NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs NetApp FAS Series comparison

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and NetApp FAS Series are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Additionally, 97% of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of NetApp FAS Series users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays and NetApp FAS Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two All-Flash Storage solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 848,207 peers since 2012

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

Featured Reviews

Eugene Hemphill

Sales Manager at Multicomputos PR

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.

Read full review

Tayo Olubanke

Managing Director at GCET

Offers flexibility and top-notch technology

You can go to bed peacefully if you have a NetApp. If you have NetApp within your data center, you get to know about power failure if you are using it. Your NetApp will still come alive. Even if it does not come alive, I can say that it is not like other tools when it comes to dealing with power failure. The tool is affordable, and the technology is top-notch. It is the only technology that has software for what we call inline compression and deduplication. All the products under NetApp are aiming to use AI. I know that you can achieve whatever you want to do with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Read full review

Paweł Jabłoński

IT Infrastructure Manager at Bricoman Wilanów

Used for VMs with replication a feature, but need upgraded SSDs

We use this solution. I configured and updated it. Of course, I was also a user of applications that store data on that storage. We already have an SSD solution. So, rather than planning to go with an SSD solution, we are focusing on expanding it. If a company wants to deploy something new, it should choose a product with SSD, and NVMe disks. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

"We are satisfied with the performance as it is significantly faster compared to traditional storage options."

"Overall stability is very good. It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"One of the best features is the support, which is excellent."

"The tool's valuable features are speed, security, data compression, and reliability. Its data compression feature is the best that we have ever seen. It helps us to save money and resources."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and performance."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its speed."

"The stability, speed, and reliability are the solution's best features. The information is also very secure."

"The replication and mirroring features are very good."

"It provides multi-protocol, which is what gives the edge when it comes to big lineage PC workloads."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to set a specific margin of performance to a specific workload."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market."

"Some of the valuable features include MetroCluster switchover, in terms of disaster recovery, it is easy to use, and flexible."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

"It gives us the performance we need and the reliability we need to make sure that our systems have the uptime that our internal customers demand."

"NAS stability"

"The solution is very stable and reliable"

"One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments."

"Better performance and lower costs."

"Using the built-in Snapshots and SnapMirror technology, we were able to have better working data protection locally and off-site."

"Has rock solid reliability and is easy to use."

"We can manage our applications from a single dashboard."

More NetApp FAS Series pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing of the product."

"Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services."

"The software layer has to improve."

"I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center."

"We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC."

"There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features."

"The tool's pricing is higher than competitors."

"Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"The price of the All Flash solution is very high."

"NetApp could improve the speed of the rebuilding rate."

"The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Their problems are on the software and the controlling of the storage where they lack segmentation and federation."

"I've observed an issue when creating a new storage solution with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays."

"This solution has limited storage."

"I would like to shrink it more, if we can. The smaller, the better."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays cons

"I’ve found that I use command line more often than I thought needed. Some things should be done in the GUI, and command-line switches can be overwhelming and take up a lot of time."

"No other area for improvement comes to mind other than its price. Making the price more attractive will help this solution have a bigger market share."

"NetApp FAS Series should introduce an FTP application for the broadcast and post-production market."

"There are some technical limitations, but it would be great to have in-line deduplication and in-line compression for the FAS series as well."

"The product must support more drives."

"They should add new features to the product."

"It lacks automatic tiering, When you use data, some of it goes cold. It is not hot data, so the system should automatically move that data to the SATA, while the hot data is kept on tier-one, the SaaS or SSD drives."

"There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes."

More NetApp FAS Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The support cost per array is about $20,000 a year for 24/7 support."

"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 licensing is on a yearly basis."

"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."

"We pay approximately $50,000 USD per year in licensing fees."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of this solution is competitive with other vendors here in Egypt."

"It's a lot cheaper than what the other vendors have for the same type of environment. It saves us money."

"The price point for EF is considerably lower than the alternatives."

"The pricing is comparable with other competitors and similar in mid-range solutions, and for high range solutions, it would depend on our requirements or needs."

"The cost of our license is approximately $200,000 over three years for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays. There can be additional costs for storage. For example, if you want to have eight terabytes."

"Its cost-effectiveness is a major selling point. Compared to other storage vendors, the EF-Series offers excellent value for its price. It's truly a leading product in the industry."

"This solution is not available to many users because the cost is very expensive."

