Pure FlashArray X NVMe Reviews

We use the on-premise deployment model of this solution. Our primary use case is for machine learning analytics.

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

Its agility has been a benefit for our IT organization. We are running VMware on Pure. The main driver was FlashStack. The joint solution has helped my organization through its support. 

The performance is the most valuable feature of this solution. 

We have taken advantage of the VMware integrations developed by Pure with the validated design, FlashStack CVD. The integration has helped in the way that engineers feel competent that the solution is designed correctly.

In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models.

The scalability and telemetry analytics could be improved.

The stability is good. 

It is somewhat scalable but it's not infinitely scalable. They could improve the petabyte-scale with greater capacities. 

We haven't needed to contact technical support. 

We knew that we needed to switch because our system wasn't performing so we knew we had to buy something. We liked Pure because it had a good pitch.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

We did the deployment in-house. 

We have seen a two year ROI. 

With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually. 

We also evaluated Hitachi, Nimble, and EMC. We went with Pure because they have the best pitch.

The advice I would give to someone considering this solution is, don't wait. Go for it. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. There is room for improvement. 

We needed a flash array to support our core databases for maximum performance. We use SQL. We were using vSAN before, but we were having some problems with it. So, we wanted to isolate the databases with dedicated storage. Rather than using a vSAN solution using servers, we tested a couple of solutions, and we figured out that Pure FlashArray X NVMe was giving us the best performance.

Fundamentally, we have more visibility to what is happening in the storage for the databases. We can determine if the problem is something that is bound by IO or the problem is related to the database structure itself. 

The amount of time that a DBA has to spend figuring out whether it is a physical problem versus a programmatic problem has been reduced significantly. Before moving to this solution, when the database was running slow, we were asked to check our disks, but we had no way of verifying that. It was a nightmare. Now, we have reports that we can send on a daily basis, and they know what their performance is like.

We can now ascertain that it is not the physical problem with the array that is causing the delays on the database. The DBAs can then look at the database and figure out various reasons or solutions for this, such as maybe the tables are value structure, maybe they need to run optimal queries, or maybe they should change the way they are accessing the data. You can pretty much take out of the equation the fact that the hardware is the problem.

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.

Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. 

The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better.

I have been using this solution for almost a year.

It is stable. It has been almost a year, and we haven't had any problems.

Scalability-wise, it is expensive but good. They love to add boxes, and they did a very good job. You can easily add boxes to the array cells, both disks or controllers. The nice thing about it is that you don't have to change your schema. In other words, you don't have to reprogram or reconfigure anything. You simply add a box, and you have more disk space. Essentially, you can extend a disk to whatever services you are running without having to reconfigure a lot of stuff. That's actually a huge benefit. 

We have 200 employees in our firm, and almost everyone in our firm uses this solution. All the databases in the firm are running off Pure FlashArray X NVMe.

Their technical support is fantastic. They are very good. 

We were using Compellent from Dell. We switched because the Dell technology was at least one generation before in the type of SSD drives that they were using. Pure FlashArray X NVMe had the latest versions of the EV disks, which Dell did not have on their systems. They were about to bring it into the market, but we would have had to wait for another three months, and it would have been a new product that wasn't yet tested. 

The infrastructure or the technology for Pure was built specifically for flash arrays, whereas Dell came from spinning disks and then moved into flash arrays. So, the controllers were not built specifically for SSD drives or flash. Even if you have flash, you still run into delays because the controllers were not designed to run just purely flash, whereas Pure was designed for flash from the beginning. They never had any spinning disks in their boxes, and that makes a huge difference. 

The thing that makes these boxes powerful is the algorithm that they use to decide where to put the data and how often they read it. Because SSD drives have a finite life, if you do the algorithms correctly, you maximize not just the performance but also the longevity. Pure is doing a very good job. I'm not fully a mathematician in the longevity piece of it, but I'm expecting that this box is going to give me three to five years of use with good performance. A Dell box would have to be replaced in three years for sure. 

The initial setup is very easy. Its installation is very simple. The console is fairly intuitive, and I understood more or less what my team was doing.

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.

