Pure Storage FlashArray Reviews

We use FlashArray for enterprise block workloads, especially VMware databases. Everything is a virtual environment these days. We work with companies in partner countries in industries like telecom and banking. 

You can see Pure Storage's performance benefits as soon as you have deployed the solution. In terms of compression and deduplication, you can see the benefit once you've migrated 25 to 30 percent of your workload to FlashArray. The algorithm needs that much to see how much duplicated data is inside the array. It has reduced the client's storage footprint 100 percent. 

One feature that's particularly valuable for our finance customers is Pure Storage's safe mode. It protects against ransomware attacks by taking snapshots. Our customers were very impressed with this capability. The data reduction is also impressive compared to other providers. 

The single pane of glass management is simple and easy to operate. It also seamlessly integrates with VMware and cloud environments. Pure Storage is hosted on the public cloud, so it's easy to monitor the array from your mobile phone.

Pure Storage's logs could provide more visibility to the end-user. The logging algorithms are different from those of other vendors. 

I have used Pure Storage for three years. 

Pure Storage FlashArray is reliable, and I've had no problems with hardware or software failures. 

I rate Pure Storage support eight out of 10. Their support is excellent, and they respond quickly. 

Positive

We recommend different solutions based on a questionnaire on the customer's needs. Are there performance or resource crunches? Is their current solution becoming obsolete? This isn't a problem with Pure Storage because it will last forever. 

Pure Storage builds its own drives using direct flash modules. Pure Storage has solutions for all scales from small businesses to the enterprise level. 

FlashArray is pre-deployed on hardware. It's very easy to deploy using one person. 

Pure Storage offers a good long-term ROI. You will get the new technology and the same level of support on an initial capital investment. It's a cost-effective solution for customers of any size for long term.

The Evergreen program is critical for our customers who would like to stay on this platform forever, control operating costs, and adapt to new technologies. 

The most important feature is that you get support services forever for a flat annual renewal cost.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray eight out of 10. 

I'm a Pure Storage partner and I have implemented two use cases for my customers. In one case, my FlashArray works like storage, but my CPU is in my other servers. In my other case, it works only as a backup.

FlashArray helps us reduce our storage footprint. FlashArray says that it can hold 10 terabytes, but I have 13 terabytes on one FlashArray in one case. We have 3:1 compression. When FlashArray says it's at 16 percent, it's a note, but it isn't helpful for our company and customers.

We see the benefits maybe a week after deployment. In that week, the publisher has to do data reduction. We have to work with FlashArray, but FlashArray has to do its work. After a week, I can see FlashArray is reducing the storage usage.

FlashArray's data reduction and NAS features are incredible. Its performance is the best I've worked with. FlashArray's admin page offers a single pane of glass view. It's the best administration page. It's the easiest to use and understand. 

If I need to change or troubleshoot the dashboard, I cannot do it without calling support. If I want to move something critical, I cannot do it by myself. The dashboard blocks me from changing those critical things.

I have used FlashArray for around a year. 

I rate FlashArray nine out of 10 for stability. Our uptime has been 100 percent for the past year. 

We don't use Evergreen to scale up Pure Storage, but it can help us if our FlashArray is old or full. When that happens, it enters Evergreen and allows us to renew our architecture without downtime. 

I rate Pure Storage support 10 out of 10. We called support with one problem. Technical support was fast. 

Positive

I previously used Dell Data Domain. I switched because our Data Domain was old and FlashArray provided better service than the new Data Domain, so we decided to switch.

FlashArray is the easiest thing I've ever deployed. You just rack it and connect it to the network. There isn't any more configuration. Including pre-deployment, one of my more complex jobs took two or three days. I deployed it with one teammate. 

FlashArray is expensive, but the quality justifies the price. 

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray 10 out of 10. Pure Storage is the best in the world for IT companies. If you want the best performance, you have to choose Pure Storage.

This solution has been part of a POC. We've been evaluating the solution. 

We went through many renditions of testing with a full load. Even if we pulled a controller out, there was just a blip of response, and it was still extremely acceptable within the limit of what we would consider acceptable - and we're talking about one millisecond here.

This code was mature. We found the hardware to be extremely robust. 

It worked flawlessly.

The deployment was fast. 

The plugin for the ESX, the VMware, was great. That integration is just perfect. They're enhancing it all the time, from what we can tell, so it works flawlessly.

Support is excellent. 

It was a very good proof-of-concept experience.

In the configuration, which we brought in or tested it in, it has a very limited config as far as the array goes. That said, it still did more than our anticipation. 

It's going to be a hard one to manage. They have most of what we were looking at, including some things that we're looking at down the road. The growth on this particular array is almost unlimited for most shops. I would say they still need more enhanced speed, however, that's always a thing with storage.

I've used the solution for six months. 

The stability and reliability are excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten in terms of stability.

The scalability was great. I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

We have 20,000 people who were virtual machine users that were just on the test load. 

