silos within our organization's storage infrastructure was discussed during our recent call with the engineer. Although we haven't explored this feature extensively yet, there's a forthcoming project where we anticipate leveraging it.One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered. With VMware, I could download a separate client program onto my computer, allowing me to log in directly rather than accessing the host through a browser.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."
"The system allows for seamless learning experiences, facilitating quick and easy cloning of environments within minutes."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"The solution is very straightforward to set up."
"It has good, reliable, fast storage."
"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."
"The latency is good."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe will quickly overcome all the hurdles you face, including network and latency issues."
"We value NetApp's ransomware protection the most."
"We have a comprehensive solution that could accommodate anything. We can fly it earlier and get them in the air testing and prototyping much faster than they could have with other solutions."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and level of technical support."
"NetApp AFF is based on Unix, which makes it secure."
"The in-line dedupe, and the compaction saves us a lot of space because most of our AFFs house VMware VMDK files."
"The most valuable feature is the support. If we have any issues, we can call into NetApp and their support is really good."
"It's very stable. It's always there when we need it. With the Dual Controller, if one drops out, the other one comes right online. We don't use any iSCSI so there is a little bit of a latency break but, over the NFS, we don't notice that switch-on. We can do maintenance in the middle of the day, literally rip a whole controller out of the chassis, and do what we need to do with it."
"The Snapshot, SnapMirror, and SnapRestore functionalities."
"Nutanix Unified Storage does a very good job of unifying our organization's block, file, and object storage. It puts it all in one place. From one platform, we can deploy S3-type buckets. We can provide iSCSI-level block storage if we need to. It does a great job with home folders and departmental shares, which is what we mostly use Nutanix Unified Storage for."
"The most valuable feature is the easy interface."
"The most valuable feature is that it is highly available, solving the pain-point of delaying updates to Windows-based file servers during production hours. And then the second one would be ransomware protection and analytics. It gives you great visibility and protection on your file shares that are otherwise the most common sources of vulnerabilities."
"From an analytics perspective, the best aspect of Unified Storage is its locality. When you read data, you want to know that you're only reading data from the particular local storage node. It's also critical to access the data as quickly as possible from that. From a business perspective, the most important thing is ease of use. Having a combination of compute and storage makes it much easier to manage."
"My opinion is that this solution has very good stability."
"The most valuable features of the solution are high availability and synchronization to another location."
"Whenever we have some necessity in terms of capacity and expansion of infrastructure, it's like a Lego system where they can just place in some more nodes and our needs are met."
"The solution is easy to use, share, and manage."
 

Cons

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."
"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."
"I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert."
"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges."
"In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models."
"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."
"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."
"I come tech support with difficulty because I installed NetApp for many years I know what to expect when I call. When I don't get their support tech that I'm expecting and I'm trying to get to the right one, it can get very frustrating for me personally, trying to all-flash push my way into the right person. NetApp has the right people, it's just a matter of getting to them."
"The ONTAP APIs are good, but little things here and there are slightly different, so I had to program something to catch a different error case or something like that. That adds a little work on my end, but it's ultimately been pretty easy to work with. It's just the consistency of the REST API. About, 95 percent of the operations working with the REST API are great, but then you have about 5 percent of things that are slightly different."
"We would like to have more behavioral reporting."
"I think adding more features to make it more cloud enabled will help us with cloud tiering and simplify the whole cloud operations when it's integrating with our on-prem AFF products. That is one area where we would like to see more improvements from NetApp."
"Offering the ability to actively write data on a single volume spanning multiple clusters is significant."
"The cost of this solution should be reduced."
"The procurement process could be improved. It takes a long time for us to receive stuff. The product is good. It's not the product, it's just that it takes forever to get it. It's not our reseller's problem; it's usually held up at NetApp."
"Going forward, I would like more performance analytics on it, on the area itself, instead of using some other tool."
"One thing I'd appreciate is having a desktop application similar to what VMware offered."
"The solution should keep adding new features to be competitive in the market."
"There is some confusion in the reporting when I have to create the report for statistics. I find it is not so user-friendly."
"Improving quota policies would be advantageous, particularly by offering the option to implement blocking instead of just issuing warnings."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The escalation process with technical support could do with some improvement."
"The graphical user interfaces could benefit from more attention to detail."
"We have some problems with Nutanix Unified Storage's support because they asked us to change our hardware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."
"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."
"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."
"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."
"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 licensing is on a yearly basis."
"It can get a little expensive if you need to add more disks. The cost is a pain point for us, especially in terms of expansion."
"NetApps offers a lot of different options. Just take your time and work with the consulting teams. Lay out what your needs are to ensure you are purchasing what will help you be successful."
"It consolidates a lot of our storage into one or two chassis, which makes money savings in our data center."
"The pricing is competitive when we compare it to other products."
"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 have used the solution’s thin provisioning to add new applications without having to purchase additional storage. We use thin provisioning on all of our flash arrays at this point. It gives us the choice to be able to overprovision and take advantage of compression, compaction, and thin provisioning all at the same time. We can get more out of the purchases that we make."
"The total cost of ownership has decreased a great deal. As far as percentages, it's hard to gauge, but we did have quite a few personnel staying up, making sure batches ran well every night. Now, batches are being done by 8:00 in the evening, so we don't have to do that anymore. When you start adding the employee hours that we have for people working in the off-hours, and it is not an issue anymore, I suspect TCO might have gone down 25 percent."
"NetApp AFF is somewhat pricey. If they weren't as pricey, that would be a big deal for us."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"Nutanix Unified Storage was cheaper than other solutions we evaluated."
"With all of the Nutanix equipment, the licensing is expensive. We operate in the enterprise space, but we're a midsized company. At times, the price tag is a little bit shocking for a company with only 35 employees. We're not a Fortune 500 company, but we deal with Fortune 500 drug and energy companies. We have to play in that enterprise space if we're going to have enterprise customers. I'm very price-conscious, but I understand that if I want the best, I've got to pay the price."
"The product is pricey."
"The cost of Nutanix Unified Storage can be prohibitive for some small and medium-sized businesses, making it challenging for them to adopt the product."
"The pricing is a bit too high."
"I'm happy with the cost and licensing because I don't have big volumes."
"Compared to other solutions, NUS is cost-effective and efficient. It also has good performance."
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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
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
71%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
32%
Educational Organization
23%
Manufacturing Company
5%
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 needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics ...
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 do you like most about Nutanix Unified Storage?
Nutanix has excellent product documentation available on their portals, written in simple, easy-to-understand language.
 

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X
NetApp All Flash FAS, NetApp AFF, NetApp Flash FAS
Nutanix Files Storage, Nutanix Volumes Block Storage, Nutanix Objects Storage
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company
DreamWorks Animation, FICO, Yahoo! Japan
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp AFF vs. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.