"Most of my customers pay for the license on a yearly basis. It can be expensive depending on the capacity number."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pricing and cost advice

"We have considered upgrading to an All-Flash solution but when we evaluated the cost-benefit we discovered that we don't have enough money to invest in it. To maintain the same technology with All-Flash would be too expensive for us."

"It’s difficult for us to get money, so make sure you get everything in order, because there’s no going back and saying “oh, I missed this or that”, so make sure you plan well and well in advance."

"The tool is expensive."

"The price of the NetApp FAS Series is reasonable and it provides value for the money with the feature sets. NetApp FAS Series are competing with Huawei storage which has an office and does aggressive marketing with a discount. However, we found that if our customers do a technology refresh they are happy with the performance of the NetApp FAS Series."

"I don't recall the price, but in general, pricing can always be better."

"The licensing cost is on yearly basis."

"In general, I find NetApp to be very expensive. That's the main issue I have with them. So it's a drawback in terms of pricing."

"The product is on the expensive side."

More NetApp FAS Series pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which All-Flash Storage solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

59%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I am an engineer and am not aware of the setup cost.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

Considering the cost, I find NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays to be the best storage available in the market.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

One has to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model for one year or three years. After three years, you need to rene...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays?

The support of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required. I want NetApp's supp...

See all answers

Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?

Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp FAS Series?

Flexibility in data replication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?

Cost is a big factor in our decision-making process. When we're buying storage, the first thing we look at is how muc...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 32% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 7% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 33% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 14% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 11% of the time

Dell XtremIO vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Compared 9% of the time

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 22% of the time

HPE MSA vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 10% of the time

NetApp AFF vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 8% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series

Compared 6% of the time

More NetApp FAS Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

March 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

March 2025

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp FAS Series

March 2025

Download NetApp FAS Series product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

No data available

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

The NetApp EF560 all-flash array is an all-SSD storage system for applications that demand extremely high levels of performance and reliability. Requiring just 2U of rack space, the EF560 all-flash array combines extreme IOPS, microsecond response times, and up to 12GBps of bandwidth with leading, enterprise-proven availability features.

NetApp

NetApp FAS series is an enterprise-level storage system that provides a wide variety of data management services, including data protection, block and file storage, and data management.

NetApp FAS is designed to be highly scalable, allowing your organization to grow storage capacity on demand. NetApp FAS also supports multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, as well as various storage architectures, including SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

The FAS series has multiple data protection and data management features, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication, to help secure your data and manage it more efficiently. The system integrates with other NetApp products and solutions, to create a unified data management platform. The system can be deployed on-premise, on multi-cloud environments, or hybrid.

NetApp FAS Series Benefits and Features

NetApp FAS series provides its users with several key benefits and features, including:

Scalability: NetApp FAS series is easy to scale, allowing organizations to rapidly grow their storage capacity according to demand.

Security: Protect and manage your data with various data protection and data management tools, including snapshots, cloning, replication, and deduplication.

Seamless integration: Integrate with other NetApp products and solutions to ensure a unified data management platform across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Reduced costs: Consolidation of multiple storage boxes greatly reduces the data center footprint. From a management point of view, with NetApp FAS you manage a single storage box instead of multiple storage boxes.
Compatibility: Forward and backward compatibility ensures that you don’t have to trade in existing controllers. New controllers can always integrate with previously released controllers.

Multi-protocol support: Support for multiple protocols, including NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel.

High performance and availability: The solution has high input and output per second performance and ensures that critical data remains accessible in the event of a hardware failure.
Intuitive interface: The FAS series has a user-friendly interface and management dashboard, making it easy to manage your storage systems. With unified management, you can quickly run a single protocol on your entire system
Data cloning and replication: Easily clone databases of any size. Clones occupy a very, very small footprint on the storage until they are severed from the main database. Replications carried out by the system are fast and require very little bandwidth.

Reviews from Real Users

NetApp FAS Series stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its speed, reliability, and a wide variety of features.

Adriano S., IT project and infrastructure service manager, writes, “The replication feature is noteworthy because it's faster than most and it uses little bandwidth. Then there's the friendly interface that the equipment offers. With this interface, it is very easy to manage.”

Temitope O., a NetApp product manager at Hiperdist Ltd, says, “I like the unified management feature because sometimes you end up running a single protocol on the entire system. You rather have a system for a particular protocol and another system for other protocols, especially in a big environment like mine.”

NetApp

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College

Buyer's Guide

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series

April 2025

Free Report: NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. NetApp FAS Series report.

See our list of best All-Flash Storage vendors.

We monitor all All-Flash Storage reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.