Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

There are two real use cases. 

1. General purpose infrastructure for VMs. 
2. Business technical applications, such as Oracle DB or MS SQL DB. 

One customer didn't have the budget to renew all the VM and VDI infrastructure. It was not so huge (approximately 100 VMs). The VMware partner provided the Horizon View solution, suggested to upgrade it to Windows 10 (for example), but the customer didn't want to recreate the infrastructure.

Without touching anything, and integrating from the traditional storage, was a two-tier Dell EMC squared infrastructure toward a flash array. We were able to guarantee the overall performance and consistency for Windows 7 machines without upgrading anything, which was a huge improvement without an additional cost. Then, we added a lot of additional VMs.

It's simple, powerful, and ready to use.

Replace SSDs in the lower-end unit. 

Some services could be inserted directly into the SAN, so Pure Storage could complete with the HyperFlex.

I has good stability. We have had no issues with upgrading.

We haven't done an upscale of the solution, maybe more in future projects.

It has very good support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It is clear, simple, and easy. While it's a human interface, there a lot of operations that are automatically done by the unit itself.

Lone segmentation is simpler and more agile. It's improved the velocity in overall provisioning from project to operation.

It's cost-effective when we replace it and has rich improvements with low effort from the customer side.

Our customers will usually also evaluate HPE 3PAR. It is a good competitor because they put emphasis on their infrastructure.

In the end, the customers pick Pure Storage because of me. I don't sell 3PAR because I don't believe in the solution.

It is simple, powerful, and a beautiful solution. It is a nice piece of software, but it also has some nice hardware inside.

The predictive performance analytics are quite good. We have touched a lot of cases where the performance was quite similar, even under big loads, but the compression and duplication numbers can be misleading. Because PDFs are more compressed, the dedupe and compression numbers are being lowered.

Since we're a database shop, we primarily do databases on Pure. Everything else follows from that.

We are doing a project in tandem with Boeing to develop a security solution for their Oracle databases. We've been doing it in the VMware virtual solutions lab, which is back-ended by Pure Storage. It's a very complex project. Pure made it fast enough that we could cycle through the things that we needed to cycle through to get it exactly right. We were able to do so a lot of times, to rev it enough to get it refined to where the process was exactly right every time. There's no way we would have had time to rev it that much had it been on anything slower.

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. As long as you don't max out the bandwidth of your connectivity, your Fibre Channel, then it doesn't matter. That has pushed the bottleneck down to the connectivity to the storage, as opposed to the different spindle groups on your storage. That has made it vastly easier to do large volumes, rapid provisioning in databases, without taking a performance hit.

We like the data reduction rates. That has been really helpful. You get 4U of Pure Storage replacing something like two racks of spinning disks. One of the things that has contributed to that are the data reduction rates. Not only that, it helps dramatically speed the read coming back in, because you don't have to read it 400 times. Actually, the write doesn't hurt anything either because the write goes in once and then it gets deduplicated and that's that. It does help speed I/O because then everything is coming right off the front end of cache. Certainly, in terms of space, it's probably the most helpful.

1. It's really fast
2. It's fall-off-the-log easy to use. 

That is the strongest selling point. The ease of use is really nice.

In terms of the Predictive Performance Analytics, it certainly contributes to better overall performance and I'm a total fan of that. I've worked with some other flash storage vendors and the one that has the best overall offering, certainly, is Pure, the Analytics is part of it, whereas some of the other storage vendors haven't had as strong an offering in predictive analytics.

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. 

I'm assuming that the VVol implementation got fixed in the last little while. We ran into that last February, so it's been about eight months. I suspect that they probably have it resolved by now. Other than that, it's bulletproof.

We have never, ever run up against a bottleneck. It's a piece of cake to scale it. You plug in more and you keep going until you max out your bandwidth and then you put another storage controller in, a Fibre Channel controller, and go some more.

The guys in technical support are great. They're on the money. Our client, Chapman University, is on a first-name basis with the Pure support guys. You get really good interactive support from the Pure team.

I think our client, Chapman University, was on Dell EMC before they went to Pure. What I'm about to say are some of my impressions, I don't know that I know all the details that went into the decision. I think that they were just done with Dell EMC and that Dell EMC's all-flash solution was an afterthought, where Pure's was engineered from the ground up to be all-flash, as opposed to bolted on after the fact.