I would absolutely recommend using it. I would also suggest negotiating and testing it. I bought a very small system of 10 terabytes that I put in one of our labs for testing so that my team can learn it, and I could play with it. We tested it, and after we were comfortable with the capabilities of the system and building things in VMware, which is a really critical part of the whole integration, we tested three different solutions from HP, Dell, etc. After the testing, it was clear to us that the Pure FlashArray X NVMe was the easiest to manage and configure and had the best performance that we had seen in all the arrays. We are not testers, but we could tell. We could see the speed at which the databases came up and everything else. After testing, you will be convinced that Pure FlashArray X NVMe is probably the best box or right there in terms of performance. We tested in early 2019. There might be another solution that is doing better today.

I would rate Pure FlashArray X NVMe a nine out of ten. The only reason I won't give it a ten is the price. Its feature set is pretty complete. I'm pushing it right now. It is like you buy a sports car and then you complain that you don't have a big trunk to put a lot of luggage. You are complaining about the wrong thing here. You bought the thing because it is fast. Similarly, we bought it because it is fast. From that perspective, whether they can address NAS or other things like that is just icing on the cake for me. Its price is a little high right now. Otherwise, I would have given it a ten.

We use this solution primarily for production data for our virtual environment. We run a lot of SQL out of it.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

Speed has definitely been a big improvement for us. We were running a bunch of iSCSI to EMC VNX and that had a gigabyte bottleneck. Now, since we're running through a true fiber channel to the Pure array, we're getting 32-gigabyte bandwidth. That means the speed and accessibility for our users and our customers have definitely improved.

The Hypervisor that ESX and vCenter use, as well as the Orchestrator for some automation,  have helped to improve my organization. There's a lot that VMware does for us. Probably 95% of our infrastructure is built on VMware's platform, hosted on-premises. This is soon to be 100%. We have some physical stuff that we're converting and VMware has made it possible to pick up and drop those servers onto their platform. We'll reach 100% by the end of the year for sure.

We do have VMware analytics stood up. It's a simple Linux machine that runs a Kubernetes container that talks back to Pure1, which is their public website for support as well as for analytics, which we're using also. It's just a simple API. 

We also use vRealize. It helps us pinpoint issues as they come. We haven't done a whole lot of the automation through vRealize, but we're probably going to work towards that so that if we have an allocation issue, it can automatically shift things for us. But the DRS and HA kind of do a lot of that for us inherently. There hasn't been a huge drive to do any of that quite yet.

The duplication algorithm allows us to get a lot more use out of less storage. We're running a five terabyte array right now and we're running probably about 30 terabytes on it. So the duplication rate is pretty phenomenal, without a cost to performance. It still runs pretty smoothly.

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.

I think it's a lot better than what we were running for production as far as the VNX, which has fail drives about every month. It had the EMC VNX protocol. And it's not the VNX product itself, it's just that we have a much older one so it has older disks and drives that will fail.

We absolutely see this working as our company grows. Even though it is fairly simplified in the way that they do their RAID and everything like that. It makes pulling drives and putting new ones in super simple. The costs could be improved though because it is quite expensive.

Their customer service is phenomenal. In their escalation paths, everything is laid out in black and white and it's very streamlined. Then they even go so far as to actually talk with other vendors on those integrations. If there's a potential issue with VMware and there's a potential issue with Cisco, Pure engineers will actually talk to Cisco engineers or VMware engineers and come to a resolution together instead of pointing fingers and saying, "Well, it's their problem, not ours." I've actually seen that in action so it's not just talk. You can actually do that.

It ended up being an incompatibility on the Cisco end for the UCS from one of the drivers that we had installed based on the firmware that we installed for that particular blade. But rather than Pure just saying it's Cisco's problem, call Cisco, they actually got on with a TAC engineer and talked us through it. With this method, they came to a resolution a lot quicker than it would have been to just open a ticket with Cisco and start the troubleshooting process all over again.

I had worked at a different company and we switched from EMC's XtremIO flash array to Pure and we were actually one of Pure's first customers when we did that. Their simplified support model and then their Evergreen program where they upgrade controllers as they come out was pretty phenomenal. I carried that over into the company I work for now. I kind of suggested that as a route to go in.