There is potential to increase usage in the future. That said, it's not up to me right now. We're working with the vendor. 

They have very good technical support. The support model was great. They usually had things resolved in under four hours. Service is very fast.

Positive

The deployment is easy. It was implemented in 15 minutes, including SNAP policies. The process was extremely fast.

It required two people to set up the solution. 

We had the whole thing up and running in 20 minutes and probably was done in an hour for everything, including end-to-end connectivity and having ES6 running on it. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using the solution. 

The pricing is okay. It's somewhere in the middle. I'd rate it five out of ten overall. 

We are using an all-flash X-series deployment. 

I'd advise people to test it and give it a try. They need to pay attention to their data reduction rate while doing so. 

I'd rate it nine out of ten overall. 

Pure Storage is located in manufacturing plants. Basically, we have VMware clusters and those clusters are supported by Pure Storage, and those clusters are intended to support those manufacturing plants.

The product cheaper compared to other solutions concerning the technology that they are using. They have excellent rates of deduplication and compression. To offer 20 terabytes of storage, we just need maybe five terabytes of physical hardware. That's great. At the time, there was a notable difference as it was the only vendor with those numbers in terms of deduplication and compression in real-time.

Today other vendor software offers something similar, however, when it was just Pure, it was the best thing. I want to check again, however, usually, we use the Gartner charts to make decisions and start looking for different vendors and maybe the vendors we want to test. At the time, Pure was the leader in every aspect in terms of flash arrays and deduplication and all of that.

I don't really have complaints about the solution. It works really well. We are using Pure for something simple, which is just running a small VMware firm. That's why I don't have any other impressions. It works and I'm happy with it. I don't have any problems with the storage we have.

I’m not sure if there are features missing. I'm the one who chooses the technology; however, after the implementation, I don't have too much contact. I'm not in the operations, I'm not working with the console, creating or putting up a launch. I'm not doing that kind of operation work, so I'm not sure what might be missing.

When we start having some issues with transformer attacks and security threats, I had to contact Pure to ask about software patches. With other vendors, they contact us immediately. They would say, "Hey, we had these vulnerabilities. We need to install these patches, and this is super urgent. And we need to do it now." Yet, with Pure, in a couple of situations, I can remember we tried to go to them and send an email or open a support case to ask them, "Hey, I'm pretty sure you are aware of these threats. Are there any patches or updates available, so we can protect those systems?" There were patches available, however, for some reason, we had to ask. It was not proactive communication.

I want them to initiate contact and have automatic requests for their clients to get the patching. Especially if there are critical security issues. I would expect them to contact us immediately and tell us, "Hey, we identify the security threats, and let's plan together how to implement the security patches or whatever is needed to secure systems."

I've been using the solution for a couple of years. 

It is stable. We only had one issue during the last two years and the support team was able to help us really fast. For the most part it is reliable and the performance is good.

The solution is scalable. It's modular. You just need to put additional two unit expansions, and that's it.

The data storage is supporting a manufacturing plant. In the end, a lot of people are using those systems. I cannot say a number, however, there is a lot of people. There are probably more than 1000 per each side, considering the 24/7 roles.

Technical support was good. We’ve contacted them multiple times and they were great. They have been helpful every time.

It’s easy to set up and support is excellent. The administration console is super easy to understand and extremely intuitive. Even if you are not a storage expert, you can easily understand what you are doing. I like it - it's not complex at all.

We are just customers.

We have two different deployments. One is located in a big data center, and another two are in smaller remote data centers.

We have multiple data centers. We’re a manufacturing company and we need to keep a physical footprint in almost all our manufacturing plants and some of the branch offices. We try to put almost all of our workloads in the cloud, however, if there's a reason like latency or security or some stuff that prevents us from using the cloud, then that is when we put those systems in local data centers.

I’d advise potential new users to be careful during the scoping phase as some things will take up more room than you might anticipate or be hard to compress. Since this solution uses compression and deduplication, if you have a lot of databases or media files like videos or images, or that kind of information, it is not great when you try to compress and deduplicate. 

We have had some issues with that. One POC was supporting a call center, and this call center is recording the agents' screens as well as the audio of those calls.

That kind of information is extremely bad when you try to compress it. That's why, on that specific storage example, we had capacity issues. That specific application was eating almost all the storage. If you have different information, like application servers, a lot of repeated operating systems, if you have a hundred windows running on precisely the same version, that's great for deduplication and compression. That's something that the pre-sales team from Pure can help with; however, it is important internally to identify all those workloads as that could modify a lot, including what is the result in terms of the estimation of capacity required.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use Pure Storage FlashArray as the primary storage of our organization. 

Pure Storage FlashArray is very important for us because this is our primary storage. Most of our data resides in this storage. We rely heavily on it and our backup solution.

