NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe comparison

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe

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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

NetApp EF-Series All Flash ...

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

28th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Ranking in All-Flash Storage

15th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

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.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is the overall performance it provides. You're able to throw a pile of IOPS at it and it will handle that without much issue."

"The main advantage of this solution is performance."

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the performance of the database access."

"The solution allows us to segregate one storage unit from another."

"We use it for our VDI environment, and have not had any complaints with it."

"Having the option of such high-speed storage in the data center is what makes it valuable."

"The NetApp EF-Series gave our organization easy access to our data bases."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays pros

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

"The latency is good."

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

"Offers excellent features like efficient data reduction, a reliable SafeMode, and a great support model for continuous assistance and updates."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"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."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"I use the tool for Oracle databases, Oracle virtual machines, and Oracle Linux databases. I'm on the storage side, not a database administrator."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

Cons

"Better integration with other brands is important so we would like to see it easier to integrate."

"We have used IBM previously. We found that the storage from IBM was poor and we chose NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays because it can scale very easily."

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

"The only major drawback is the replication between EF-Series units."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

"They could improve overall scalability through performance. Denser capacity, which is doable, it is what the competition is doing."

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

"The initial setup phase of NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is not straightforward and needs improvement."

More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays 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."

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

"They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage."

"Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient."

"We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency."

"We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

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

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They need to improve its pricing. The storage market is dying. So, they need to improve the price because it should reach all people. NetApp is one of the top ones, and they are charging a little bit of royalty as compared to other storage solutions."

"Adding more capacity will increase the cost."

"Cheaper pricing is always good. NetApp has been doing everything the right way. They've been figuring out things really well, going in the right direction."

"he price point that we're getting is very competitive in the market. Since we are buying in such a large quantity, they gave us a huge discount."

"Price-wise, NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is costlier than Dell. You have to buy a lot of licenses separately."

"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."

"NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays is an expensive product."

"It's a way to get relatively low-cost, very high-performance, low-latency block storage as a point solution."

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

"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."

"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."

"Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD."

"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."

"Pure FlashArray X NVMe’s pricing is cheaper than other products."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"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."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

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 renew the license.

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 support to be top-notch because it is an area that has changed a lot in the product....

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?

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

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 should not incur extra charges. This is one of the main things organizations need.

Dell PowerStore vs NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Comparisons

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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

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More NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays Competitors

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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

Product Reports

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays

Download NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays product report

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays report

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Also Known As

NetApp EF540, NetApp EF-Series

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

Overview

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

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

Sample Customers

RP Data, Western Oregon University, Toei Animation

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

NetApp EF-Series All Flash Arrays vs. Pure FlashArray X NVMe