We used VNX, which we still have. I think one of the main driving points at the time was that we were running out of space on the VNX and the flash pool, and we could have added additional space, but the cost comparison between getting a Pure array and adding a new shelf to the VNX was about the same. I felt like we would get more bang for our buck going to Pure, which we have.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It's pretty much plug and play.

We actually used Pure professional services, which we didn't even really need, but we used anyway because it came with the implementation purchase. We did use a reseller to buy. We used RoundTower to buy the Pure array. We used professional services from Pure. It was probably set up within 20 minutes ad we could've done it ourselves, but it's always good to have trained hands on it.

A SQL job that would normally take six minutes running on VNX takes two minutes on Pure. That's been pretty beneficial because we're constantly running reports out of those SQL instances. We've seen enhancement and efficiencies from that.

EMC still has good products so they were still there. We were looking at adding additional space to the VNX. And then for general purpose, we did look at some stuff through Cohesity, but we needed more performance-oriented space. So that's why we went with Pure.

Try to get as many discounts as you can if you go with Pure.

If you don't need performance-oriented space or storage, Cohesity is very well priced and scalable. If you just need file server storage, you might not want to go with Pure. You might want to go with something a lot cheaper or more cost-effective like Cohesity.

The Systems Engineer that we worked with was a huge help, too. 

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten. It's very functional and very cutting edge. Technology just costs a lot.

We are using this solution for our on-premises, private cloud.

The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability.

The UI for this solution needs to be improved.

This product is very stable and I have had no issues.

This solution is very scalable. It's good enough for us at the moment.

I have had no issues with technical support.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

We used an integrator, WWT, to assist us with our implementation. We have had no issues with them.

Our licensing fees are $500,000+ USD.

VMware benefits our IT organization because of its ease of deployment and manageability.

We are using VMware on Pure, and we have implemented this because of the speed. VMware is faster, so it helps when you log in.

We use vCenter integration. It helps because you can see the storage added, and manage it from vCenter with a single console.

The cost for Pure may be high, but the reliability and scalability make it well worth the money.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using version //X70 of Pure FlashArray. Our primary use case is to have a very fast storage array.

The virtual volumes and clarification around storage arrays are the most valuable features 

In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified.

We have been using the Pure FlashArray for about five years.

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

The solution is very scalable as you can add capacity very easily. We have about 2000 users using the storage array.

The technical support was not good in the beginning. I would rate the support at a five out of 10. It has improved though.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It took two weeks from start to finish.

We were able to complete the setup in house without any vendor support.

We looked at IBM and NetAPP before choosing Pure FlashArray.

I would definitely recommend Pure FlashArray. I would rate the product at ten out of 10.

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 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.

I have not had to contact technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy.

I would absolutely recommend Pure FlashArray X NVMe to anyone and rate it an eight out of ten.

FlashArray is used for flash storage for SQL databases, like Oracle or MySQL. Oracle is the best use case for FlashArray.

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. 

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

We've been selling FlashArray for a few years.

FlashArray's performance is quite good. We haven't had that many server or hardware issues with FlashArray X. We lost some drives a couple of times, but we replaced them before we got errors. FlashArray is connected to a cloud system, so it sends some warnings before you lose a component. 

FlashArray's latency is the best on the market. I don't know of another product that has latency this low. Read and write latency averages .5 submillisecond. It's good for online financial transactions using Oracle.

I have no complaints about Pure's customer service and support. I've never had a negative experience with these guys. They're always fast, gentle, and ready to help. They offer ample support, and [inaudible 00:06:16]. If you connect FlashArray X to the cloud, they will inform you about any potential issues before they cause an outage. 

We use this solution for our primary storage. Our deployment is in a private cloud environment.

Using this solution has benefitted us operationally by making us more efficient.

VMware benefits our IT organization through cost efficiency.

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

I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution. 

This solution is pretty stable.

We have not tested scalability yet, so it is to be determined.

Technical support for this solution is very good.

We did not switch from a previous solution. We brought this in as a way to improve operational efficiency, which is something that we're always looking for.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward. It was an easy setup.

We used an integrator for our deployment, and our experience was ok.

We have not yet seen ROI with this solution.

We considered IBM and Dell EMC for our storage solution. 

My advice for anybody who is researching this or a similar solution is to give it a shot.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.