From what I saw at Chapman University, they wanted the increase in performance plus the decrease in power utilization and space and cooling in their data center. That dramatically mitigated a whole bunch of data center issues they had before. It didn't take nearly as much power to power it or to cool it and they reduced their footprint significantly.

I saw a little bit of the initial setup at Chapman University, and it didn't look all that complicated. It appeared to be pretty straightforward.

There Is ROI has come in saving personnel time, a lot of time. That pushes into the DBA staff, the DevTest staff, and the production folks, because we got their stuff to run 50 percent faster. We took it off the old physical hardware and virtualized it and got it to go 50 percent faster than the physical hardware running against Pure Storage.

That made it easy to rapidly provision DevTest environments. Things like that, that used to take hours and hours and hours, can now be automated down to one click of the button by the requester and another one or two by the approver. Then it just runs in the background and it's done in a couple of minutes.

It's hard to quantify the reduction in the total cost of ownership, but it's there, absolutely, particularly in the VS lab context and the channel context as well. It's so much faster, that not only has it eliminated the time that DBAs would have spent otherwise, doing tasks that take a long time to do - things like backup and the like - but it has also helped on the front end because you can do development and DevTest provisioning so much more quickly. It's hard to roll that into traditional TCO, but it's certainly part of it when you look at the entire organization.

Regarding finding the TCO of flash to be lower than SSD implementations, I'm not sure I could quantify that.

Do it. I have zero reservations about recommending Pure to anyone who is looking for some really good all-flash. Pure is the way to go, for sure.

All-flash is great whenever you can get it but I really like the Pure offering. It's very robust. I heard the "chief scientist," the brains of the deal, explain how some of that stuff works at the bit and byte level and, being a computer science major, I thought that was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Pure works pretty well as is. I've been so busy using all the good stuff that it already does. I'm sure it can be improved, but we haven't got that far yet. We've been milking what it already does.

I hesitate to give it a ten out of ten because I'm sure it can be improved somehow. In terms of how it could be improved, I don't know. I'm pretty happy with it as it stands. Pure is the best thing that I have seen in that space so far, hands-down, bar none.

Our database administrators had to run some manual process twice a week since the disk performance of our previous storage unit was not able to respond to the requests fast enough.

This process took approximately four hours and it had to be done manually twice a week by the DBAs. After the implementation, the time to run the process was reduced to minutes and it did not require any manual intervention from our DBAs.

Performance, deduplication, compression, and fast response time for requests from servers and applications.

I have not been able to find one yet.

We did, but it was partially due to our environment. We were running outdated firmware in the HBAs for our HPE Blade Servers and an old version of vSphere that it is not supported by VMware.

We decided to keep these servers under with the previous storage array to avoid disconnects and system outages.

No, the unit that we bought contains 40TB of usable space and we are using 10TB so far.

Technical support is great. They will dive in deep with your team to figure out what is causing the problem for them and find the root cause.

I wish they could collaborate more with the other vendors internally, instead of us opening cases with Cisco, HPE, VMware, etc.

We have another platform using spinning disk 600GB 15K RPM SAS drives, but our applications and servers have grown so much that the storage was getting saturated with the requests from the applications.

We discussed the option to add more SAS disk and memory to the controllers of that array versus buying a Solid State Drive Array (SSDA).

We concluded that it would be more beneficial for our company to invest in an SSDA, and the results paid off.

The initial setup was straightforward and very easy to implement, as long as you have all the information that you need ahead of time.

For instance, IP addresses, iSCSI IPs and adapters, switch configurations and ports enabled, etc.

The price seems fair according to the market. We analyzed multiple All-Flash Arrays (AFA) in the market, but Pure came at the top in many areas.

The price was slightly higher than others, but competitive, if you consider all the other features that you get from it. I love the Evergreen model to replace any parts after three years with a newer part as part of your support contract. The licensing is based on your capacity.

We researched other products from Kaminario, NetApp SolidFire, Nimble Storage, EMC XtremeIO, and HPE.

I always recommend a company to start with a proof of concept. That way, you can test your applications directly with the unit. It is critical to get a baseline of the before with your current storage array and after with an SSDA or an AFA.

Pure Storage FlashArray has significantly improved our data center performance. It handles high workloads efficiently, providing better performance in the environment. With increased storage capacity, it has led to improved overall system performance. The tool's technology is a standout feature. It has helped me reduce storage costs by 15 percent. 