We can integrate Pure Storage FlashArray with our Veeam backup software. In addition to our backup, we also take storage-level snapshots. When we take storage-level snapshots for any volume, we can easily restore any virtual machine by using the Veeam portal from the Pure Storage snapshot. This capability is significant for me. As a storage admin, I find it very easy to restore any data. It also reduces the need for extra storage. The data compression feature minimizes the cost of buying extra storage space, benefiting the organization financially.

The compression rate is one of the most valuable features of Pure Storage FlashArray. Additionally, it is all-flash storage with excellent IOPS, and hardware failures are very less. 

We can easily replicate our data from the DC site to the DR site. 

Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal. Our disaster recovery plan was mostly based on the integration between Veeam and Pure Storage, and we faced a lot of problems. Pure Storage promised that a future upgrade would solve this problem by introducing a plugin.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for about one and a half years.

The solution is very stable, and I would rate its stability a nine out of ten. It has reduced downtime by 90% to 95%.

We are a small organization. We have 120 GB of storage and 3,000 to 4,000 people. We have multiple departments using this solution. We have one production site and one disaster recovery site. We have two locations.

They are almost perfect. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used IBM Storage before. The main difference is that IBM supports various storage types such as SAS disk and Flash disk, whereas Pure Storage is all-flash storage. That is the main difference between them. Pure Storage has a higher data compression rate than IBM Storage. 

I prefer Pure Storage over IBM Storage when it comes to performance and power. I also prefer Pure Storage in terms of cost because they are giving the subscription feature to upgrade free of cost. There is also a better compression rate, so we have to buy less storage space than IBM Storage.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not very complex. It takes a few days.

It requires upgrades from time to time. It also requires monitoring. That is all. There is not much maintenance.

The failure rate is very low. It is very stable. It saves resources and time. We do not have any performance issues. The performance is good. In addition to the time and resources, it also saves us costs. Its high data compression rate results in buying less storage space, thus saving costs.

It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective.

I would surely recommend Pure Storage FlashArray for its ease of use and less complexity compared to other storage solutions. The snapshot and replication technologies are much easier to understand and implement compared to other storage solutions.

I would rate Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

We have our own hosted environment that utilizes Pure. We also use it for customers. We use the solution both internally and externally. We use the tool for data storage and backups.

What we had previously wasn't quite working for us. Pure Storage FlashArray gives us the required availability and sufficient performance. We use the secure snapshots for malware protection. We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.

Pure is not designed to be a backup storage. It would be nice if Pure had something in its portfolio that provided higher deduplication and compression for backups. It would be nice to get specialized backup storage with immutability, multifactor authentication, and very high deduplication and compression without sacrificing performance.

I have been using the solution for about five years.

It is an extremely stable solution.

We can start with the base array. As we scale on the contract, we get the higher-end controllers. It's a zero downtime upgrade, which is also very nice. We have some large enterprise customers.

The support is amazing.

Positive

The implementation is easy. The time taken for deployment depends on the engineer. Typically, it takes less than one hour. We need one engineer for the configuration. The tool is very easy to maintain. It has no failure rates.

The ROI is good.

We have customers who use a three-year or five-year license. We also have customers who use Evergreen.

I am also working with Nimble and HPE Alletra. One of the pros of Pure Storage is that it deals with all-flash arrays. It's a lot simpler. The other advantage is the collaboration with Pure.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We are using Pure Storage FlashArray for all of our SAN storage for our VMware environment

The solution has benefited our company because of the ease of use and the performance and reliability.

The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is its high stability level.

The GUI could improve, it could be more intuitive. There is hidden functionality.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for approximately eight months.

The solution has been highly stable and we have not had an issue.

I rate the stability of Pure Storage FlashArray a nine out of ten.

We have one person that using the solution to manage it.

We do not plan to increase our usage.

I rate the scalability of Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

I have not used support often but my experience was good.

I rate the support of Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

Positive

I was not there when the initial setup was done, but we recently we swapped the controller and it went smoothly.

Pure Storage FlashArray is a good investment.

The price of Pure Storage FlashArray is expensive.

My advice to others is for them to plan and try the solution out.

I rate Pure Storage FlashArray an eight out of ten.

We use Pure Storage FlashArray for storage provisioning.

The single pane of glass is good for management. It has improved our company, but I have been working with this solution for only six months, so it is hard to measure the improvement. However, I know that our usage has only increased. We recently purchased two more models, so my company must be seeing some benefits in continuing with this product.

The best feature is that it is easy to learn and use. We can easily do various tasks related to storage provisioning. We do not have to struggle.

The speed can always be improved.

I have been using Pure Storage FlashArray for six months, but my organization has been using it for about five years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability. It has helped us with uptime.

It is scalable. I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability. The upgrades are easy.

The whole organization is using the storage, but we have only five people on the storage team working with it.

We are facing some issues and working with their support to resolve them. Their support is good. We have an account manager, and we can easily raise a case. They also have a good knowledge base.

Positive

It is easy to deploy. It does not require any maintenance from our side.

I would recommend Pure Storage FlashArray. I would rate it a nine out of ten.