Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Pure Storage FlashArray Logo

Pure Storage FlashArray pros and cons

Vendor: Pure Storage
4.6 out of 5
Badge Leader
4,835 followers
Post review

Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.
Get the report

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Pure Storage FlashArray delivers extremely low latency and high IOPS, crucial for enhanced performance in data-heavy environments.
Data deduplication and compression are standout features, enabling efficient data management and storage optimization.
Non-disruptive upgrades allow Pure Storage FlashArray users to perform upgrades without downtime, ensuring continuous operations.
Scalability is a vital aspect, with easy drive swapping and addition of shelves, allowing for seamless storage expansion.
Technical support is highly praised for its responsiveness and expertise, contributing to minimal downtime and fast issue resolution.

CONS

Data reduction is lower than expected, posing a challenge in certain workloads.
Pure Storage FlashArray's integration with VMware experiences specific functionality issues.
The initial setup process is complex and can necessitate adjustments to recommended guidelines.
Scalability limitations have been encountered, specifically during upgrades involving drive counts.
The cost of Pure Storage FlashArray is notably higher compared to other flash storage solutions.
 

Pure Storage FlashArray Pros review quotes

SrManagee02f - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2019
It comes with a large number of features out-of-the-box, which makes it easy for us to see problems and manage capacity.
JK
Sep 20, 2019
Their REST API is wonderful, well-documented, and easy to use.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2025
As we needed to grow in capacity, we were able to do so without increasing footprint by replacing smaller devices with larger ones.
Learn what your peers think about Pure Storage FlashArray. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
TY
Jun 17, 2019
It's reduced our overhead management time on storage, since it is so simple to get in and just provision a volume, present it to the host, and then you are done.
SeniorMa7726 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2019
All our junior partners can administer the storage arrays. It is simple and easy to use. We don't have to dedicate a whole team of full time people to work on it.
reviewer1127118 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2021
One of the features that my customers are really interested in is immutable snapshots. There are immutable snapshots to which your applications can be reverted back if you are hit by some kind of ransomware threat or malicious attack. That's kind of a key deal, and it is one of the selling points I use to point out to my customers the value and the features that Pure Storage brings to the table.
MM
Nov 21, 2018
It helps simplify storage. When you're running Pure all-flash, you don't have to do a lot of the old Oracle best practices. You don't have to worry about putting log files on a different disk channel than the data files, and those types of issues... That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit.
reviewer1514421 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 5, 2021
The mobile app is very helpful.
Operatio6735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2019
It helps us maintain uptime much better than other solutions we've used in the past, and the support is extremely quick and responsive.
VA
Nov 21, 2018
The ease of use. That's what our customers love. They say it's very easy, they don't need special training, they don't need to call us or any other company or integrator to help them do their job. That's the main reason they purchase Pure.
 

Pure Storage FlashArray Cons review quotes

SrManagee02f - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2019
I would like to have an easy way to determine the cost per VM so that I can present a solution to our customers.
JK
Sep 20, 2019
The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features.
Nabeel Sayegh - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2025
One requested enhancement yet to manifest is the scheduling of snapshot replications.
Learn what your peers think about Pure Storage FlashArray. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
TY
Jun 17, 2019
We did have one hiccup with the integration of vCenter. When we were installing Pure Storage, we were using vCenter 6.7, which defaults to the HTML5 Web Client. The current plugin for Pure Storage doesn't show up in that client at all. You have to go and use the legacy FlexFlash client to see the Pure Storage plugin in vCenter.
SeniorMa7726 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2019
I would like to see some improvements on the FlashBlade side around the CIFS space support. I am not super familiar with all the different NAS protocols that they run on their box, but there could be some improvements made on SMB CIFS side.
reviewer1127118 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2021
I like what they're doing, but some of my customers complain that they do not have all the bells and whistles and knobs to fine-tune workloads that some of the competitors have. In my opinion, that's good. All customers don't have dedicated storage gurus, and they can get themselves into trouble if they fine-tune too many of those high-performance knobs, but they do get knocked down. Pure Storage takes a hit in the minds and opinions of some of the customers because they cannot customize things as much as compared to a legacy storage provider's appliance such as NetApp, Dell EMC, or even HPE. I personally think 95% of my customers are better off letting the system fine-tune itself. That was something that you needed to do 12 or 15 years ago, but now with all-flash, the technology can handle what it needs to handle. Customers just end up shooting themselves in the foot if they are tweaking too many default settings.
MM
Nov 21, 2018
The only time that we had problems with it was that there was a bug in the VVol implementation but, outside of that, it has been flawless.
reviewer1514421 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 5, 2021
The solution is not cheap.
Operatio6735 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 3, 2019
I would love for them to have a hyper-converged solution.
DG
May 19, 2021
A minor issue that comes to mind is that, every once in a while, a hard drive will go bad.