The product should improve its response time. I have also encountered issues with its configuration. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

I have used Dell EMC before. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

Pure Storage FlashArray's pricing is very competitive. 

I rate the product a ten out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for storage. 

It has improved the way our organization functions by improving the resilience of our infrastructure by quite a bit. 

The tool size is good. We have a tool size and then each size has one Pure Storage and they form the active cluster. We can just access the data on both sides with a uniform access design.

The scalability is good.

It can do some replications. They're very easy to perform. 

We're quite happy with eh solution overall. I can't recall coming across any features that were lacking. 

There was some complexity in the initial setup.

While they've improved a lot, many features have been released recently and they are not that mature just yet. My understanding is they just released some features, for some transport services over the NVMe and then the file service. However, the file service is not so mature. I had some problems with the file service when we used it. 

Other new features, such as the active clustering over the FC, and the verification over the FC feature, we didn't use. We have to have a trial on it first before commenting on it.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

It's very, very, very stable. There are no performance degrades during any upgrade or replacement of the parts. 

The product is extremely scalable. 

There is only one person using the solution currently. 

I've dealt with technical support previously. Their response is fast and mostly very, very helpful. We just need to enable the remote console on the array and then they just can easily troubleshoot by themselves. That way, we do not need more time to work with them. They just fix the problem for us.

We also use HPE Nimble. This solution scales much better. That said, it is a bit more complex to implement when you compare it to Nimble. 

There are two different classes in our design. We put more critical applications on Pure due to its stability and resilience. Less important or less critical applications or servers are on Nimble. However, the capacity of Nimble is far larger than Pure Storage.

The initial setup is more complex than the Nimble. Mostly the configurations must be done by the Pure engine at the back end.

It took two or three weeks to deploy the solution.

You only need one person to deploy and maintain the solution.

We handled the initial setup by ourselves. We did not need any outside assistance from any integrators or consultants. 

With Pure Storage, we buy the array and then all the features can be enabled on that.

It is more expensive than Nimble. The price is likely double Nimble's.

You do not have to pay for any extra features or add-ons. Everything is included. 

I'm a customer.

We use the Pure Array X model with a version of Purity 5. Recently, we bought the Pure C series.

We use it with a private cloud and on-premises as well.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use the solution for the storage of our database and to run some algorithms to analyze data we retrieve from the internet.

I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand.

Pure Storage FlashArray could improve by being more secure.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

The solution is highly stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have five customers using this solution.

The technical support is very good.

The installation is the simplest I have ever done from any solution.

We did the implementation of the solution ourselves with the supervision of the integrator.

We have a team that does the maintenance and operations of the solution.

There is an annual or perpetual license required for this solution.

I am very satisfied with this solution and I would recommend it to others.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

We use virtual servers on there.

We have tons of capacity on it.

It is fast and reliable. It works. 

For three years, we haven't had any trouble with it. It is reliable. Once it is installed, off it goes.

The scalability is handy. You can just add more drives. They automatically synchronize. You don't have to do anything but snap them in there. It is pretty easy.

I can't even remember dealing with technical support. 

We had tons of old physical servers and needed the storage room. It was more cost-effective to set this solution up for running our VM environment off it.

The solution is bigger and faster than what we had before.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and simple. 

We used Compunet for the deployment. Our experience with them was good.

The solution has reduced our power usage.

The solution could be cheaper.

There should be quite a bit of reduction of TCO with just licensing (and stuff) because we run the VM environment off it.

I would recommend to go with this solution.

We have integrated the solution with VMware, and the process was seamless. We've never had any trouble with it.

Flash drives make an amazing difference.

The primary use case is big data. 

SAP is very important for our business. We are running our management system on SAP, so it's very critical. We are running SAP S/4HANA and other ERP modules. We run our config on-premise.

The most valuable feature is test performance. It helps us store large amounts of data along with providing us faster retrieval of data.

The stability is very good.

The scalability is very good.

The technical support is okay, but could be improved.

We switched because the performance was bad with our previous solution, and it was expensive.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed it in-house.

We have seen latency improvements.

We also evaluated EMC and HPE.

We really needed high performance with large amounts of data. We weren't happy with other vendors, and the speed and the volume of data that they could store, handle, and compress.

It has been quite satisfactory in performance and scalability. Since we adopted this only a year ago, we will see what happens in the long term, if they will keep up with their quality.